It is not enough to work hard, it is more important to get along with the boss

There is a widespread belief that if you try hard at workIf you arrive early and leave later, job success comes on its own. Is a nice idea. But, several psychological studies have shown that it is absolutely false.

According to the conclusion of psychologists, what really determines whether an employee is promoted, if he is evaluated well or if he simply survives staff cuts In a company it is not only what it produces. It has a lot to do with the relationship you have with your boss and other employees. And that depends, to a large extent, on your social skills and the relationship that exists between them.

The bias that no one recognizes, but everyone practices. Since the 1970s, researchers have been studying something they call LMX or Leader-Member Exchange (Leader-Member Exchange Theory). The idea behind this theory is simple: bosses do not treat all their employees the same. With some of them they build a relationship of trust, support and access to opportunities, while with others they maintain a colder and more distant bond. According to a study By Josephine Campbell, that difference has direct consequences for performance reviews, promotions, and career development.

The most striking thing about the different studies that have been carried out is that the quality of this relationship predicts work success more accurately than one would expect. Research on the persistence of the LMX phenomenon carried out at the University of Portland, show a clear link between supervisors’ ratings of the possibility of promotion, salary progression and professional satisfaction. The employees most valued by their bosses are usually the ones who get along best with them, even if they are not the ones who put in the most hours at the end of the day.

Seeing your boss’s face matters more than it seems. According to published data by Euronewsemployees who work 100% remotely have 31% fewer promotion options and 38% fewer bonuses than their in-person counterparts. All this based on the same performance as his office colleagues. A 2019 study from the University of California, collected in Organization ScienceI had already observed it previously: the fact that your boss see you face to face generates positive results for the employee, regardless of their work performance.

This has a name. Is called proximity bias or proximity bias and is an unconscious behavior of the human being, in which prioritize people more or events happening around you. Bosses tend to favor those who are closest to them, not necessarily those who perform the most. It is estimated that 96% of managers admitswhich perceives more contributions from those who are physically in the office than from those who work remotely.

Communicating counts a lot. There is one more factor that also decisively influences how bosses and supervisors perceive some of their employees: whether you say what you think. a study carried out by researchers from the universities of Waikato (New Zealand) and Bergamo (Italy) published in Personnel Review analyzed the behavior of 218 employees and supervisors in a Japanese company. Employees who expressed opinions out loud got better ratings from their bosses. Their superiors saw them as more capable. More involved. The voice, in itself, and its reputation was built.

However, the study itself recognizes that this factor cannot be extrapolated to all companies. “It is important to carefully consider the degree of politics in the workplace before expressing one’s opinion,” the study’s authors note. In business environments with a lot of internal politics and hierarchies, where power dynamics are complex, speaking up can be counterproductive.

Working more hours does not move the marker. a report from the employment platform Deel Using data from more than a million employment contracts around the world, it showed that remote workers work almost twice as much overtime as their in-person colleagues, but they are still less likely to receive promotions. The extra effort, if it is not visible, does not translate into recognition and, therefore, does not materialize in promotions or opportunities for professional growth.

This connects with something that psychology has been telling us for decades: The boss’s perception of you is not built only on your results. It has a lot to do with you saying good morning every morning at the office. The merit exists, but it goes faster if, in addition to doing it, you tell your supervisors about it.

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Image | Unsplash (Vitaly Gariev)