Research Hit: When Abusive Bosses Get a Pass
New research shows that if considered high performers, employees view abuse as "tough love".
Are you suggesting that employees can’t tell the difference between abuse and tough love?
Well that is precisely the outcome of this study form Robert Lount and colleagues of Ohio State University. But the difference is dependent on how the boss is perceived.
What do you mean how the boss is perceived?
The first part of the study involved surveying 576 workers in a variety of industries, reporting on behaviours, on how they rated the effectiveness of the boss, and how the employee rated their boss.
They noticed a pattern of those that had bosses who were high performers tended to rate behaviour that was rated by others as abusive, as a version of “tough love” such as "stern but caring," "insensitive but nurturing" and "rough but well-meaning."
But isn’t there a difference between exhibiting tough love and abuse?!
Yes, precisely, the behaviours included ridicule or making fun of employees - precisely this that is rated as abusive in all other contexts.
But why?
That is an interesting question but first let me tell you about the second part of the experiment because this was a lab-controlled experiment so they could control for subtle variations that may not be measured in the real-world sample.
Oh, sounds fascinating what happened?
Well, 168 undergrads took part in this lab study. Teams wer given a task of working on teams that were supposedly competing against each other to solve a problem.
At the start of the task teams were randomly sent a message that said either: "Don't waste my time coming up with stupid ideas! Do better than a typical undergrad and don't embarrass us!" or a non-abusive message simply encouraged participants to "try hard."
The teams were than supposedly rated on their performance but teams wee randomly given one of two pieces of feedback either saying they performed well above average or well below average.
The teams were then asked to rate their team leader.
But this was all random?
Precisely, nice experimental design. And lo and behold those teams that had randomly been assigned to a high performing group (as it was random it wasn’t because of their performance or high-performing personality traits) rated the abusive leader higher on tough love compared to abusive.
Or lower performance meant that the leader was labelled as abusive.
So performance - or perceived performance means employees perceive tough love and not abuse!
Yes, it seems like we make a connection between performance and hence view this as well meaning or at least something that will drive our own performance - so it is just tough love.
But doesn’t this just open the door to, errr, abusing this?
Sure, note that I and others have reported that positive leadership behaviours will contribute more to high performance - the above is also a version of outcome bias where we judge past events depending on the outcome. It does not excuse or mean this is actually the best way to lead - on the contrary all research points to positive leadership behaviours being the most effective.
It however, does explain some experiences we may have seen in the workplace - I can think of a plenty of situations I have seen this, from close and afar.
Reading this research created small" “Aha effect” for me!
So beware - abuse is still abuse!
Yes, and not tough love - tough love is also clearly caring. The above examples were clearly not tough love.
Reference
Robert B. Lount, Woohee Choi, Bennett J. Tepper.
'Abuser' or 'Tough Love' Boss?: The moderating role of leader performance in shaping the labels employees use in response to abusive supervision.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2024; 183: 104339
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2024.104339