Bosses with ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ personalities cause their staff the highest levels of anxiety, research has found.
Managers with mood swings cause more tension in the office than those who are nasty all the time, according to a new study.
Not being able to predict how a boss would act had a detrimental effect on the productivity of workers.
Managers with mood swings result in more tension in the office than those who are nasty all the time, a study showed. Not being able to predict how a boss would act had a detrimental effect on the productivity of workers (stock image)
Researchers from the University of Exeter carried out four surveys in three companies, two in the UK and one in India, involving 320 members of staff.
They found a poor but consistent relationship with managers was better for workers than a boss prone to angry outbursts.
The impact was worse when colleagues did not have a supportive relationship with their co-workers.
In the study, researchers measured how positively or negatively staff felt about their manager.
Dr Allan Lee, of the University of Exeter’s Business School, said: ‘The focus is usually on trying to work out if relationships between staff and bosses are good or bad, but they can sometimes be both, and it is important to measure that.
‘Bosses reward and punish their workers, and this has an impact on self-esteem.
The study also found that employees could compensate for an up and down relationship with their boss if they had a good relationship with other colleagues. A consistent boss inspired greater productivity from employees than a temperamental one (stock image)
‘If their staff have to adopt different roles at different times because they have a manager who can be both nasty and nice they view him or her in an ambivalent way’, he said.
Researchers found having a clear attitude towards a boss was better for an employee’s performance.
‘If your boss is both pleasant and unpleasant to be around it is hard to know what they think about you, and you can’t predict how they will act’, Dr Lee said.
‘This makes it hard to trust them. This creates negative emotions and makes staff feel anxious, causing poor performance at work.’
The study also found employees could compensate for an up and down relationship with their boss if they had a good relationship with other colleagues.
Researchers asked 60 teams of staff in three companies what they thought of their bosses and how they performed in different tasks.
The staff who took part in the study worked in a service centre, providing telephone-based customer service support or outsourced human resources services and other tasks.
The study is published in the Journal of Management.