Subscribe
The latest psychology and neuroscience discoveries.
My Account
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychopharmacology
No Result
View All Result
PsyPost
PsyPost
No Result
View All Result
Home Exclusive Social Psychology Business

Leader agreeableness can stifle team reflexivity by weakening the impact of constructive feedback, study finds

by Eric W. Dolan
June 4, 2022
in Business

[Subscribe to PsyPost on YouTube to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience]

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

New research suggests that business leaders might want to rein in their agreeableness when providing constructive feedback. The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, provides evidence that warm and friendly leaders tend to provide less effective feedback to their team.

“I am interested in team effectiveness. Most of today’s work in organizations is performed by teams, yet high-performing teams is not the norm,” explained study author Jean-François Harvey, an associate professor at HEC Montréal and co-author of “Extreme Teaming.”

“Leadership is a key factor in determining if teams are going to be effective or not, and feedback is one of the main tools for leaders to influence team performance. Thus, I thought that we should consider personality characteristics of the leader and how those can affect the impact of their feedback on their team, starting with agreeableness — the highest-variance personality characteristic among the Big Five.”

“Agreeable individuals have the behavioral tendency to subordinate various self-centered emotions such as frustration or exasperation in favor of other-oriented, empathic expressions of support or prosocial behavior (i.e., empathy, forgiveness).”

Harvey and his research team conducted two studies to examine how agreeableness influenced feedback and team task performance.

In the first study, 182 adults were asked to provide actionable feedback to the writer of a cover letter and then completed a personality assessment. The researchers used text analysis software to identify the proportion of words in the feedback submissions that were associated with positive and negative emotions, and found that an individual’s level of agreeableness was associated the emotional tone of the feedback that they provided.

For their second study, the researchers collected data from 517 salespeople and 53 sales team leaders who were working for a financial services firm in Canada.

The team leaders provided information about how much constructive feedback they gave their team and completed a measure of agreeableness. The team members provided information about the team’s reflexivity, or the extent to which they reviewed their approaches their job and discussed the methods used “to get the job done.” The teams were also rated on their ability to come up with new ideas to improve performance, develop adequate plans for the implementation of new ideas, finding new ways of performing work tasks.

Team leaders who provided more constructive feedback tended to have team members who reported higher levels of reflexivity. Teams with greater reflexivity, in turn, tended to have greater performance. Importantly, the researchers found that the link between constructive feedback and increased team reflexivity was especially strong for teams with more disagreeable leaders.

“We show that agreeableness heightens the positive emotional tone that an individual uses when providing constructive feedback. Then, in a second study, we show that highly agreeable leaders’ constructive feedback is less impactful than lesser agreeable ones: the former’s feedback does not push their team to reflect on its work, which stimulates performance,” Harvey told PsyPost.

“In other words, tone can make the meaning of feedback ambiguous and the feedback-giver’s intentions can be hard to decipher. Thus, highly agreeable leaders may want to be mindful of their tendencies to use positive emotional tone when providing constructive feedback.”

“This does not mean to be disagreeable in general—there are pros to being agreeable such as invoking strong social ties and building high-quality relationships—but to be aware of the influence of the facet of one’s personality when providing constructive feedback,” Harvey explained.

But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.

“We do not consider the team members’ attributes and we only tested our theory with sales teams,” Harvey said. “Some individuals may be particularly keen at picking up the cues from any type of feedback, and start a conversation that spurs reflexivity within their team. Moreover, future research should both examine leader agreeableness and feedback dynamics in other contexts.”

“Agreeableness has been shown to positively influence leadership effectiveness when effectiveness is defined by affective and relational dimensions, but not when it is defined in terms of execution and performance,” he added. “The study helps explain why that is.”

The study, “Constructive feedback: When leader agreeableness stifles team reflexivity“, was authored by Jean-François Harvey and Paul Green Jr.

ShareTweetSendScanShareSharePin1Send

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

STAY CONNECTED

TRENDING

People exposed to phubbing by their romantic partner are less satisfied with their romantic relationship

Virtual reality can inoculate people against the allure of alternative romantic partners, study finds

Greedy people have more money but are less satisfied with their lives, according to new study

Young men rate their IQ as higher compared to age-matched women, but the reverse is true for older adults

Study finds harsh maternal discipline can leave daughters vulnerable to anxiety and depression

Listening in silence to someone with depression might increase their social anxiety, study suggests

RECENT

Those with dark personalities are more vulnerable to developing homonegative and transnegative views

Young men rate their IQ as higher compared to age-matched women, but the reverse is true for older adults

Social anxiety predicts body dysmorphic symptoms via appearance rejection sensitivity

Greedy people have more money but are less satisfied with their lives, according to new study

New research highlights the misinformation about misinformation research

People exposed to phubbing by their romantic partner are less satisfied with their romantic relationship

Psilocybin might help reduce rumination and suppressive thoughts in depressed patients

Study finds harsh maternal discipline can leave daughters vulnerable to anxiety and depression

Currently Playing

Paranormal beliefs are associated with worse sleep, study finds

Paranormal beliefs are associated with worse sleep, study finds

Paranormal beliefs are associated with worse sleep, study finds

Mental Health
Large-scale cross-cultural study provides insights into mating performance and singlehood

Large-scale cross-cultural study provides insights into mating performance and singlehood

Evolutionary Psychology
Disclosing victim status reduces online dating matches regardless of race or sex

Individuals with dark personality traits are less oriented towards long-term mating strategies

Dark Triad
Longitudinal study examines the effects of adversity on wise reasoning

New study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying Solomon’s paradox

Social Psychology
Engaging in religious practice, even if you don’t believe, may increase your capacity to delay gratification

Engaging in religious practice, even if you don’t believe, may increase your capacity to delay gratification

Cognitive Science
New study sheds light on how three distinct types of first impressions predict subsequent dating outcomes

New study sheds light on how three distinct types of first impressions predict subsequent dating outcomes

Relationships and Sexual Health
  • Cognitive Science
  • COVID-19
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Drug Research
  • Conspiracy Theories
  • Meditation
  • Psychology of Religion
  • Aviation Psychology and Human Factors
  • Relationships and Sexual Health
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Neuroimaging
  • Psychedelic Drugs
  • Dark Triad
  • Political Psychology

About

PsyPost is a psychology and neuroscience news website dedicated to reporting the latest research on human behavior, cognition, and society. (READ MORE...)

  • Contact us
  • Privacy policy

Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Cognitive Science Research
  • Mental Health Research
  • Social Psychology Research
  • Drug Research
  • Relationship Research
  • About PsyPost
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used.