JUST PLANE CULTURE
ADMINISTRATORS AND MANAGERS EXHIBIT PROFESSIONAL ARROGANCE WHEN THEIR ACTIONS AND DECISIONS ARE BASED ON POSITION, POWER, EGO OR THE NEED TO IMPRESS THEIR SUPERIORS INSTEAD OF DOING WHAT IS BEST FOR THE EMPLOYEES OR ORGANIZATION.
professors. If that isn’t scary enough, some of those over- arrogant grad students become over-arrogant grad school professors who will produce more arrogant grad students. Arrogance and humility are considered to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Both are traits that people perceive in others and assume that people do not see in them. People identify others as being more arrogant or more humble than they see themselves. These perceptions often stem from how people handle success. Justin Bieber is not handling it well. People who are successful are automatically presumed to be arrogant unless they openly attribute their success to others such as mentors and coaches, or even luck, and then they are perceived as humble. On the other hand, if one ascribes their success through self-aggrandizing or as the result of one’s self- created abilities or skills, it will solidify people’s presumption of arrogance. This indicates that this person sees himself or herself as being better than others. Given that arrogance and humility are polar opposites, we, no doubt, have had personal experience with intellectual arrogance outside of academia. Intellectual humility is a rarity and is best described in this anecdote. “There was an elderly professor in my department and he had been passionately keen on a particular theory for a number of years. One day an American visiting researcher came and he completely and utterly disproved our old man’s hypothesis. The old man strode to the front, shook his hand and said, ‘My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these 15 years.’ And we all clapped our hands raw. That was the scientifi c ideal, of somebody who had a lot invested, a lifetime almost invested in a theory, and he was rejoicing that he had been shown wrong and that scientifi c truth had been advanced” (Dawkins, 2006). The elderly professor did not treat the theory as his own and disconfi rmed any threats to “his theory.” Rather, he cared only for the truth.
PROFESSIONAL ARROGANCE Administrators and managers exhibit professional arrogance when their actions and decisions are based on position, power, ego or the need to impress their superiors instead of doing what is best for the employees or organization. Administrators and managers might say they value employee input as a pacifying measure but, in reality, their actions display they only accept input that agrees with their own. At times this can lead others to sacrifi ce quality and safety in order to meet the numbers and appease their superiors. Thus the problem peeks from behind the curtain.
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Professional arrogance puts the individual on a solitary
venture. The social consequence of professional arrogance is that people who are modest about their accomplishments are liked more, and people are more compassionate if they lose their power and are willing to assist. On the other hand, the professional arrogant individual will have compadres only as long as they remain successful. The following list if from the article “Twelve Signs
Arrogance is Running Your Company” by Alaina Love: Arrogance is running your company if: 1. You hire and develop great people but then fail to listen to their input if it is non-conformist thinking.
2. Your company rationalizes its mistakes instead of learning from them.
3. Your company focuses almost exclusively on fi nancial success with little regard for legacy and social impact.
4. Your company lobbies against sound regulations because they might add complexity to the way you operate.
5. Your leaders pat themselves on the back when the company succeeds fi nancially, even success derived from market forces rather than actual performance.
6. Your leaders believe the company can’t fail. 7. Your leaders dictate more than they listen. 8. The company underestimates its competition and minimizes the success competitors achieve.
9. Access to top leadership in the company requires wading through multiple layers of bureaucracy.
10. There is a focus on amassing the trappings of success: large, well-appointed offi ces, chauff eured cars, private jets and the like.
11. Your company doesn’t become a partner in a merger; it takes over, losing the value of the culture and learning the other organization might have provided.
12. Your company suff ers from “Not Invented Here Syndrome,” believing it holds the monopoly on great ideas, so that innovations coming from the outside (“Not Invented Here”) are deemed to hold little value.
If you answered “yes” to more than six of these signs, your company has a dangerously high arrogance index (Love, 2010). It is important to note that businesses are not inherently
arrogant but become that way from the culture that is cultivated over time by the attitude of those who work there. The auto industry expressed arrogance in the 1950s and 1960s at the upstart Japanese auto market.
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