There's an expression that "nice guys finish last," implying that not so nice guys finish first, or at least do better. Yet we don't like to think or admit this, particularly when we think of our bosses or co-workers.
Some new research has tested this nice guy hypothesis, with somewhat surprising results. A recent study, "Do Nice Guys-and Gals-Really Finish Last," by Beth Livingston of Cornell University, Timothy Judge of the University of Notre Dame in Australia and Charlie Hurst of the University of Western Ontario, which will be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, conclude that "nice guys are getting the shaft," in the workplace.
The researchers studied "agreeableness," using twenty years of survey data from three different surveys, from 10,000 workers in a variety of professionals, salaries, and ages. They concluded that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned approximately 18% more than nicer guys. Less than agreeable women, according to the study, earned 5% more than their agreeable counterparts. Livingstone and his colleagues reported that the income premium for disagreeableness is more than three times stronger for men than women. The researchers concluded that less than agreeable people may be more assertive in salary negotiations, and that people who were more agreeable were less likely to get promotions or a new job compared to their less agreeable counterparts.
The authors of the study did present one caveat: The study was limited in scope to monetary success and does not examine other issues in the careers context.
A whole different perspective is presented by research conducted by Jeanne Trudel of Indiana Wesleyan University and Thomas Reio of Florida Internal University, who concluded in their study that 86% of workers from Midwestern industries reported increasing levels of incivility in the workplace, mostly perpetrated by managers, and this has led to increasing employee turnover.
Disagreeableness or rudeness can have negative consequences that reach beyond the workplace. Meredith Ferguson of Baylor University completed a study of the impact of disagreeableness or rudeness in the workplace, published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Ferguson concluded that "Employees who experience such incivility at work bring home the stress, negative emotion and perceived ostracism that results from those experiences, which then affects more than their family life-it also creates problems for the partner's life at work."
So it seems like organizations are rewarding-at least at the monetary level-people who are disagreeable and even uncivil, while at the same time, there is evidence to show the significant negative consequences of such people in the organization and their families.
In my experience in working with leaders and organizations there is clearly two contradictory and counter-trends. One, the desire to have strong agreesive males in leadership position, and at the same time, the desire to build positive work cultures based on civility and respect for all.
