Set-up-to-Fail Syndrome: Overcoming the Undertow of Expectations - Softcover

Manzoni, Jean-Francois; Barsoux, Jean-Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 142210284X ISBN 13: 9781422102848

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2007

Synopsis

Do you have an employee whose performance keeps deteriorating—despite your close monitoring? Brace yourself: You may be at fault—by unknowingly triggering the set-up-to-fail syndrome. Perhaps things started off swimmingly. But then something--a missed deadline, a lost client—made you question the person's performance. You began micromanaging him. Suspecting your reduced confidence, he started doubting himself—and stopped giving his best. You viewed his new behavior as additional proof of mediocrity, and tightened the screws further. In The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux show how this insidious cycle hurts everyone: employees stop volunteering ideas, preventing your organization from getting the most from them; you lose energy to attend to other activities; and your reputation suffers as other employees deem you unfair. Team spirit wilts as targeted performers are alienated. But the set-up-to-fail syndrome doesn't have to happen. The authors provide preventive measures, such as loosening the reins as new employees master their jobs. If the syndrome has already erupted, Manzoni and Barsoux explain how to discuss the dynamic with your employee and reverse the cycle.

About this title

About the Author

Jean-Francois Manzoni is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. His research, teaching, and consulting activities center on the management of change at the individual and organizational levels. Jean-Louis Barsoux is a Research Fellow at IMD. His doctoral thesis provided the foundation for Management in France, which won the Management Consultancies Association for Book of the Year in 1990.

From the Back Cover

Sometimes it's easy to see how some leaders are destructive to those they lead. Poor leaders regularly impede potential, damage confidence and ruin good people. But most leaders aren’t so extreme, making their faults less obvious.

Here's what happens: an employee falters by missing a deadline or bombing a presentation, so the supervisor turns to micromanagement. But the more the manager helps, the worse the employee performs. While it may seem that the employee is failing in spite of the boss’s efforts, it turns out the opposite is true. The manager’s behaiviour and attitude are setting up the employee to fail.

This book gives that phenomenon a name: The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome. After ten years of studying boss subordinate relationships, leadership experts Jean – Francois Manzoni and Jean – Louis Barsouix have discovered that a manager’s over attention to poorly performing employees causes stifled self-confidence and ultimately, unrealized employee potential.

Don’t be a set up to fail manager, coach or teacher. Learn how to stop people from succumbing to the undertow of expectations, and start empowering

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 142210284X
• ISBN 13: 9781422102848
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304