Research Roundup: Salary Disparities, Managers Who Squash Ideas, Exclamation Points, and More

Staying on top of new research can sharpen how you lead, manage teams, and grow your company. In this roundup, adapted from our March–April magazine, we spotlight standout findings from academics, consulting firms, and other sources to help you stay ahead of the curve. These insights cover topics including: Reasons some managers suppress their employees’ good ideas. Why your team should focus on either learning or performance (but not both). How to pursue seemingly competing goals. For several of these briefs, you’ll also find links to related HBR.org articles, offering a chance to explore the research in greater depth. Sudden Changes Make You Seem Less Authentic When employees offer feedback, many leaders feel compelled to act on it immediately. But moving too fast may hurt their credibility, new research shows. In three studies with 3,056 participants from the United States and the United Kingdom, researchers explored how the speed of leaders’ behavioral changes affected perceptions of their authenticity. In one study, 190 doctoral students were asked to imagine that their adviser had received anonymous advisee feedback during an annual review. Half the students were told that the adviser’s behavior immediately changed in response, while the other half were told the adviser’s behavior altered more gradually. Although both scenarios described the improvements as lasting, the rapid change was seen as less authentic. A second experiment with 2,000 participants confirmed this effect across eight leadership behaviors, including coaching, listening, and motivating. Sudden changes felt superficial because people assume that genuine change requires a deep shift in a leader’s self-perception, which they believe takes time. Fast fixes seem like lip service. In a third study the researchers found that speed mattered less for easy-to-modify behaviors (like sending a meeting agenda in advance) than hard ones (like becoming a better listener). Additionally, when leaders moved too quickly to correct hard-to-change behaviors, participants reported being less willing to speak up in the future. So should leaders slow down when it comes to feedback? The researchers say it depends. For easily modified behaviors, prompt action can still foster a feedback-friendly environment. But for more-complicated behaviors, gradual improvement signals sincerity. If leaders want to get started on hard changes immediately, the researchers say, they should articulate the reasons behind their actions to their team, which may offset the authenticity penalty by making changes seem well considered rather than hurried. High-Quality Store Managers Help New Products Succeed A great amount of effort goes into designing, marketing, and launching a new product. To help it really take off, a new study shows, you should pay attention to who oversees its sales on the retail floor. In the study, researchers tracked the rollout of 4,093 new products that took place from 2017 to 2019 at a large Colombian grocery chain with 229 stores in 109 cities. They also followed the movement of its 616 store managers, who were centrally assigned and frequently transferred to different markets. The researchers uncovered a significant relationship between individual managers and store performance, finding that some were consistently associated with above-average store performance, even when they changed locations. As is usual at large chains, new products weren’t launched at all stores at once but normally started at a few stores and expanded to others if they were successful. The researchers found that when a high-quality manager arrived at a store, revenue per new product increased by almost 20%. In addition, new products initially allocated to good managers’ stores expanded into 31% more additional stores within 11 months (the median product life span) than those launched in other stores did and were nearly 11% more likely to last longer than average on the market. To find out how the good managers achieved superior results, the researchers conducted interviews and collected survey data. They found that high-quality managers excelled at forecasting future sales and managing inventory to match demand—which helped them ensure that in-demand new products were continually in stock. While this study is based on one retailer, the researchers write, the chain’s broad geographic and economic reach makes its implications relevant for large chains everywhere. In particular, they argue, their findings suggest that who manages a new product’s introduction on the retail floor can be just as important as the product itself. A strong manager can elevate an average product, while a weak one may hold back even the most promising launch. They write that when evaluating a launch, retailers should take account of this unlikely source of friction in the rollout process—the differences in the skills of managers on the ground—that might make a product perform better or worse than its true potential. Go deeper: “What Sets Successful Product Launches Apart? Savvy Store Managers,” by Michael Blanding. Why Managers Stifle Good Ideas Employees with creative solutions often need their bosses’ backing to get their concepts in front of senior leadership. But are managers motivated to support them? Or are they too worried about their own image? Those were the questions posed in a study examining who stands to lose or gain status (defined as respect and voluntary deference from others) when a manager endorses an employee’s idea. Across four experiments, U.S. participants evaluated scenarios in which a manager supported an idea that either succeeded or failed. They found that when the manager championed a winning idea, both the employee and the manager gained status, but the employee gained more, narrowing the manager’s standing over the employee. When an idea failed, both lost status, but the losses for managers outweighed any potential gains from backing a winner. In other words, when managers support an employee’s idea, whether it succeeds or not, they lose status in some way. That’s because when an idea fails, people look harder for who was responsible than they do when an idea succeeds. After a flop, people found both the employee and the manager responsible, but with a win, credit went primarily to the idea generator. A fifth study with 600 managers revealed that managers accurately predict the loss of status for supporting employees’ ideas—whether good or bad—and the relative gains for turning them down. “These perceived status dynamics are a reason why even when both companies and managers want innovation, managers may face incentives to reject the sorts of ideas that could lead to innovation,” the researchers write. To prevent this bias from killing off promising new concepts, they encourage companies to set up blind review panels to evaluate them. Go deeper: “Why Some Managers Stifle Good Ideas,” by Wayne Johnson and Brian Lucas. Your Team Should Focus on Learning or Performance—Not Both Does striving to learn new skills enhance a team’s performance and sense of purpose? To find out, researchers studied 109 teams at a large North American mortgage company. Over a 16-week period, the teams reported on the goals they prioritized, how well they collaborated, and whether their work felt meaningful. At the end of the study, managers rated each team’s performance using standardized measures. The researchers found that the teams that tried the hardest to maximize both learning and performance received the lowest scores from their managers, while teams that leaned into either learning or performance (while de-emphasizing the other pursuit) scored better. Teams that focused on just one goal also were much more likely to say their work felt meaningful. The researchers say that prioritizing one aspect of work creates stronger team alignment. Innovation requires experimentation and tolerance for mistakes, while high efficiency demands precision. When teams are asked to achieve both, hesitation creeps in, leading to inconsistency and a lack of focus. When teams coalesce around a single priority, they know what to pursue and how to pursue it. “For leaders, the message is simple: Don’t overload your teams with conflicting signals,” the researchers write. “When [teams are] given a focused direction…they’re more likely to find meaning in their work, collaborate effectively, and achieve better results.” Go deeper: “Teams That Prioritize Either Learning or Performance Perform Better,” by Jean-François Harvey and Wonbin Sohn. Don’t Choose Between Goals—Sync Them Up Juggling personal and professional dreams may feel like a zero-sum game, where chasing one means sacrificing another. New research suggests there’s a better way to handle multiple ambitions: harmonize them. In 11 studies across 10 countries, researchers explored what happened when they asked people to focus on the synergies among their goals. In one experiment, 200 participants were split into two groups: In one, people listed ways their goals could complement each other (for example, a promotion funding a dream vacation), while people in the other listed ways their goals clashed. Those who explored connections reported stronger motivation to pursue their aspirations than those focused on conflicts. In another experiment, participants were asked to name three New Year’s resolutions and then rate on a scale from one to seven how much they felt the goals pulled in the same direction. Two months later, those who saw the most compatibility were the most likely to have stuck with their resolutions. Further experiments found that even brief reflections on how goals connected lowered people’s stress and increased the anticipation they felt for the next day. This happens because harmonizing goals reduces the anxiety that comes from conflict and time pressure, the researchers write. It also reduces the sense of loss that perceived trade-offs create. When people see their goals as symbiotic, they feel less guilty about neglecting something important. The researchers also found that some cultures are better at encouraging goal alignment than others are. Participants from collectivist cultures—such as India, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Mexico—reported more natural harmony and higher overall motivation and well-being than people from individualistic cultures like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands. Collectivist cultures tend to prize balance and avoid conflict, which may explain why seeing connections between goals was more common in them. “The most motivated people are not simply more disciplined; they are more strategic,” the researchers write. To capitalize on harmony’s benefits, they encourage people to find ways to “reframe and realign their important goals so they work in concert.” Go deeper: “How to Create Harmony Between Your Personal and Professional Goals,” by Ayelet Fishbach and Jiabi Wang. Pay Inequality Starts at the Initial Offer Research has shown that wage gaps between men and women are due in part to women’s less-aggressive salary negotiation tactics. In fact, the disparities emerge earlier, before negotiations even begin. In a new study, researchers analyzed data on 738,000 initial salary offers made to job seekers in the United States from 2017 to 2020. They found that women received offers that were 5.5% lower than men’s, despite controlling for the job’s title, employer, industry, location, and occupation type and the applicant’s education, race, and experience. To understand where the differences were most pronounced, the researchers analyzed task descriptions for 599 occupations. They found that the offer gap was wider for women in occupations with stereotypically “masculine” tasks—associated with traits like assertiveness and independence—than in those with stereotypically “feminine” tasks. That aligns with theories about how stereotypes influence employers: With roles characterized by masculine norms, they often undervalue women’s competence, even when their credentials match men’s. The researchers say that their study helps overturn long-standing misconceptions about women’s supposed complicity in their lower wages. “In finding that gender disparities in pay exist as early as the offer stage, our research provides a critical counterargument to skill-deficit explanations for the gender wage gap,” they write. If your company is looking to improve pay equity, instead of encouraging women to become better negotiators, it may help to look at the offer you’ve put on the table. The Real Reason Brands Should Be Multiplatform Is your company wasting resources posting on Facebook when your customers are mostly Instagram followers? A new study finds that it really does pay to diversify—but perhaps not for the reasons you might think. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 2,000 top U.S. e-commerce retailers from 2011 to 2018, including their web sales, site traffic, and social media presence across Facebook, Twitter (now X), YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram. They also examined brand engagement on each platform by studying yearly user counts—a widely accepted proxy—and the traffic each drove to the retailers’ websites. Adding just one more social platform was associated with a 2% boost in web sales, or an average of roughly $8 million for the brands studied. Additionally, brands with above-average diversification (equally high engagement across more than one platform) saw an additional 3% lift in sales. That held true even after controlling for factors like product category, brand popularity, and average cart size. But diversification didn’t work by reaching new customers on different platforms. Analyzing publicly available data on users from Twitter and Pinterest, the researchers found that the sales bump came from users who followed brands across multiple platforms. The researchers say that the repeat exposure reinforced brand awareness, which nudged followers toward purchases. “Retailers should not just simply adopt new platforms [to increase reach],” the study’s authors write. “Instead, they should start from the existing followers [and] adopt the platforms that these followers have also been using [to] generate overlapping impressions,” which in turn drives sales. Successful and Struggling CEOs Are Leaving at Similar Rates Top-performing CEOs tend to stick around their companies longer than underperforming ones do—but the difference is narrowing. In 2024, just 7% of higher-performing S&P 500 CEOs left their roles, compared to 18% of underperformers. In 2025, turnover rose to 12% and 14% for the two groups, respectively. (“Strong Results, Short Tenures: The New Reality for High-Performing CEOs,” by the Conference Board, Egon Zehnder, and Semler Brossy.) It’s Okay to Add That Exclamation Point! Does using exclamation points in your writing make you seem unprofessional? Or enthusiastic? In a series of studies, researchers found that people who used the punctuation mark were viewed more positively than people who didn’t and were preferred as collaborators. Though seen as less analytical and powerful, exclamation point users were rated just as competent—and notably warmer—than nonusers, regardless of gender. (“Nice to Meet You.(!) Gendered Norms in Punctuation Usage,” by Yidan Yin, Gil Appel, and Cheryl Jan Wakslak.)

Research Roundup: Salary Disparities, Managers Who Squash Ideas, Exclamation Points, and More

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