LMX Theory & Marketing to your Boss or Teacher
Bias is a natural part of how we operate as human beings and it plays an important role in your commercial, corporate or educational success. I’m not talking about your own biases… I mean the biases of the people who assess your work. Biases of your team mates. Biases of your managers.
A good concept to understand is the in-group and out-group membership paradigm – the Leader Member Exchange Theory (LMX).
LMX theory says that very soon after you join a group you will be put in a box as either an in-group or an out-group member. In-group members are those close to the decision maker / teacher / manager and if you’re lucky enough to be in the fold you get positive attributions reflected upon your work. If you succeed at a task its because you’re brilliant and if you fail its because you were unfairly disadvantaged by circumstance.
Alternately, if you’re placed in the out-group your successes will be delegated to luck and your failures attributed to your own incompetence. That is a state of the world we pretty much learn intuitively the day we first go to school…
In-group and out-group are simply those boxes that people put us into and from which we find it extremely difficult to free ourselves from over time.
Understanding LMX theory means you’re in a better frame of mind to position yourself when you enter a group or show up for your new job or embark on an educational degree. For example, a student has only a short time to convince the teacher they are a high distinction student as opposed to a distinction, credit or pass level student in the course. In any subjective assessment the teacher’s bias will more often than not reflect upon the grade handed back to the student.
This happens every day where you work… to some extent… and it may even be you doing the LMX attributions to your own in-group / out-group members.
And when you do understand LMX theory you can take responsibility for the fact that a big part of your job is to market yourself as an employee or a student to the people who assess your work. If you’re an in-group student you will find it much easier to get great marks on subjective assignment work… while out-group members have to fight for every mark they achieve.
My point is that understanding human beings plays an important role in your career outcomes. And while the way to your bosses heart may not exactly be through his stomach you can preempt the situation early and use simple marketing to position yourself for the future career campaign.
Don’t ever think you rise or fall solely on the work you do… we’re social animals. The more you know about how people work the better equipped you are to improve your career outcomes.
