When People Optimise for Approval
The Currency That Distorts
Every organisation has a primary currency — the thing that most reliably generates reward. In some organisations, this currency is results: what was delivered, what was achieved, what moved the metric that matters. In others, the currency is approval: the perception of the people above you in the hierarchy, the sense that you are valued, the signal that you are in favour. These are not the same currency. And the organisation's character depends critically on which one it is actually trading in.
When approval is the primary currency, people optimise for visibility over impact. They invest disproportionately in activities that will be noticed by the people who dispense approval, and underinvest in activities that generate value without generating attention. They manage their image carefully in ways that consume energy that should be going to the work. And they make decisions based in part on the question "how will this be received" rather than "is this the right thing to do."
How Approval Culture Forms
Approval culture does not form through a single decision or policy. It forms through the accumulation of signals about what actually generates advancement and recognition. When people who manage upward well advance faster than people who deliver well, the signal is clear. When the people closest to power receive the best opportunities regardless of their performance relative to others, the signal is clear. When leadership's emotional response to someone is a more reliable predictor of their future in the organisation than their track record, the signal is clear.
These signals are read accurately by everyone who receives them. People adjust their behaviour accordingly — not because they are cynical, but because they are intelligent. They are maximising for the actual reward structure rather than the stated one. The problem is entirely in the reward structure, not in the people responding to it.
What Approval Optimisation Produces
Approval-optimising behaviour produces a specific organisational profile. The people who rise are skilled at managing relationships with power. The people who deliver without managing those relationships plateau or leave. The information that reaches leadership is filtered through approval considerations — problems are softened, risks are downplayed, the news that arrives at the top is systematically more positive than the reality it purports to represent. And the organisation makes decisions based on that filtered information, which means it makes decisions that are systematically biased toward confirming current beliefs rather than correcting them.
Over time, this produces an organisation that is good at appearing capable and progressively less capable of actually being so. The performance becomes performance — a display oriented toward the people watching rather than toward the work being done. And the work, starved of genuine attention, quietly deteriorates.
The Leaders Who Create This
Approval-seeking cultures are typically created by leaders who have high approval needs themselves. These are leaders for whom being liked is genuinely important — who experience criticism as threatening, who respond to praise with warmth and to challenge with coolness, who promote people who make them feel good about themselves and hold back those who do not. They do not create approval cultures intentionally. They create them by modelling approval-seeking and by inadvertently rewarding it through their own responses and decisions.
Recognising this pattern in oneself — distinguishing between the genuine need for positive working relationships and the approval-seeking that distorts decision-making — is among the harder forms of self-awareness available to leaders. It requires being honest about the moments when one's response to another person is driven by how that person makes one feel rather than by an assessment of what they are contributing.
Reorienting Toward Results
The reorientation from approval culture to results culture requires consistent, explicit, and often uncomfortable decisions. Advancing people who deliver well regardless of their management of relationships upward. Addressing the performance of people who manage well but deliver poorly. Receiving challenge and critical information with genuine engagement. Separating the personal relationship from the professional assessment clearly and consistently enough that the signal is unmistakable. These decisions, made repeatedly and visibly, change what people in the organisation understand the currency to be. That change, over time, changes the culture itself.
Request Access at planets9.com