Managing the good and bad of looking to others: The use of proxies for self-assessment

Employees often compare themselves to the actions and performance of others in order to understand their relative standing and assess their likelihood of succeeding at future tasks. The challenge, however, is that managerial advice for facilitating informative comparisons is sparse. Accordingly, this article adopts the viewpoint that managers need to better understand how to facilitate useful comparisons between employees in order help them attain success. We provide suggestions that help managers direct employees in ways that develop their self-efficacy and assist with their goal attainment.