Star employees get most of the credit - and blame:
Working with a "star" employee – someone who demonstrates exceptional performance and enjoys broad visibility relative to industry peers – offers both risks and rewards, according to new research from the ILR School.
In collaborations, stars tend to get more than their share of the credit when things go well -- and more of the blame when projects don't succeed, according to "Shadows and Shields: Stars Limit Their Collaborators' Exposure to Attributions of Both Credit and Blame," published Dec. 10, 2020, by Personnel Psychology.
"We look at what happens when you collaborate with a star in terms of whose getting credit when that collaboration is successful," said Rebecca Kehoe, associate professor of human resource studies. "What we find, and this is consistent with research on the Matthew effect and other work, is that if you collaborate with a star and that collaboration is successful, the star does get more of that credit and you benefit less than if you were working with somebody that wasn't a star. The silver lining here though is that if you collaborate with a star and that collaboration is not successful, the star takes the heat."
[...] Results showed that collaborating with a star reduces the credit -- and gains in professional status -- that non-stars experience in the context of collaborative success. On the other hand, collaborating with a star not only mitigates -- but may actually outweigh -- the professional status loss associated with collaborative failure.
[...] "I think what this points to, both for low-performing employees and for managers," she said, "is the importance of being very mindful of what is the gain that you're hoping to achieve from a collaboration with a star."
Journal Reference:
Rebecca R. Kehoe, F. Scott Bentley. Shadows and shields: Stars limit their collaborators' exposure to attributions of both credit and blame, Personnel Psychology (DOI: 10.1111/peps.12436)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday February 17 2021, @05:19PM (10 children)
Doesn't that sound kind of obvious? One assumes, which may be wrong, that the Star is the one that comes up with the ideas and/or propels the project or idea forward. So if it works the Star gets most of the credit. Sounds reasonable to me. If it fails the Stars gets most of the blame, even tho it might be out of the stars control if it failed or not, which also sounds somewhat reasonable. But just as the failure might not be the Stars fault it's not necessarily that the success is down to the Stars performance either. Still they do get extra rewarded or credited then, I guess to make up for the extra failure blame. It sounds like a pretty normal risk vs reward scenario to me.
That said I don't mind working with the Star. I don't care very much about the glory or the credits, not that I don't want the credit or my fair share of it -- or for that matter my fair share of blame if it goes down in flame. That said I hate it when someone claims credit for things that are not their idea to begin with. That is just so much worse. We all know those people that have a tendency to get attached to projects that they then actually contributes nothing towards, but trouble, but once the reward comes around they are first in line to claim the credits or success.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @05:36PM (2 children)
The thing to watch for is the fake Stars. Or management Stars. Their job is to hoodink you into to doing all the work while they grade the quality of work. Basically a replication of High School with them as the teacher and you as the kid. They talk well but always state the obvious in a convincing (and loud) way.
There's a couple of maneuvers that anyone with kids can recognize:
1) Do you want to do "x" or "y"? (i.e. you have no choice except x or y and "you" are doing it)
2) "name" - did you receive the email about "problem" - did you get a chance to respond to that? (delegation of problem to name)
3) "name" what do you think about "other name"'s suggestion? (more delegation)
After a while, takes about 6 months, you notice that the Star never gets on the hook for doing something. Others get on the hook and the Star grades their work.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday February 18 2021, @08:44AM (1 child)
You basically described Steve Jobs and his contributions to Apple, and people practically worshiped him for it. Which is probably why more technical folk were critical of him and his "contributions", because they followed the same pattern as Apple's beginnings where Wozniak did the work, then Steve attached his name and some smooth talking to it and got all the credit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:43PM
True, Jobs was the manager/salesman/BS-er with Woz doing the real work of creating the product, but after the Apple IIe (Apple III?), Woz had no input in the company. Apple *absolutely* needed Woz to start, but not since then. Apple did however need Jobs, as Apple was dying after it kicked him out, and only came back to life after Jobs returned and based the new Mac on the technology of his NeXT company. Jobs drove Apple to even greater success with iPod, iPad, iPhone, and iTunes sales of digital music by the song for a reasonable price.
Woz was replaceable. Jobs was irreplaceable. I still think Jobs was a steaming asshole, BTW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by slinches on Wednesday February 17 2021, @06:03PM (5 children)
Extremely obvious to anyone who has worked large group programs. And it's often a fair trade in healthy organizations. Practically, you need someone to act as a focal point to funnel technical decisions through to ensure a consistent philosophy is applied in terms of product goals and trades. It may not look like these "stars" are doing enough "real work" to deserve the credit, but nonetheless they are critical to the success of a program. It's through their technical leadership, direction and guidance that conflicts that would potentially derail things are avoided and resolved quickly or escalate into delays and compromised product decisions. I've played both that technical lead "star" role as well as being an individual contributor on multiple products. Both have their advantages in terms of recognition and risk, but you won't last long as a "star" unless you share credit with those who contributed to success and are ready to accept the blame for poor team decisions.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @07:41PM (4 children)
It's also worth noting that often times the stars become the stars because nobody else is showing any initiative. In general, if you're not taking care of something, there's a better than even chance that nobody else is either and depending upon the work environment you may still receive the consequences of it not getting done even though it wasn't anybody's responsibility.
I don't personally like being the star, but I frequently get stuck in the role as I'd rather not deal with the headaches of the consequences of things not being done. Usually, I wind up spending even more time and energy cleaning up the messes even if I wasn't in charge. It doubly sucks because then I've got to exercise judgment about what I can and can't deal with without management assistance and getting it wrong in either direction carries with it consequences. In many cases, the stars would probably be better off just leaving the company and starting their own as at least then they've got an ownership share in the profits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 17 2021, @09:15PM (3 children)
When shit breaks it's usually not my fault but it's always my responsibility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @10:57PM
Well shit just broke and you ain't doing shit about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @01:14AM
> When shit breaks it's usually not my fault but it's always my responsibility.
"If you know anything about German history, it has always been, the time when Germany has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home. So the central - well, vastly overstated - the central principle of Adolf Hitler is that there must be a united, tightly controlled Germany [...] Culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow." [nypost.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:22AM
A few words of wisdom one of my supervisors shared with me:
It's not my place to run this ship.
I can't even ring the bell.
But let this damm thing run aground...
And see who catches hell!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:01PM
I think this is very fair and reasonable... as long as blame hits, too. We all know of C-level executives with golden parachutes, "hugely successful" businessmen who declare bankruptcy multiple times but still get massive support, and similar. When a so-called star gets all the credit but none of the blame, that's just pants.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @05:40PM (9 children)
Managers get ALL of the credit, and the employess get blamed for anything and everything that makes the managers look bad.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Wednesday February 17 2021, @06:57PM (3 children)
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @07:47PM (2 children)
Are there any non-broken organizations left anywhere?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 17 2021, @09:17PM
Yes.
If you are finding that every single organization that you have ever worked with is broken then it may be time to take a look in the mirror.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:04PM
Any organization where the focus is on YOU is broken. E.g. under the guise of making YOU more productive.
Fuck off out of my head, dipshits. If the work was good and the product was selling, they'd be no time and no need to fuck with the employees.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday February 17 2021, @08:07PM (3 children)
This, kinda, but without the sour grapes. Everywhere I've worked, the duties of delegation fall to somebody with a leader-like title, such as manager or line lead. The "stars" are always non-managers. The manager or lead usually takes credit for a job well done on time, but everybody knows who really worked the magic, and why that manager is a manager and not something else. Everytime I've seen somebody who wasn't marked as manager/lead/etc. try to delegate to others, they get told to fuck off and made the department bitch. This happens a lot with guys who spent 15-20 years in the military, who are used to bossing people around. Some of them have very difficult adjustment periods with their colleagues when working as underlings to supplement their retirement income.
Also kinda related: Employers who unironically use words such as "rockstar" and "ninja" in their marketing or recruiting literature should be avoided like the plague. Workers or applicants who unironically describe themselves as such should be jettisoned and/or their resume's trashed ASAP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @10:06PM (2 children)
Are you getting more mature and wiser in your advancing years, or has the collective behind your handle stopped drinking as much? It's like you've changed, but it is hard to discern exactly how to define what about you has not remained the same.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:04PM (1 child)
If you've seen a lot of his posts, you'd note that there's some that aren't deliberately offensive.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:45PM
I know. Sometimes Eth disappoints me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:45PM
In other ne s, shit rolls downhill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @08:47PM
I would say that if you have 2 years experience, it is harmful to be on the same team as a "star." Just when you could use visibility to get recognized by management and put you on a growth career path, someone else will be hogging all the limelight. It is less harmful if you are "settled" into your role and have already proven yourself technically and are OK with not being promoted beyond your role.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @12:34AM
If you make an honest mistake and fess up to it, you'll gain credibility even if you take short-term lumps. People know they are dealing with somebody honest. Resist your ego telling you to deflect.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by srobert on Thursday February 18 2021, @04:18AM
"if you collaborate with a star and that collaboration is successful, the star does get more of that credit and you benefit less"
The assumption here is that you want the credit. I just want to get paid and keep a low profile. My dream job is one where no one knows who I am, or what I do.