Besides listing my biggest take away, I hope to be able to create a development plan that would help me learn and hone these essential soft skills. By writing this paper I would like to achieve fine tuning of certain skills that I already believe I have as well as learn a few new skills that I don’t think I possess right now. Personally, before I leave Great Lakes and go back again into the working world with my guns blazing, learning about these before hand is extremely beneficial.
While some of the articles make me more confident about getting into the corporate world, some make me feel that I may not appreciate the learning’s unless there is some circumstantial relation to it. When I first attended the organizational behavior class, I did not know what to expect. I was expecting an analysis on how corporate and organizations work from a very analytical viewpoint. I realized in the first class that there is so much more to organization behavior that I bargained for. I will start with the two most exciting exercises that were given to us during the lecture which revealed traits within me I was completely unaware of.
The Big Five Locator: I always believe that my emotional level was somewhere between responsive and reactive but the score indicated that I had a very high negative emotionality. I was always a very emotional person and I believed it to be normal for everyone but after coming here and interacting with around three hundred odd colleagues I realized I was way too emotional. This task helped me know a little more about myself. Managing Perceptions: This exercise revealed the huge difference between what I perceived about myself and what others did.
I always found status and high self esteem to be most important to me but others rated my social nature highest. I also realized that I had rated people highest in parts where I would have rated myself highest. This further clarified that people tend to see others the way they are. That session indeed was an eye opener for me. I have had the experience of working and seeing settings where the people and the corporate cultures of the companies were all different. I worked in a private organization whereas my dad is working in central government organization.
I have found that there is a great difference in the both the behaviour of people and of their organizations. One simple example is that of the ability of an employee to act independently without direct instructions from his or her boss. In many Government organizations, acting without direct instructions is considered a form of disrespect towards the supervisor, who is generally offended by such behaviour. I now understood why such organizations tend to have low operating efficiency. Its because the employees lose their innate ability to take the initiative.
On the other side in private institutions you have freedom to some extent in doing things the way you would prefer to do. The difference in efficiency of both the organizations is very obvious. Every individual, connected or member of some group, is actively seeking opportunities at work to involve in decision-making problems. They are hungry for the chance to share what they know and to learn from the experience. So, organization should provide them a chance to express their opinions, ideas and suggestion for decision-making problem. A meaningful involvement can bring mutual benefit for both parties.
But this does not compensate for the flaws that private organizations currently have. After the session on perception I found myself included in the culprit list for stereotyping and greatly influence by ‘Horns Effect’. I can now see many positives that my manager had but I could not see those and was blindfolded by the single negative trait of his. In all the learning that I have received till now in this course I have found that the most important factor in successful businesses lies in how the business is able to exploit its resources to meet the needs of its target markets.
Human resources ultimately make possible the full utilization of the other resources, even including that of the most advanced and powerful new technologies. The essence of success at leveraging resources is managing people and their behavior. With the introduction and development of the idea of employee empowerment, organizational behavior is now being determined by the participation of more people throughout the organization rather than just a few senior level managers. One quality that my manger lacked was treating his followers or employees as a ‘Whole Person’ and not an individual.
Every person’s personal life is not detached from his working life. As an example, a student who attends the very first class of the college’s day is always anxious for his/her friends are coming today or not. Similarly, mother always thinks about her children, whatever work she may be doing. As a result, its impact falls on his/her concentration that means his or her working life. For this reason, we cannot separate it. So leaders or managers should treat the followers or employee as a whole person as these behaviors are humane.
I am only half way through the course but have got so many future ideas that I will implement once I am again exposed to corporate world. I am interested in determining the specific factors that determine the different behaviors of employees and how they work together to form the behavior of the organization, as well as finding ways to modify such behaviors to make for a healthier and properly functioning organization. The incidents in the past, the learning that I got from them and the actual interpretation from those now after this course would definitely help be become a manager equipped with both technical as well as behavioral skills.
I can now understand the needs of my employees more efficiently and follow all the necessary steps to fulfill them. “The Confessions” by Rousseau stated that the least knowledge acquired by humans is knowledge about humans. Knowing yourself and fellow mankind are extremely important in life as well as in management. After the end of the course I hope to be able to contribute to other people, my country, society and life as a whole by realizing self-actualization and self-fulfillment through the study of organizational behavior.