• Patience plays a crucial role for individual performance
• Firms can positively influence collaborations by assigning employees with patience to long-term projects
• Incorrectly assigning people to long-term projects could undermine efforts of the rest of the team

The Productivity Method, a business which originally started as a hobby for its founder, ended up being so popular that, at one point, over 75,000 people were on a waitlist for its product.

The demand for the line of productivity planners and notebooks, created by Grace Beverly, a former University of Oxford student and Instagram influencer, highlights just how important it has become for people to become more productive in their daily lives. According to Google Trends, the number of people searching ‘how to be productive’ worldwide has skyrocketed over the last few years.

The term ‘productivity’ has become the latest buzzword in both personal and professional settings. It is often defined as a measure of business and economic performance by indicating how efficiently people, companies, and industries convert inputs, such as labour and capital, into outputs, such as goods and services. On a personal level, however, ‘productivity’ is often used to describe how much individuals can accomplish every day, not just in the workplace but in their personal lives too.

Is it a bad thing for people to be seeking the ideal model for productivity? Not necessarily. In fact for businesses, being more productive is key for their success as it is a proven fact that productivity plays a key role in both profitability and competitiveness.

But ensuring productivity is harder than simply setting yourself an agenda or to-do list and sticking to it. And, whilst it might be relatively easy for individuals to monitor their own productivity, for managers, the difficult part lies in ensuring that everyone within their business is being productive too.

What qualities should a manager look for when looking to build a highly productive workforce? Is it keen enthusiasm and a can-do attitude? According to research by the University of Cologne, firms should also seek to hire people who display patience in order to improve their productivity.

The study, conducted by Professors Felix Kölle and Thomas Lauer, investigated cooperative behaviour as well as its underlying mechanisms. To do this, they carried out two experiments which measured individuals’ decisions to cooperate, exploring their beliefs about the contribution of others, their general attitudes towards cooperation, their time preferences and, finally, their perceptions of what constitutes as socially appropriate behaviour.

The results found that patience plays a crucial role for team performance, and suggest that firms can positively influence collaboration and productivity by strategically assigning employees with high levels of patience to long-term projects.

Good things come to those who wait

“This strategy is particularly relevant for team competition,” says Professor Kölle, “as incorrectly assigning impatient people to long-term projects could undermine the efforts of the rest, especially as most people are conditional cooperators who only cooperate if others do so as well.”

We’re in a word where we value speed, tangible results and immediate decisions in the workplace, and as a result patience is becoming increasingly rare. Antonio Argandoña, Professor of Economics and Business Ethics at IESE Business School, says that research shows that very few decisions in the workplace should be considered truly urgent. Business culture seems to embrace the idea that “he who hesitates is lost.” He adds that practicing patience is invaluable for innovating, negotiating, starting a company and countless other situations where it serves both leaders and employees in good stead.

Being patient means observing, listening, seeking relationships and consulting other people in order to make better decisions. Professor Argandoña’s paper makes the case that patience really is a virtue – one we have neglected in recent years.

Workplaces have placed such an emphasis on being fast that patience is never rewarded. Professor Kölle says, “our findings further suggest that recognising and appreciating individual differences in patience may be essential when assigning projects.” Doing this will give people the confidence to take a step back, and slow things down to ensure they’re doing things in the most effective way.

So how can workplaces encourage a culture of patience to come to the fore?

Based on the results of the study by the University of Cologne, the researchers recommend companies focus more on assessing an applicant’s level of patience during the recruitment process, in order to identify candidates who hold these necessary attributes. “This can be implemented by incorporating relevant questions and tests in interviews,” Professor Kölle says.

The research also highlights the role of patience as a critical non-cognitive skill in work settings and advises businesses to cultivate a workplace culture that values and encourages patience, as this is a promising strategy for promoting productivity. To do this, the researcher advises organisations to provide training and development programmes, acknowledging the contributions of patient employees, and emphasising the value of perseverance and dedication in achieving long-term goals.

So whilst we all might still have out to-do lists for the week jotted down and deadlines to meet, it seems it pays to set some of those goals a little further in the future rather than racing to sign them off swiftly. Taking the time to slow down might not win you the race, but will result in you gaining the biggest payoff.

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