Peer pressure

Last month was Ganesh festival and our Apartment committee had charged 1000 rupees this year for the celebration. I was surprised to see that almost everyone contributed the amount. During discussions, most of them thought that the amount was pretty high. I was discussing with one of my friend in the apartment and he immediately said one word - "Peer Pressure". This was the only reason why everyone contributed. They don't want to be left out from the crowd. This is really true, happens everywhere and every time.

Now what kind of Peer pressures do we face in office? There can be many, some can be positive and some negative. I think there are always few things that we do in office because of Peer pressure. I will list some of them and try not to categorize them as Positive or Negative.

1. Staying extra time, working on weekends - There will be few who genuinely stay and work, some stay late because other team members are still there, some because Manager is still there.
2. Trying to log not so useful bugs to catch up with your colleagues.
3. Drink or Smoke because your colleagues or Boss does the same. Please don't do this :).
4. Trying to complete tasks faster to catch up with others without caring about the quality.
5. Logging into Facebook, Twitter, Orkut because everyone exists over there.

An ideal Manager can effectively use Peer pressure technique to get the best out of the team. I have seen some great Managers applying positive peer pressure and you can't escape this trap and you don't realize the trap until you get deep into it.