Thursday, December 21, 2006

Competent jerk or lovable fool?

TAKEN FROM THE STRAITS TIMES RECRUIT 20/12/2006


There are 4 types of people in a typical company: the competent jerk, the lovable fool, the lovable star and the incompetent jerk.

The explanation is quite simply, "competent" and "star" means you have talent, "lovable" means you are well liked, "fool" and "incompetent" means you have no talent and "jerk" means you are not well liked.

Quote "informal work relationships play a more vital role than most bosses realise or value. Their essay is not about formal work relations, but in workers' choices of informal, though work related, interactions".

Research shows that people rather choose a congenial colleague over a more capable one.


There is a variety of reasons why people choose who they want to work with. Some choose the lovable star so that there is prestige being associated with him/her. Some choose a strategically placed superior in the hope that this will later enhance their carrers. But whatever the reason, most of the time its based on 2 reasons: job competence and likeability.


They researched in 4 types of companies and found that everyone wanted to work with a lovable star and nobody wants to work with an incompetent jerk. (duh~). But things got more interesting when people can only choose between competent jerk and lovable fool. Logically they should have choosen competent jerk right? But no, they chose lovable fool. Thus its shown that Quote "personal feelings played a more impt role in forming job-oriented friendship than is commonly acknowledged, even more impt than evaluations of competence."

"...if someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer."



I think i was somewhere between competent jerk and incompetent jerk back then. Or maybe just one of them.

I will choose lovable fool between lovable fool and competent jerk too.



Who would YOU choose?

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