Some skepticism at work can be good, but too much can have a negative impact on individuals’ careers, preventing them from making the personal connections that can help them advance in their companies.
The latest research from Hogan Assessment Systems, a research-based personality assessment and consulting firm, has found that individuals who score high on the skeptical scale are perceived as bright and proficient in detecting patterns in others’ behaviours. They are also able to defend their views about others’ intentions with great skill and conviction.
When these individuals are stressed, however, these tendencies can become overused and damage their ability to form and maintain relationships with others. In such situations, they can become cynical and suspicious and more alert to signs of betrayal in their friends, family members, co-workers and employers.
Such negativity can impact the workplace overall by bringing down morale and causing employees to focus more on the gossip than their jobs at hand.
Hogan suggests the following strategies for managing individuals with high levels of skepticism.
- • Candour and transparency are particularly important to ensure the individual develops the trust required for effective intervention.
• Highly skeptical employees benefit from feedback that encourages greater balance in their perceptions of others and a willingness to consider multiple motives for others’ behaviour.
• These employees should be encouraged to question their assumptions that others deliberately attempt to demean, frustrate or exploit them, and to risk confiding in others to prove wrong their belief that colleagues will use this information against them.
• These individuals can benefit from being taught how to address those situations in which they were misunderstood or criticized inappropriately with skills other than hostility and combativeness.