Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
Steve Kerr did I-O psychology a huge kindness by giving us a peek under the tent of team leadership development (2009). He didn’t pull his punches about the methods of the so-called “great developer of executive talent” at GE, Jack Welch. Steve pointed to my research program and correctly made the statement that low performance by a manager may reflect “a bad boss or any number of things.” Turning a “pig’s ear” into a “silk purse” is not required to train senior managers in the methods of developing leadership teams, but aggressively training them in these protocols should be. I-O psychologists can begin to combine our knowledge of effective methods of executive coaching with our new methods of developing leadership-motivated excellence teams to quickly get senior managers ready for leadership (Graen, 2010). In the same TIP issue, Konczak and Foster (2009) expanded on the questions of what is needed? What is done? And what needs to be done to develop executive team leadership? I strongly endorse their conclusions but suggest that we set our goals a bit higher.
In terms of executive team leader development goals, I suggest we train executives to do the following: (a) FIND the competent, upward driven, and underchallenged (those senior managers showing readiness); (b) PROVIDE opportunities for professional growth in teams (open stretch windows); (c) ENGAGE beyond business as usual to team partnerships (close the deal); and only then (d) BEGIN the standard four process cycles of forming, storming, norming, and performing (construct and test team). The overall goal should be to comprehensively train executives’ to become efficacious in negotiating the psychological partnerships that are necessary before a team will go beyond business as usual and clearly avoid the bottom 10% in team performance.
My consulting and research experience makes it clear to me that many senior managers actively avoid the “team partner” role for a number of reasons. They may have come up the ladder in a technical silo and never dealt with direct reports as their team members beyond business as usual. They may now be too embarrassed by their underdeveloped level of team partnership-making skills. They may wrongly believe that their superior formal authority over their direct reports should be an adequate motivational substitute for team leadership. Many have tried threats and bribes and know that they do not work unless they stand over their people. They complain that they have been exposed to classroom training, on-the-job experiences, action learning, 360 feedback, assessment-based feedback, coaching, and business games, and none work as promised. Clearly, they are frustrated and have had enough of our fads, fashions, and folderol (Dunnette, 1966). Unfortunately many live in fear that their Jack Welch will fire them for low team performance, but they protest that it’s not their fault.
What Is Needed
Team leadership is not that difficult to learn by functionally competent, motivated, and supported executives. In fact, we have taught it successfully to first-level supervisors of accounting case professionals in two controlled experiments in a government agency (Graen, Novak, & Sommerkamp, 1982; Graen, Scandura, & Graen, 1986) and top management teams in banking (Graen, 2007). John Eggers is testing the latest LMX protocol at a public organization, and Bill Schiemann may use it with one of the largest retail corporations. In conclusion, let us begin to train executive leaders to keep the Jack Welch types from wasting valuable resources by sending some of those most ready to become team creators to their competitors.
References
Dunnette, M. D. (1966). Fads, fashions, and folderol in psychology. American Psychologist, 21(4), 343–352.
Graen, G. B. (2007). Jessica’s web: Women’s advantages in the knowledge era. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc.
Graen, G. B. (2010). How do you motivate teamwork beyond business as usual? In M. G. Rumsey (Ed.),The many sides of leadership: A handbook. London: Oxford University Press.
Graen, G. B., Novak, M., & Sommerkamp, P. (1982). The effects of leader–member exchange and job design on productivity and satisfaction: Testing a dual attachment model. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 30, 109–131.
Graen, G. B., Scandura, T., & Graen, M. R. (1986). A field experimental test of the moderating effects of growth need strength on productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 484–491.
Kerr, S. (2009). Some random thoughts on false dichotomies, common coffeepots, and the portability of knowledge. The Industrial Organizational Psychologist, 47(2), 11–24.
Konczak, L. & Foster, J. (2009). Developing next generation leaders: High priority on high potentials. The Industrial Organizational Psychologist, 47(2), 39–49.
Note: TIP previously described this case in Art Gutman and Eric Dunleavy’s column, On the Legal Front, in the 2009 TIP, Vol. 47, No 2.
To the Editor:
I/O Solutions (IOS), the firm that developed the tests in question in the Ricci case, has chosen to remain silent on matters related to the Ricci case as we found ourselves in a tenuous position: Our client, the City of New Haven had rejected I/O Solutions’ tests and sought to cast doubt as to their validity, while the plaintiff was relying on our work and testimony to build their case. At this point, it seems appropriate to address a number of misconceptions toward providing a better understanding of the facts of the Ricci case.
The amici, who represented themselves as spokespeople for the I-O psychology community on behalf of the defendant, posited that the assessments delivered in New Haven were fatally flawed because they failed to assess a most critical construct: command presence. The argument that “command presence” was not assessed is a misleading illusion born out of the amici’s lack of knowledge concerning the tests in question. Command presence is not a single construct but the confluence of a number of elements, all of which the oral assessment process did assess. The amici would have the court believe otherwise, simply because the test developer chose not to use the nebulous term “command presence” in describing the constructs that were assessed by the oral interview.
The amici also clung to an argument, made by a competitor of IOS in statements before New Haven’s Civil Service Board, that assessment centers were a more valid, less adverse alternative to the oral interviews that were used in New Haven. While IOS would agree that assessment centers are generally a preferable option to oral interviews, IOS knows that they are not always feasible. Such was the case in New Haven, which conducted a sequestered assessment that processed numerous lieutenant candidates in a single day using 10 assessor panels. Assessment centers rely greatly on simulations and often use role-play exercises to accomplish this. Conducting dynamic roleplays across 10 different assessment panels was a severe risk to the reliability of the assessment process. Actors’ performances could not be standardized in a manner that could produce a reliable and consistent assessment for each candidate. New Haven had good reason to favor a selection system that processed numerous candidates in a short period of time: Past assessments had raised security concerns. That said, this choice by New Haven relegated the city to using an assessment model that could be administered using their chosen sequestering model. Operationally, assessment centers were not a workable solution in New Haven, not to mention that they would have represented a cost to the city that was approximately three times greater than the chosen oral interview model.
The Ginsberg dissent questions why the less adverse option (assessment centers) mentioned by one of IOS’s competitors was not considered in New Haven. Ginsberg also cites another court case that concluded that written exams do not do a good job of measuring ability areas relevant to fire supervisors. There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding by the dissent and many who would argue that assessment centers are a good alternative to written exams. These two tools simply measure different constructs. Written exams, as used in New Haven, assess job knowledge. Assessment centers are much more adept at measuring job skills. Fire supervisors make critical decisions based on their knowledge of building construction, fire behavior, incident command, fire tactics, etc. The criticality of a tool that assesses these knowledge bases cannot be overstated—and is certainly supported by job analysis. As we know, job knowledge tests tend to demonstrate high levels of validity (see Schmidt and Hunter, 1998). The New Haven promotional processes used written exams to measure essential job knowledge and structured oral interviews to assess job skills. The amici and dissent imply that we should forego the assessment of knowledge in favor of solely assessing skills. Opting for a testing process without a comprehensive knowledge assessment seems a more grave threat of criterion deficiency than the one referenced by the amici and dissent.
Finally, the amici argued that the standard practice of involving local subject-matter experts was simply ignored. Again, they failed to consider that the city patently disallowed the use of local SMEs due to a history of test security compromises. For this reason, IOS employed the services of trusted fire SMEs outside the city to review the written exam items and oral interview questions.
Neither the amici nor the dissent, as far as we know, conducted a review of the tests/assessments in question before filing their opinions of the New Haven process. The general lack of knowledge concerning the tests that were considered in the Ricci case and the lack of careful research on the part of amici does not serve the interests of the practitioners who seek to better understand the implications of Ricci . Testing processes are often constrained by the contextual variables that are imposed by a client. It is easy for the amici and others to assume that the Ricci tests were “fatally flawed” and to base the disparate outcomes on this premise. However, an abundance of information that was not considered in Ricci overwhelmingly supports the majority opinion that the tests were valid and appropriate.
Chad Legel
President, Industrial/Organizational Solutions, Inc
Reference
Schmidt, F. L. & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262–274.