The Ideal Employee: What Organizations Should Know

Most managers can describe their “Ideal Employee”. Pretty logical!

But, where does this image come from?

And why does it need to be carefully managed by organizations?

In the past two years I asked 320 leaders in the USA and Europa about their Ideal Employee. This is what I I found in a nutshell:

In manager' eyes, an Ideal Employee should “fit in” with the prevailing work context and culture, and be similar to the manager him/herself.

Non-conformity? Individuality? Creativity? Complementing qualities? 

Not really on the list of desirable traits.

What drives leaders' preference for conformity?

My studies found an astonishing degree of alignment between work context, organizational culture, leaders’ own personality and the way they form expectations for staff members. For example, managers in highly formalized and regulated work contexts prefer efficiency over creativity in staff members; and while open-minded leaders expect their employees to be creative, very conscientious managers are also looking for employees who just get the job done within the given limits. Lastly, organizational culture strongly affects their opinion what’s good about subordinates: hence, leaders will form their employee image according to the values endorsed at work.

What’s the problem here? Take lack of diversity and gender inequality for a start.

In my dissertation, I argue that leaders’ Ideal Employee image can be hazardous for leadership effectiveness. An 'Ideal Employee' image or 'employee prototype' can become rigid if strengthened by organizational values or processes. And, inflexible expectations determine leaders’ behaviors towards employees, their personnel related decisions and consequently, their work relationships. They can lead to idealized or unrealistic assessments and to great difficulties in hiring new team members.

A lack of cultural, intellectual or social diversity, as well as gender inequality in organizations are the direct result of people's prototypical expectations excluding non-conforming individuals. It's not their lack of skills, it's the organization's inability to register their skills.

What can organizations do about their leaders’ Ideal Employee image?

Now that we know that the work place co-determines the way leaders want their Ideal Employee to be, organizations can start managing their managers’ (unproductive) expectations. They can:

·         Find out what their leaders’ Ideal Employee profile is

·         Assess the prevailing organizational culture and other organization-related elements

·         Think about ways this Ideal Employee image may be at work on a daily basis

·         Be aware, manage and change the nature of their Ideal Employee image

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apart from working as independent management trainer and coach since 2006, I am currently finishing my PhD dissertation in Economics with a focus on Leadership and Organizational change. Part of my work has been published this month in the Leadership & Organization Development Journal[1]. All throughout my career, I have been working closely with organizations in both Europe and the USA; my goal is to provide answers to real-world organizational problems on the basis of management science.

---

[1] Derler, Andrea, and Weibler, Juergen. 2014. “The Ideal Employee: Context and Leaders’ Implicit Follower Theories.” Leadership & Organization Development Journal 35(5):386–409.

The Ideal Employee, from a Leadership perspective

Managers base many personnel related decisions on so-called ‘lay theories’ about the way employees generally are or should be. Their internal images of (ideal) employees are the result of past experiences with others and develop into a conglomerate of expectations and hopes as well as misperceptions, bias’ and prejudices about subordinates. Either way, these “folk theories” about employees have been shown to impact employee performance* as well as interpersonal relationships**, and are powerful and vastly underestimated factors in the leader-follower dynamic.

The top desired trait in employees: Reliability

I studied some of the traits and behaviors that leaders expect from an ‘ideal employee’. Of course, many factors play a role when leaders develop their personal ‘ideal employee profile’, so my work revolves around leaders’ work and organizational context in relation to their ideal employee profile. In spring 2012 I undertook a leadership survey with 200+ US leaders from various companies to show that leaders’ work context can affect their preferences for certain employee types. Whilst I cannot share all of the results here and now, I found one to be particularly interesting: Reliability. It was the highest rated of all traits, so what leaders want most from employees is that they are reliable. This is not a surprising finding and makes sense: being reliable means to be dependable in accuracy, achievement and honesty - important traits for all organization members.

The really interesting question is: are today’s organizations actually providing a work environment that encourages employees to be reliable?

The problem with reciprocity

Lately it was the job market that made headlines. If companies hire at all right now, they seem to find it incredibly difficult to find good employees. According to Peter Cappelli this could just be one side of the story. In his newest book Cappelli challenges organizations that complain about a lack of skilled workers by arguing that the blame for the current situation on the job market lies in part by the businesses themselves. Companies are looking for the perfect employee (that seldom exists), are not willing to provide sufficient training (to the imperfect rest), and refuse to pay appropriate wages (to those who are lucky enough to have a job). Bottom line: If businesses weren’t so unnecessarily picky during the hiring process, if they trained people better and paid them more, they could solve the skilled workforce problem themselves.

Let’s say  Cappelli is right: how does leaders’ desire for reliable employees fit in with the unwillingness of organizations to really care for their workforce?

It doesn’t.

The problem with reliability is that it cannot be forced upon someone like we can force a work uniform upon them. Rather, it emerges in response to the fulfillment of a social contract on the side of the organization, provided by a reciprocal give-and-take and preceding any expectation.

Fostering the ‘Ideal Employee’

Can leaders in organizations create an environment in which employees want to be reliable? They will need to. Whatever it is that individual organizations need to do, it’s crucial to be aware that that it is up to them to create an environment instead of sticking to their expectations and complain if they are not being fulfilled. It is not up to employees to be a certain kind, but it is up to the organizations and their leadership team to provide the environment that will foster desired behaviors and qualities.

The results of my survey were eye-opening and I found several interesting associations between work context and leader’s preferences for certain employee qualities. Most importantly I was able to find support for the thought that context can create individual outcomes. For leaders and organizations, the first step in the right direction would be to ask themselves the following question:

Are we creating a work environment that makes people want to be what we expect them to be?

As always, your feedback and comments are welcome. You may also email me at andrea.derler@gmail.com

References:

** Sy, T. (2010). What do you think of followers? Examining the content, structure, and consequences of implicit followership theories. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 113, 73–84.

* Whiteley, P., Sy, T., & Johnson, S. K. (2012). Leaders’ conceptions of followers: Implications for naturally occurring Pygmalion effects. The Leadership Quarterly. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.03.006