There's a moment in the American sitcom The Office when Michael Scott, the paper-company branch manager played by Steve Carell, explains how he wants employees to treat him: "I don't want somebody sucking up to me because they think I'm going to help their career. I want them sucking up to me because they genuinely love me."
While the series includes plenty of over-the-top examples of two of Scott's employees - Andy and Dwight - trying to win his approval, there's more than a kernel of truth in their outrageous behaviour. Every office has employees who go out of their way to get close to the boss. Researchers even have a name for them: "upward influencers."
"These are people who are trying to look good in front of the boss, being nice, buttering them up and finding reasons to spend more time with them," says Jee-Eun Shin, assistant professor of accounting at the Rotman School of Management.
But how, Shin wondered, do these employees affect team dynamics and performance? How do colleagues perceive them? How do managers handle them? And are they better workers than most?
These are crucial questions. Most workplaces today are built around teams. The way group members interact influences both efficacy and morale. And if upward influencers do have an outsized effect, organizations need to know how best to leverage them.
To investigate, Shin dug into a large service firm's 360-degree employee evaluation surveys. These surveys offer researchers rich insights, as each employee is evaluated by current and former supervisors, peers and subordinates, allowing Shin and her fellow researchers to identify upward influencers and assess their impact. Their study, titled "Upward Influencers in Teams," is among the first to examine how these individuals affect group dynamics at work.
As it turns out, upward influencers have both positive and negative effects on co-workers.
For one thing, they can hurt team collaboration - especially when there are too many of them. Shin found that team performance peaks when about half the members (52 per cent, according to the study) are upward influencers. When the proportion rises above that level, communication, knowledge-sharing and collegial support decline. Team members also report lower satisfaction with their group.
"When there are one or a few upward influencers on a team, everyone seems to get along pretty well. They still talk to each other," Shin says. "But when more are trying to please the boss, we start to see a lack of communications within the team."
Shin and her colleagues also discovered an overlooked upside to having suck-ups around: they attract more managerial attention. Supervisors of teams with one or more upward influencers spend about 20 per cent more time offering feedback and guidance to the overall team compared to those without them.
While these managers don't provide additional financial or material resources, they are more likely to offer hands-on support such as lending their experience to solve a problem on an important client project.
Shin surmises this extra attention can benefit the whole team - not just the suck-up. "If the boss is giving more attention to that team, and the team performance is good, the other employees in the group stand to get rewarded," she says.
But Shin is clear about one thing: nothing in her research shows that upward influencers are better individual performers than other employees. Her research also suggests that upward influencer behaviour is likely an innate trait in certain individuals. In other words, sucking up is part of their personality.
Unlike Michael Scott and his craving for devotion, effective managers usually understand the potential for office conflict when some workers regularly butter up the boss. If their behaviour is rewarded with more responsibility, a raise or promotion, other employees will take note of the favouritism.
That's why Shin and her fellow researchers also looked at how managers respond to upward influencers. They found that more experienced managers are better at containing such behaviour and redirecting it toward actions that align with the organization's goals. Inexperienced managers, on the other hand, are less successful in doing so.
So how can firms identify upward influencers? A 360-degree survey can help, but Shin says seasoned managers usually already know who's trying to curry favour. The challenge, then, is to ensure the team has the right mix of personalities. Upward influencers aren't inherently bad - but too many can impede a team's ability to thrive, she says.
This story was originally published at the Rotman Insights Hub
