Stanley Silverman
The office know-it-all might, in fact, know very little and hide that incompetency behind a shield of arrogance, says Stanley Silverman, University of Akron dean of Summit College, associate provost and dean of University College. Arrogance, he says, raises a red flag to organizations, which he warns, will bear the brunt of a self-centered employee.
Silverman says that arrogance is related to negative performance and cognitive ability.
"It's not just a dreadful set of behaviors, it also can affect an organization's morale and bottom line, and it often influences job performance," says Silverman, who co-developed the Workplace Arrogance Scale and groundbreaking findings that, for the first time, measure the impact of arrogance on work performance.
Arrogance leads to stress in the workplace
In his new book, "Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure," Tavis Smiley highlights research, "Arrogance: A Formula for Failure," conducted by Silverman and colleagues Russell Johnson of Michigan State University, Aarti Shyamsunder of Infosys Leadership Institute, Hsien-Yao Swee of Eaton Corp., O. Burcu Rodopman of Bogaziçi University (Istanbul, Turkey), and Eunae Cho and Jeremy Bauer of University of South Florida. Their findings show that arrogance equates to self-centeredness, which equates to disagreeability, which equates to a stressful work environment.
"Arrogant people add to the difficulty of communication, can increase stress levels and often complicate and add tension to situations," Silverman says. "To make matters more frustrating, often times, these people do not see anything wrong in the way they act."
Smiley quotes Silverman's advice to organizations to restrain employee arrogance and encourage positivity, such as humility. Silverman adds that managers could use measurements of workplace arrogance to lessen its harmful effects and to promote the benefits of performance feedback and action planning.
"This is especially true in light of the disconnection we found between self-perceptions and others' perceptions of behaviors we call arrogance," Silverman says. "A nontransparent, self-report measure of arrogance might also help us prove, or disprove, the commonly held belief that employees don't leave organizations. They leave managers."
Silverman, who co-authored the book "Working Scared: Achieving Success in Trying Times," speaks throughout the country on workplace issues and has appeared on radio and television programs, including NBC’s "Today Show."
Media contact: Denise Henry, 330-972-6477 or henryd@.uakron.edu.