Do you want to be the boss’s favorite employee? It may not be the fast-track to success.

“There’s a personal cost to ingratiating yourself with your boss,” said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Oregon State University and the lead author of a study recently published edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Klotz and his co-authors examined how 75 mid-level managers at a large publicly-traded company in China used two “impression management” techniques — ingratiation with the higher-ups and self-promotion — over two weeks. The kisser-uppers acted out in other ways too, they found.

Studies suggest successful use of ‘managing up’ can lead to better performance reviews, but this may also come at a personal cost.

“Impression management refers to behaviors employees use to create and maintain desired images in the workplace,” they wrote. Previous studies have shown that the successful use of impression management can lead to better performance reviews. But this may also come at a personal cost.

Those who flattered the boss appeared to have a false sense of security and were more likely to lack self-discipline. As a result, they were uncivil to co-workers who were not as high up on the management chain as they were, skipped meetings and surfed the internet rather than working.

One explanation: It takes a lot of effort for most people to suck up to the boss and their emotional energy was simply “depleted,” Klotz said. Those who flattered the boss, but also possessed political skills of diplomacy and communication, were less likely to act out in other ways by slacking off.

Ingratiation with a CEO can lead to resentment and bad mouthing

“Someone who is willing to kiss up to a boss to move their agenda forward is also more likely to just behave badly,” said Tim Sackett, president of HRU Technical Resources, an information technology and engineering staffing firm in Lansing, Mich. “That’s the kind of person they are.”

In fact, researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Texas at San Antonio analyzed the relationships between 3,895 chief executive officers and their top managers and found that ingratiation increased the likelihood that managers would resent and bad mouth the CEO.

“The size of the effects was large,” they wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “A one-standard-deviation increase in compliments to the CEO was associated with an average increase in resentment of between approximately one and a half and two points on a two-point scale.”

Female CEOs and CEOs belonging to a racial minority fared worse: “Specifically, we found that white male managers seemed to particularly resent having to ingratiate a female or a racial minority boss, and were more prone to then criticize that CEO with a journalist,” they wrote.

They added, “Disturbingly, the CEOs may be completely in the dark about the identity of these backstabbers. Why would a CEO expect that a manager who seems particularly supportive, offering flattery and agreement to their face, would be the very ones saying bad things behind their back?”

Office relationships mirror complicated personal relationships

Denise Dudley, author of “Work It! Get In, Get Noticed, Get Promoted,” says the kind of employee who kisses up to the boss is probably likely to waste time and energy in a romantic relationship trying to please the other person and feign interest in his or her hobbies. It takes work.

Faking it only goes so far, she says. “After a while, what starts to happen? You become exhausted. You run out of stamina to maintain the ruse. You feel trapped, crabby, and defensive. When they excitedly bring up the activity, you feel yourself starting to become uptight.”

“We expend an enormous amount of energy when we’re projecting an unnatural persona,” she adds. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we’re sucking up to a boss — especially one we wouldn’t even normally want to socialize with outside of work, let alone hand out compliments and favors.”

Also see: How many women are accused of sexual harassment?

Also see: 10 things you should never say to a colleague

But Dudley believes there’s a fine line between being supportive and paying your boss compliments on an idea, and telling him or her what you think they need to hear. She recommends avoiding transparent statements like, “I think you’re the most awesome boss in the entire company!”

Political skills in the office come in handy for those who are adept at “impression management” and managing up, she adds. In other words, that requires always being “on” for a senior manager — someone who has the power to hire and fire, and give or withhold raises.

“Just think about every politician in the world,” Dudley adds, “they’re experts at smiling, saying nice things to their constituency — and, most importantly, to their donors — and looking like they’re enjoying the hell out of themselves at all those interminable fundraising dinners.”

Office theatrics eventually get noticed for the wrong reasons

Surprisingly, self-promoters did not display the same slacker mentality, the Oregon State researchers found, even if those who constantly brag about their achievements and boast about their connections to other high-level employees are unlikely to endear themselves to colleagues.

On that point, being loud and noisy gives the impression of being productive, a separate study published in the Journal of Consumer Research concluded. “Feeling busy and overworked may make us feel in demand and scarce, and therefore more valuable and important,” the authors wrote.

The study, “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol,” looked at people who post about being busy on social media and found they were actually perceived as being busier than everyone else. So, in one sense, it worked.

Political skills can greatly burnish your ‘impression management,’ but workers are ultimately judged by their results.

One humblebrag from a stage manager cited in the study read: “Opened a show last Friday. Begin rehearsals for another next Tuesday. In-between that, meetings in D.C. I HAVE NO LIFE!” It did not, the researchers noted, mean that the busiest or loudest employees were the most talented.

There’s also a limit to how much one person’s office theatrics go unnoticed by others. Noisy co-workers are the biggest distraction for people at work, studies show. And the prevalence of open-plan offices where it’s possible to overhear everyone else’s business doesn’t help.

What’s more, it’s often difficult to distinguish flattery from positive reinforcement. “Some managers respond well to employees kissing up to them,” Sackett said. “They react positively when it happens, which perpetuates the employee to do it more. And the whole process begins again.”

But Dudley says your boss ultimately looks at your results — and your success will depend on that.

Get a daily roundup of the top reads in personal finance delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Personal Finance Daily newsletter. Sign up here.

Source link