Ingratiation drains self-control
IF YOU love to indulge in flattery or “kissing up” to your boss, think twice.
While it may boost your career, it can also drain selfcontrol resources, thus making you more susceptible to bad behaviour in the workplace, a study has found.
Ingratiation or kissing up, which generally includes flattery, conforming with the supervisor’s opinion and doing favours are just some of the many behaviours employees use to create and maintain their desired image in the workplace.
However, “there’s a personal cost to ingratiating yourself with your boss”, said lead author Anthony Klotz, associate professor at the Oregon State University in the US.
“When your energy is depleted, it may nudge you into slack-off territory,” he pointed out.
The findings, appearing in the journal of Applied Psychology, showed that the extent to which employees engaged in ingratiation varied widely from day to day and the more they engaged in kissing up, the more their self-control resources got depleted.
“It makes sense that ingratiation is depleting, because successfully kissing up requires the appearance of sincerity and that requires self-control,” Klotz said.
The employees with depleted self-control were more likely to engage in workplace deviance such as incivility to a co-worker, skipping a meeting or surfing the internet rather than working, the researchers said.
But those with high levels of political skill were less prone to engage in deviance after performing impression management, signalling that it can act as a buffer against the depleting effects of ingratiation.
The results were based on nearly 100 professionals in China, who were examined using two supervisor-focused impression management tactics – ingratiation and self-promotion – for over two work weeks. – IANS