The Selfless and the Despised

You might think employees who are consistently willing to go the extra mile and help others serve as an inspiration to their co-workers. You'd be wrong.

By Andrew R. McIlvaine

"Jim" is a model employee -- whenever he's on a team, he's always willing to spend extra time helping the other team members and perform additional duties without waiting to be asked. Best of all, he never seems to expect anything in return.

Senior managers really appreciate Jim's diligence -- they think he sets an excellent example. But his teammates? That's a different story.

There are lots of Jims in the workplace -- and they often inspire resentment among their colleagues, who feel the Jims of the world make them look bad and are bad for teamwork. This was demonstrated recently in a study by psychology professor Craig Parks at Washington State University, who says he was "completely surprised" by the outcome.

The study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, was based on an experiment originally intended to measure the reactions people have to a selfish teammate, says Parks.

Participants were placed in five-person virtual teams (they did not see the other four players, who were actually computer algorithms) and invited to play a game. Each member of the group was given a pool of points in each round of the game that they could either keep for themselves or put into a common pool for the team.

At the end of the game, participants were shown the mean contribution and take for every other group member, and asked to indicate which "players" they'd like to keep playing with. Not surprisingly, most said they wouldn't want to play with the greedy players.

But they also said they didn't want to play with the most-selfless players, either.

"My first thought was that we'd gotten the data wrong," says Parks.

But after checking and re-checking the data, and conducting follow-up interviews with the subjects, the results held up.

"The players thought the selfless team members were not playing by the rules, somehow -- that they were making the rest of the team look bad, that there was something sinister about their behavior," he says.

Critics might point out that college students aren't good arbiters of workplace behavior -- after all, what do they know? But Parks says their responses were validated by the outpouring of feedback he received from adult readers after the study was publicized in several mainstream newspapers, including the Toronto Globe and Mail and Britain's Daily Mail.

"I got tons of calls and e-mails, which fell into two camps: Those who identified as selfless themselves, who said 'I always knew my colleagues resented me,' and those who said 'I can't stand those people -- thanks for making me feel like I'm not alone,' " Parks says.

The study highlights an obvious paradox: Organizations often depend on the willingness of certain employees to spend additional time helping others without expecting anything in return, yet those employees can undermine the organization by arousing their colleagues' ire.

But it's possible for selfless employees to defuse these situations without necessarily changing their altruistic behavior, Parks says.

"People weren't reacting to the fact that this person was very generous, it was that the person was very generous and asked for little or nothing in return," he says. "I suspect that if these people would just say, 'Look, I'm no saint, I'm benefiting from this just as much as you are,' it would really go a long way toward helping others be more tolerant and accepting."

"Selfless" employees also need to be honest with themselves, says Sean Achor, a lecturer in positive psychology at Harvard University who's consulted for a number of Fortune 500 companies.

"I have yet to meet a 'selfless' person -- one who isn't at all interested in their own personal gain," he says.

Achor, the author of a forthcoming book, The Happiness Advantage, says selfless team members are better described as "rational optimists."

"Rational optimists don't view the world through rose-colored glasses -- they recognize the deficiencies of others, but they're good at maintaining the belief that their own behavior will lead to positive results for the entire team," he says.

But they can inadvertently alienate their teammates, who may find their behavior off-putting. "The others fear it will lead to them not being rewarded for their own positive contributions," Achor says.

Another way selfless team members can defuse hostility or other nonproductive behavior -- and inspire the team to even better results -- is by actively celebrating the team's achievements, he says.

"Selfless people often make the mistake that others are motivated by their example, when in reality it's the small victories along the way that really motivates a team," he says. "By openly celebrating the team's positive achievements as they come in, that person can short-circuit the natural resentment people may have for an unselfish spirit."

Establishing uniform, team-based rewards can also help organizations avoid potential rancor between selfless and not-so-selfless employees, says David Shaner, a professor of philosophy at Furman University and author of The Seven Arts of Change: Leading Business Transformation That Lasts.

"If everyone receives the same carrot when the team hits a realistic target, you flip the dynamic -- rather than employees protecting their underachieving brethren, employees will become the watchdogs of each other: 'Why isn't Joe over there pulling his weight?'" says Shaner, who serves as a change-management consultant for a number of companies.

"Everyone will want to be a high achiever," he says, "which is what management wants."