The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome: How Good Managers Cause Great People to Fail

by Jean-François Manzoni, Jean-Louis Barsoux, Dina Nayeri

Book Overview

Does this scenario sound familiar? An employee you manage slips up somehow: a missed deadline, a lost account, or a weak presentation. You decide to oversee that person's work more closely. After all, if your direct reports aren't delivering, it's your head that will roll. To further your frustration, the more you 'help', the worse the employee's performance becomes. What's going on? In this eye-opening book, leadership experts Jean-Francois Manzoni...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0875849490
• ISBN13: 9780875849492
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Can be a bit dry but good read.

An excellent review of why some manager-employee relationships can spiral downward. A and B examines some of the causes, and solutions, to such toxic relationships. In this short read, the authors urge managers to look at the effects they may have upon their own employees. The authors also encourage managers to examine their biases how they affect others. Also, they showcase the self-fulfilling prophecy low expectations can cause to employees. Another plus for this book is that they don't claim this book to be a one-size-fits-all solution. The authors acknowledge that boss-employee relationships can be complex and some employees may just be bad. Yet, there are some open-ended and simple solutions rather than firing subordinates. All things considered, this is a must-read for all managers. Many times if need be. 4/5.

Set-up-to-fail behavioral anti-pattern is more frequent than one can think...

I find this book extremely interesting and definitely worth of reading. It sheds lights on the well known situation when trying to help a person a manager can actually make things even worse. *** Whom this book could be interesting for? *** I believe this book would be interesting for managers of all possible levels since the subject of the book seems to be relevant for all kind of people whose job description is involving management of any kind - regardless if it is a top-management or a team coaching. The above can be applied to parents since growing children sometimes is very close to managing and coaching. Sometimes people tend to give grades to other people, such as "strong" or "weak". What if the person giving such grades is a manager? How can this affect the behavioral pattern of a person marked as the "weak"? Is this person really "weak" and relatively to whom is he or she "weak"? How managers and "weak" employees build biased opinion towards each other? All these questions are carefully and step-by-step discussed in the book. It is very important to know that this publication is actually a result of researches performed by the authors and based on real life. It is even more interesting that according to author's words, the described behavioral anti-pattern can be noticed in different cultures. In other words, the book reveals the tendency that can be noticed in many places regardless of the cultural conditions. *** Summary *** The book is extremely interesting as a research study on the subject. It contains many examples from the real life while some of them are given with concrete names of well-known Managers and this fact makes the book even more exciting to read.

Common Wisdom: Insidious & Pernicious

This work deftly weaves those seemingly abstract and academic studies Psychology 101 students have been reading about for 40 years into the fabric of everyday work experience. The authors are able to put the subtle pattern into high resolution, which at first appears shocking, then depressing, and finally, hopeful.It was depressing to think that the syndrome is both insidious and pernicious because the common wisdom of most coaching models is a key driver of the syndrome. That is, when a manager notices a performance problem, the appropriate response is to give the person feedback and put them on a "short leash" so that the employee gets extra guidance. On the face, this starts a chain of events:* Employee perceives the lack of trust, feels cramped by the limited autonomy, as well as being under appreciated.* Employee responds by withdrawing and reducing unnecessary contact with the boss.* The Boss takes the withdrawal as confirmation the this is indeed a weaker performer and so shortens the leash even more.* Progressively, the employee begins to doubt her own capability and ability to contribute, and* The ugly cycle continues in a downward spiral and the employee has been successfully set up to fail.It was hopeful to realize that the dynamic is not really based in the coaching model at all. It is based in the very human tendency to categorize and label. It is the common wisdom that there are three kinds of employees: the Stars (or A-Players), the Worker Bees (or B-Players), and the Deadwood (or C-Players). The problem lies in the labeling and how the manager relates to the Worker Bee employee. The Stars have close partnerships with the Boss and are treated as `trusted assistants." The Worker Bees, on the other hand, have low quality relationships with the Boss and are treated as "hired hands." This stark differentiation in the quality of relationship, based on the label is at the root of the issue. Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization has said, "We're running as an economy at a 30% efficiency rate because so many workers are not contributing as much as they can..." because a disconnect with an immediate supervisor. Psychologists say that "Perception is not reality." That is truth in their offices; truth in the workplace is, "Perception IS reality." Unfortunate but true. Manzoni & Barsoux do the business world a great service because they clearly and skillfully lay out how our perception creates unintended bias. This awareness is required by both the Boss and the Subordinate to be able to stop the dysfunctional "dance" that occurs when the Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome is at work. The hope that they present is that awareness leads to re-evaluation and the reduction of bias. This is one powerful book; buy it, read it, talk about it.

The Negative Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

This book is based on more than fifteen years of extended and combined research whose primary objective was to reveal the reasons why so many in positions of authority, especially bosses, are so ineffective when managing their subordinates, especially their perceived weaker performers. That is to say, supervisors are often unaware of the fact that they are "complicit in an employee's lack of success. How? By creating and reinforcing a dynamic that essentially sets up perceived weaker performers to fail." Hence the title of Manzoni and Barsoux's book. The authors explain the causes and effects of that "dynamic" (see "Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome," Chapter 3) and also explain how to avoid it ("Preventing the Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome: Lessons from the Syndrome Busters," Chapter 9). One of this book's most valuable contributions is comprised of a series of "Tables" which organize and summarize key points. For example:Table 2-1: "How Bosses See Their Behavior toward Subordinates" which contrasts tendencies of bosses in relationships with weaker and stronger performers.Table 5-1: "Taking Sides" which presents two views of the same supervisor's observed behavior either as a "great boss" or as an "impossible boss."Table 7-2: "Taking Responsibility Away from an Employee" which juxtaposes a supervisor's thoughts and feelings about a subordinate with their interaction in dialogue.Manzoni and Barsoux assert that the set-up-to-fail syndrome is "both self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing, which obscures the boss's responsibility in the process as well as some of the key psychological and social mechanisms involved." My own experience suggests an often great discrepancy exists between modes of behavior determined by conscious and unconscious mindsets. That is to say, many supervisors would vehemently deny that they are "complicit in an employee's lack of success....[by] creating and reinforcing a dynamic that essentially sets up perceived weaker performers to fail." Nonetheless they are. Were they to read this book, they would probably agree that there is such a syndrome and then lament how unfair it is to subordinates who are victimized by it. One final point. Countless research studies of face-to-face communication have arrived at essentially the same conclusion: Body language creates 60-75% of the impact, tone of voice 15-20%, and content (i.e. what is actually said) only 10-15%. (Percentages vary among research studies but only slightly.) With the publication of this book, Manzoni and Barsoux have made a substantial contribution to our understanding of a widespread but, until now, neglected cause of human dysfunction in the workplace. Whether intentionally or not, a supervisor can sometimes create irreparable damage, especially to those who already feel insecure, by a negative and demeaning "message" which need not be expressed in words but comes through loud and clear nonetheless.

Relationship between leadership and subordinate performance

Jean-Francois Manzoni is Assistant Professor of Accounting and Control at French business school INSEAD; Jean-Louis Barsoux is a Research Fellow at INSEAD. Barsoux is also co-author of 'Managing Across Cultures' (1997). This Harvard Business Review article was published in March-April 1998.This article is based on two studies designed to better understand the causal relationship between leadership style and subordinate performance - or in other words, how bosses and subordinates mutually influence each other's behavior. Those studies suggest that bosses - albeit accidentally and usually with the best intentions - are often complicit in an employee's lack of success. Manzoni and Barsoux use the term 'set-up-to-fail syndrome' to describe a dynamic "in which employees perceived to be mediocre or weak performers live down to the low expectations their managers have for them." The set-up-to-fail syndrome usually begins surreptitiously and underlying the syndrome are several assumptions/generalizations about weaker performers that bosses appear to accept uniformly. The authors describe these assumptions/generalizations and the impact they have on organizations and relationships. The two costs of the syndrome are the emotional cost paid by the associate and the organizational cost associated with the company's failure to get the best out of an employee. Other costs to consider, often indirect and long term, are: Sapping of the boss' emotional and physical energy, the impact on the boss' reputation, and the impact on the team (team spirit, time management, etc.). So how can we break out of this syndrome? The authors provide a five components framework for effective interventions but they warn that these interventions do not take place very often. In line with the recent emphasis on emotional intelligence, they conclude that higher emotional involvement and investment from bosses is the key to getting the subordinates to work to their full potential.Good article into a very familiar problem, not just to organizations but also to people. The 'set-up-to-fail syndrome' is mostly based on generalizations by managers and bosses, but is difficult to reverse. The authors provide a solution which is primarily based on emotional intelligence, which is still difficult to learn. I recommend this article as an complement to Daniel Goleman's articles and books into emotional intelligent leadership and management. The authors use simple business US-English.