Speak up, your boss may not be listening
NATALIE KITROEFF If you just started a job, are working part time or are not white, there is a good chance your boss is not really hearing anything you say. That’s the take-away of a study published last week in the Journal of Applied Psychology, which analyzed how much supervisors at 89 credit union offices rewarded employees for speaking up.
The authors, five professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business found that bosses were less likely to value or even notice the suggestions of people who were wallflowers at work, new to the job or racial minorities.
Who gets listened to? Office socialites — those seen as the go-to people for advice among colleagues — were heard more often and considered more valuable contributors by their supervisors, the study found. They got more credit from bosses than people in other groups who spoke up the same amount.
Bosses at the credit unions valued talkative women over men, partly because, the authors say, these offices were overwhelmingly female and being a majority in the workplace makes it more likely you’ll be heard.
Being a loudmouth proved a smart career strategy.
The authors asked the same bosses to rate their employees performance a year after rating their gabbiness and found that verbose workers earned higher marks.