An Odd Way to Increase Productivity

It's not often that we find an article for this blog from Gawker, but we were forwarded this article with the title "Your Angry, Sarcastic Boss Is Actually Helping Your Productivity". I had to say I was at least a little bit intrigued.

Well the article wasn't exactly by Gawker, it was quoting an interesting article in the Journal of Applied Psychology. It showed that people who were exposed to anger and sarcasm worked harder and smarter than people in a neutral environment:

"The test was done with engineering students who all listened to an interaction between a customer and a customer service rep. Those who listened to the calls where the customer was angry ended up working harder and faster on a subsequent problem than their peers who listened to a nice call. Those who listened to a sarcastic interaction worked as hard and quickly as those exposed to anger, but also had more accurate and creative results."

It's an interesting conclusion, but there are not many lessons that can be learned here. You don't want your managers being angry or sarcastic--even if it does help productivity. One thing it does prove though, is that just because a group is productive, it doesn't mean their manager isn't a jerk to work for.