Journals To Boardrooms

Researchers found that staying late leads observers to automatically infer that an employee is committed — spontaneously, below conscious awareness. Managers who believe they evaluate on merit may be evaluating on optics without knowing it.

A study of nearly 20,000 workers found one personality trait consistently higher in managers, supervisors, and entrepreneurs than in everyone else. It was not charisma or IQ. It was Conscientiousness. Research has a way of confirming what experience already knew.

Organizations keep asking how to retain top talent while running systems that systematically erode what made those people exceptional in the first place. The research has been available since 1999.