Does Image search for the word “occupation” or “manager”, and what comes back? Nothing that even remotely looks like a business or the managers. It’s not that the guys are just attractive. That’s what they’re doing. Many stock photos feature well-composed types sitting around a table. One of them is beaming and the others are laughing hysterically as the cult members hear that the Rapture has been brought forward a week.
In other pictures, a speaker is pointing to a pie chart. His colleagues were amazed at what they were seeing. Or people shaking hands purposefully and frequently. If they are ever left to their own devices, they stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and gaze passionately at the sky. What must they be thinking? Is it about what was on that pie chart?
To some degree, business life involves sitting around a table. Sometimes there is laughter. But if you want to represent the reality of a meeting, one person will be talking, two people will be listening and everyone else will be wearing the glowing expressions of clerics who have just lost their faith. If there were an accurate stock photo of someone working at a desk, its surface would be covered in fragments and the laptop screen would display its owner’s social-media account.
The corporate headshot is the way companies use photography to bend reality. But while stock photos glamorize business, headshots achieve the opposite. They make corporate life seem less fun than it really is.
Most companies’ websites have a gallery of their senior executives and boards, the product of hours of awkward primping and posing. The executives are dressed in make-up and forced to smile at the camera. The results have been consistently appalling. Most look like well-dressed hostages. Someone, usually the general counsel, looks so sad that he appears to have just passed out. One or two smile completely: in this context they are hostage takers.
The awkwardness is amplified if the photographer has decided to show more than a person’s head and shoulders. Pity the executives who have been forced to stand in front of the camera, tilting their heads slightly like a giant parrot, folding their arms and asked to look natural. If you ever saw someone standing like this in real life, you’d think “Better go the other way,” not “I bet that person is great at creating shareholder value.”
What on earth is going on? There is some research to suggest that profile photos can have a useful effect in business settings. Humans are quick to make judgments about others by looking at their faces: for example, people with childlike faces are perceived as more trustworthy than those without, while more mature faces convey expertise. A recent paper by Stuart Barnes of King’s College London and Samuel Kirshner of the University of New South Wales looked at the effect of facial features on the prices that Airbnb hosts can charge their guests. They found that hosts with attractive and trustworthy faces could charge up to 5% more per night than their peers for the same apartment. Unsurprisingly, perceived trustworthiness mattered more for smaller, shared housing.
But the decisions made by consumers on online marketplaces do not explain corporate headshots. Some people may try to choose between Disney+ and Netflix by going to the About Us section of their websites, but that seems unlikely. And even if executive profiles are somehow feeding into the subconscious decisions of investors and job applicants, it’s not quite clear what kind of picture should follow. Managers may already be trying to create an impossible brew of leadership qualities, from confidence to naked vulnerability. Now they also have to look baby-faced? No wonder people grumble.
So what’s behind this oddly widespread custom? A headshot is something for a fresh executive to show their mom and something for a weary guy to show employers. This is useful for employees who have no idea what their ultimate boss looks like. Leadership galleries increasingly serve as a crude but quick measure of diversity. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that it’s just something everyone does. It is strange to have a leadership team that does not show its face. Strange but not impossible. Alphabet lists the names of its board members and removes photographs altogether. You just have to imagine them shaking their heads in amazement at a graph.
Read more from our columnist, Bartleby, on management and work:
why is it useless to point fingers (January 19)
How to unlock creativity in the workplace (January 12)
How to have the most productive work day of your life (January 4)
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© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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