U of Ideas of General Interest -- June 1999
Contact: Mark Reutter, Business & Law Editor
(217) 333-0568; [email protected]
THE WORKPLACE
Political skills increasingly more critical to job success, professor says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- As business organizations become "flatter" in structure, an employee's ability to work with others is increasingly critical to job success, says a University of Illinois scholar who has developed a scale to measure an employee's interpersonal savvy.
"Nothing short of monumental transformations" have taken place in the structure of American business over the last two decades, writes Gerald R. Ferris, a U. of I. professor of labor and industrial relations.
"Hierarchy has been replaced with flatter, team-based work structures, and employees are expected to perform fluid and continually changing sets of roles in place of the static and rigid bureaucratic boundaries formerly placed around jobs."
Ferris developed the concept of "political skill" as a tool for identifying the talents that help predict effective job performance.
"While bookstore shelves are full of books that identify tactics and behaviors designed to make one effective -- presented under labels like emotional intelligence and functional flexibility -- none of these forms of social skill was developed explicitly to address interpersonal interactions in organizational settings."
He described political skill not as a single trait, but "an integrated composite of internally consistent and mutually reinforcing" skills that combine "social astuteness with the ability to emote well."
After beginning with a pool of 85 items, Ferris whittled down his Political Skill Inventory (PSI) to six scale measures. They involved items that could be gathered from self-reports or from supervisors such as "I find it easy to envision myself in the position of others," "I am good at getting others to respond positively to me" and "I usually try to find common ground with others."
Tested in five different organizations, including a large bank and a southern university, Ferris found PSI to be the strongest predictor of performance ratings, outshining such standard personality measures as agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and emotional stability. Furthermore, while intelligence did play a role in a job holder's performance rating, mental ability alone was not as strongly correlated to positive evaluations as was political skill.
In fact, according to the U. of I. researcher, intelligence and political skill together may be the best predictor of job performance. "Intelligence may well contribute to cognitive or mental flexibility, whereas political skill may enhance behavioral flexibility," he said.
Ferris believes the concept of political skill opens a new arena for management development programs, especially for trainees. "The Center for Creative Leadership reports that a leading cause of 'management derailment' is lack of good interpersonal skills.
One is likely born with a predisposition toward political skill, but without proper environmental stimuli or precipitants, this set of skills may never be fully realized," he noted in a working paper, "Political Skill at Work."
-mr-
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