Hiring Radar
By Warren Camp, Esq.
© High Conflict Institute 2010
INTRODUCTION
Workplace bullying and high conflict personalities in employment settings are experiencing a stratospheric increase. What is most surprising, however, is that such incidences are not limited to small, obscure organizations, nor are the victims of high conflict employees insubstantial members of their company’s directorship.
Consider the case of Kevin Morrissey, 52, former editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review. His suicide in July, 2010, has prompted the literary journal to cancel its winter issue and close its offices pending an investigation by the University of Virginia, which operates the journal. At the center of the investigation is Ted Genoways, a fellow editor, who is accused of bullying Morrissey and engaging in extreme high conflict behavior that drove him to take his own life.
In a recent Zogby International study, in conjunction with the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute (WBTI), 37% of American workers identify as victims of high conflict employees (Heathfield 2010).
Approximately 25 percent of employees said that avoiding conflict led to sickness or absence from work, and nearly 10 percent reported that workplace conflict led to project failure and more than one third said that conflict resulted in someone leaving the company, either through firing or quitting. Employee turnover is also expensive. Replacing an employee will cost you 150 to 200 percent more than that employee’s salary and benefits. This means that losing even a mid-level employee making $30,000 a year could cost your company $70,000 or more to replace (Lawler 2010; Kohl 2009).
Conflicts can stem from the most trivial of offenses. In a larger company, the conflict may be contained to a workgroup. But in a small business, it is everyone’s problem.
Although high conflict personalities general fall into one of five categories (e.g., borderline personality, narcissistic personality, antisocial personality, paranoid personality, and histrionic personality), most workplace conflicts seems to involve narcissistic personality types. That is because most, but not all, workplace conflicts involve bullying and bullying usually originates from the narcissistic employee.
Narcissist behaviors – now labeled misconduct – have long been normative. The basically narcissist traits of individualism, competitiveness and unbridled ambition, are the founding stones of certain versions of capitalism. These forms of bullying actually constitute an integral form of corporate American (Vaknin 2007).
EXISTING MEASUREMENT TOOLS
Hiring high conflict personality employees can have a devastating impact on corporate morale within an organization. It is not surprising, then, that more and more companies are turning to pre-employment testing in an attempt to ferret out such potential employees.
Psychological testing
The MMPI-2 and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are two popular tests used by employers to assess potential personality concerns in prospective employees. In addition, there has been an explosion of private consulting firms that have developed their own versions of goal and personality testing. For example, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter is an expansion of the MBTI. Other instruments that are being marketed to employers include the California Psychological Inventory, the Personal Outlook Inventory, the PDI Employment Inventory, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF) [which allegedly measures emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience], the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) [which allegedly measures neuroticism, anxiety, anger, depression, impulsiveness and vulnerability], and the Spherion Workplace Snapshot Survey.
For a variety of reasons, these instruments are considered blunt tools that fail to meet their objectives.
First, in a recent study in Australia, human resources professionals found that personality testing was actually more harmful than beneficial. Company managers displayed a tendency to use such test results to engage in workplace bullying of employees (Dogstar 2010).
Secondly, approximately two-thirds of workers believe that personality tests do not adequately measure personality issues and such test results should not be used for any purpose (Spherion 2006).
Finally, at least one researcher has observed that the key component of high conflict personality types is their lack of insight into their own behavior. Consequently, they tend to produce invalid and unreliable profiles on most personality testing instruments.
Some people do not have sufficient self-insight to report on their own feelings and behavior … and cannot give accurate answers about themselves (Furnham 1992:39).
Integrity Testing – Polygraph
Some employers have attempted to use “lie detectors” and polygraph testing to distinguish high personality employment candidates. Not only are such test instruments considered highly unreliable (see Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) 509 U.S. 579; United States v. Frye, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Circ., 1923); People v. Kelly (1976) 549 P.2d 1240), but federal employment law mandates that no employee can be required to submit to such testing as a condition of employment interviewing or continued employment (29 U.S.C. §2001 et seq.) [1].
MYTHS ABOUT THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
While employers tend to consider past indicators of potential work performance (e.g., job hopping, absences from work, latenesses to work, periods of unfilled time, reasons for leaving past employers, and past wage rates), the academic literature suggests that these considerations are misplaced and largely unproductive.
In one study, 25% of personnel managers reported job history among the two top criteria for assessing employability (Bills 1990:27). What is so surprising about these results is that they are counter-intuitive.
High conflict personality employees tend to enjoy engaging in offensive and challenging behavior, and overall they tend to have more stable employment histories. By contrast, conflict-averse employees as a group tend to leave difficult employment situations where they are being victimized (Lawler 2010; Kohl 2009). The Zogby Study, supra, reveals that 62% of employers ignore problems of workplace bullying and high conflict personality employees, and 40% of employees targeted as victims never tell their employer (Heathfield 2010). While their unstable work histories tend to be interpreted against them, they are in reality the least confrontational and most team-oriented employees.
HOW TO RECOGNIZE A HIGH CONFLICT JOB CANDIDATE: TIPS FOR SHARPENING YOUR “HIRING RADAR”
The best pre-employment predictor of high conflict personality employees remains informed appreciative inquiry and engaging in meaningful, reflective listening.
Most high conflict personality employees exhibit the following common behaviors (Eddy 2008):
1. Rigid and uncompromising thinking.
2. Unable to accept or heal from loss.
3. Negative emotions dominate thinking.
4. Unable to reflect on their own behavior.
5. Difficulty empathizing with others.
6. Preoccupied with blaming others.
The following are key questions designed to elicit these behaviors in prospective employees:
1. Why did you leave your last job?
2. What about the job before that?
3. How did you get along with your co-workers?
4. Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker and explain how you resolved it?
5. Imagine two times you had difficulty getting co-workers or employees to use your very good ideas.
6. Tell me exactly how you handled them to get them to use yours ideas?
Beware of answers such as:
“They didn’t understand me”
“There was someone who had it in for me.
”RULE OF THUMB: REMAIN SKEPTICAL AND PROBE DEEPER
WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE ALREADY HIRED A HIGH CONFLICT EMPLOYEE
Avoiding the high conflict personality job candidate is an admirable and lofty goal, but even the most sophisticated business executives can miss obvious red flags and soon find disruptive employees in their ranks.
First, recognize that surfacing conflict is desirable and beneficial to a business’s health. Not only does it channel employee dissatisfaction into a creative solution, but it engages all the stakeholders in the process (Lipsky et al. 2003; Lipsky et al. 2004).
Rory Rowland, CEO of a small financial institution, discovered this the hard way. He encountered a petty workplace conflict between two of his employees – “I don’t even remember what it was about, but it was over an insignificant matter, like the way one of them looked at the other” – and he did not immediately address the problem. That turned out to be a big mistake. “It escalated to the point where they were snarling at each other. They weren’t professional at all. They would just fling stuff at each other’s work area” (Lawler 2010).
Secondly, recognize that there is a fundamental difference between “dispute resolution” and “conflict management”. Conflict management goes much deeper and explores issues before they become actual workplace disputes. It is broader in perspective and can address corporate culture, business practices, and allows solutions to be structured from the lowest levels of the organization (Lipsky et al. 2003; Lipsky et al. 2004)
Finally, employers should think about what kind of conflict management system best suits their business. For example, mediation, ombudspersons, peer-review panels, facilitated discussions, arbitration, and multiple variations of these processes are all viable options. However, most experts agree that the key feature to successful workplace dispute program design is multiple entry points, or the ability to initiate the conflict management process through different key players in the organization. Not surprisingly, in organizations without this attribute, the only entry point into the dispute resolution process (e.g., the human resources manager or the regional vice-president) is frequently the high conflict employee causing the very disputes the systems seeks to address (Lipsky et al. 2003, Lipsky et al. 2004; Stitt 1998). In fact, approximately 15% of employees experiencing high conflict co-workers reported their direct supervisors as the offending individuals (Blosser 2004).
ENDNOTES
[1] However, the protections of 29 U.S.C. §2001 et seq. have been held to apply only to private sector employment. In the case of McKenna v. Fargo, 510 F.2d 1179 (3rd Circ., 1979), federal courts held that candidates for government employment (in this case, firefighters) have a reduced expectation of privacy and that the government’s intrusion into their private life is a compelling state interest necessary to further the government’s objective of public safety and crime control.
REFERENCES
Bills, D. 1990. “Employers’ use of job history data for making hiring decisions: a fuller specification of job assignment and status attainment.” The Sociological Quarlerly, 31(1):23-35.
Blosser, Fred. July 28, 2004. “Most workplace bullying is worker to worker, early findings from NIOSH study suggest.” Retrieved on September 17, 2010, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/updates/upd-07-28-04.html.
“Dogstar”. 2010. “Employment personality in Australia.” Retrieved on October 11, 2010, from http://www.hereticpress.com/Dogstar/Psychology/WorkPsy.html.
Eddy, Bill. 2008. “It’s all your fault! 12 tips for managing people who blame others for everything.” Scottsdale, Arizona: HCI Press.
Furnham, Adrian. 1992. “Personality at work: the role of individual differences in the workplace.” New York: Routledge.
Heathfield, Susan. 2010. “How to deal with a bully at work.” Retrieved September 17, 2010, from http://humanresources.about.com/od/difficultpeople/qt/work_bully.htm.
Lipsky, D., Seeber, R. and Fincher, R. 2003. Emerging Systems for Managing Workplace Conflict. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kohl, P. December 2, 2009. “Employee hiring mistakes: when judging by its cover costs you.” Retrieved on September 17, 2010, from http://www.hrtools.com/hiring/articles/
Lawler, J. June 21, 2010. “The real cost of workplace conflict.” Retrieved September 17, 2010, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/207196.
Lipsky, D. and Seeber, R. 2004. “Dispute resolution in the changing workplace.” A paper presented at the 56th annual meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association Series, San Diego, California.
Lipsky, D., Seeber, R. and Fincher, R. 2003. “Emerging systems for managing workplace conflict.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Stitt, A. 1998. Alternative Dispute Resolution for Organizations: How to Design a System for Effective Conflict Resolution. Ontario, Canada: John Wiley & Sons.
“Spherion”. November 1, 2006. “Two-thirds of workers believe personality tests should not be considered.” Retrieved on October 11, 2010, from http://www.spherion.com/press/releases/2006/snapshot_personality.jsp
Vaknin, S. April 18, 2007. “Narcissism in the workplace.” Retrieved September 17, 2010, from www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/transcripts/narcissism-in-the-workplace/
Warren Camp is a lawyer and mediator, and intern at High Conflict Institute. For more information about the high-conflict people in the workplace and methods for managing High Conflict People, see Bill Eddy's book It’s All YOUR Fault! 12 Tips for Managing People Who Blame Others for Everything.
High Conflict Institute provides training and consultations regarding High Conflict People (HCPs) to individuals and professionals dealing with legal, workplace, educational, and healthcare disputes. Bill Eddy is the President of the High Conflict Institute and the author of “It’s All Your Fault!” He is an attorney, mediator, and therapist. Bill has presented seminars to attorneys, judges, mediators, ombudspersons, human resource professionals, employee assistance professionals, managers, and administrators in 25 states, several provinces in Canada, France, and Australia. For more information about High Conflict Institute, our seminars and consultations, or Bill Eddy and his books go to: www.HighConflictInstitute.com or call 619-221-9108.