As more and more people return to the office, the relationships that we forged while at work have been rekindled, for good and bad. One of the more common sights in any office is the supposed “yes man”, and while this individual is typically viewed negatively, research from Columbia Business School suggests they might actually benefit the workplace.

The researchers review such people as so-called “upward influencers”, and they can actually boost the performance of a team. Indeed, the optimal teams might actually have around half of the team members fulfilling this role.

Upward influencing

The researchers characterize such individuals as prone to try and flatter their boss or intentionally misrepresent their own contributions in order to try and impress their manager.

The study is among the first to explore how these people can help or hinder the success of their team and they analyzed a number of 360-degree evaluation surveys alongside proprietary data from a talent management consulting firm where employees are randomly assigned to project teams.

Upward influencers were identified due to their higher ratings by former and current supervisors relative to their ratings from peers and subordinates. The performance of each team was then measured using success in achieving their predetermined goals.

A helpful influence

The results suggest that teams with around half of members classified as upward influencers achieved the best results. When upward influencers made up a higher proportion of teams than this, the performance declined.

This is likely to be because then teams descend into a more competitive mindset where members are competing with one another for power and influence rather than focusing on the success of the team. When upward influencers are a smaller proportion of the team, however, then they can help with maintaining good links with supervisors and ensure they have the resources needed to succeed.

The researchers hope that their work highlights the benefits of having upward influencers in a team and how managers can deploy them strategically to ensure teams do well. By pairing them with more team-oriented individuals appears to be the right mix to maximize productivity and success.

Moreover, upward influencers can serve as the communicative “glue” when onboarding new managers to lead teams or starting new projects that require lots of coordination and information sharing.