Organisational Behaviour #3 - Workplace Emotions and Attitudes
First class exercise was to find your group and affirm/agree on how we wanted our group test results allocated (25% in total, minimum of 5% to group or individual score). One wanted 5/20 individual/group and another wanted 10/15; I wanted 5/20 and when it became obvious the entire class was going for 5/20 we went with it too. The theory being that the group will always score higher than the individuals which was quickly confirmed by the test results (I was 70%, group was 77.5% except I accidentally lowered it to 72.5% in a moment of classic dyslexia for which the group kindly did not hassle me)
We talked about learning A relatively permanent change in behaviour (or behaviour tendency) that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with the environment. and some of the things that stop it taking place in the context of the workplace
We covered Organisational Learning Disabilities: I am my position: the belief that your role or job position defines you and allowing that to limit how you contribute and resolve issues. Classic example is when someone says ‘that’s not my job’ and refuses to help, rather than recognising that a problem exists and helping to solve it. The enemy is out there: the belief that problems come from outside/not_me and are therefore not mine to resolve. Illusion of taking charge: the belief that if only you look strong and ‘manage’ other people that problems will go away rather than considering the possibility that your approach/status quo is flawed. The fixation on events: the belief that if we can ‘get all this work done’ that everything will be ok rather than looking for patterns and roots causes. Boiled frog story: the interesting (and gross) observation that if you put a live frog in boiling water it jumps out, but if you put a live frog in tepid water and slowly warm it the frog gets dazed and stays until it cooks (ugh). The idea being that it’s better to be sensitive to change and work with it as it happens. The delusion of learning from experience: the idea that policy makers may not see the consequences of their decisions and the need to learn how to anticipate those consequences. The myth of the management team: I think of this as the ‘messiah!’ delusion - that someone with superpowers is magically making it all better rather than having a ‘learning’ team that balances advocacy with enquiry
We talked about the characteristics of a learning organisation by Peter Senge who is apparently an expert is this field. Personal Mastery: I like this one - developing one’s life as a creative adventure. This is about paying attention to what is real, cultivating a view that tries to see beyond what you expect to see (your various filters/assumptions) and constantly re-evaluating what is important. Mental Models: Still getting my head around this; if we’re talking about the way we develop theories about how things fit together and use those theories to predict/influence then yeah, I understand that - and I get the associated danger of not updating/challenging your models all the time. If we’re talking about something else then I’m screwed :p Shared Vision: Absolutely critical to have, I’m not even going to stop and define this, oh OK, I am. Shared Vision is the glue that connects people in organisations to each other. Good glue is important :) Team Learning: the idea that creating the results desired by the team is a process of alignment (shared values), development (personal mastery), innovation, coordination and role identification. Systems Thinking: More glue - how does it all fit together, what underlying processes bind us together, do they work, do they work for all of us?
Behaviour Modification this took me back a few years,. I think of this as ‘black box theory’ but I can’t remember where I got that term from - probably one of my two first year psych units back in 1992. We took a quick survey of Operant Conditioning which I tend to associate with Skinner and think of as old and creaky. I also shamelessly use positive reinforcement on housemates - works very well on
maharetr, less so on
ascetic_hedony. The main theory is about modifying behaviour through modifying your own response to the behaviour - reinforcement (positive = praise, negative = withdraw criticism), punishment (provide unpleasant consequences), extinction (ignore, do not respond). As a primary technique it pisses me off because the subject of it has no freaking idea what’s going on in your head and may very well develop behaviour B in order to please you when you were hoping for and thought you were rewarding behaviour A. I personally vote for talking to people about your expectations and trusting them to manage themselves. We did talk a bit about when to reinforce, schedules of reinforcement and I tangented us off into addiction studies results of erratic positive reinforcement (gambling is terribly attractive because never knowing when you’re going to get VERY positive reinforcement is very motivating to some of us). We talked about learning by copying people we admire, learning by avoiding the mistakes of others and reinforcing learning by rewarding yourself when you are Good (have a biscuit!).
Moods and emotions: moods being more generalised, persistent states without a specific, obvious trigger whereas emotions tend to demand attention and be directed at something/someone. We also talked about classing emotions in terms of Activism (how passionately you feel it) and Evaluation (how good/bad it is) although I’m still unclear on what you then go on and use that for :p The cool bit for me was talking about Cognitive Dissonance (where what you think, feel and/or do doesn’t match) - this is a dealbreaker for me in personal and work relationships, I can only handle so much before I either try to change the relationship, or break it and form new ones somewhere else. Emotional labour is about the work you do to convey a state you aren’t actually in, service roles tend to require a lot. It’s really important in management too because you need to create/support a certain type of emotional culture even when you’re not in the mood. I want to work in a communicative, trusting, positive, enthusiastic environment and that means I need to be that person as often as possible - even when I’m tired and cranky. I look on it as practicing being the kind of person I want to be but this means my work has to be closely aligned to my personal values or it becomes exhausting long term.
Emotional Intelligence: a huge topic - we concentrated on the Goleman model where you start off developing awareness of your own emotions, learn to manage them, develop awareness of other people’s feelings and then learn to manage them (rough and dirty version). I’m told this increases with maturity and that it can be learned - yay!
Last topic for the seminar was Job Satisfaction another monster topic. Let’s just say that lots of factors feed into job satisfaction, some of the obvious ones being the job itself, working conditions, pay and benefits, career progress supervisors, and co-workers. Dissatisfaction can be expressed through leaving (exit), trying to fix it (voice), waiting for it to end (loyalty) or doing less work (neglect). It’s interesting to note that the correlation between job satisfaction and productivity is weak - especially in production line jobs (you’d think it would be higher) although the relationship between job satisfaction and staff turnover, absenteeism and theft is medium strength. I’m interested in how this relates to the fact some people think work isn’t supposed to be fun (work over play) and would presumably have a very different relationship with the concept of ‘job satisfaction’ as compared to the other end of the spectrum (work is play) where you work because your work satisfies/inspires you. This entry was originally posted at http://samvara.dreamwidth.org/418983.html, where there are
comments.
We talked about learning A relatively permanent change in behaviour (or behaviour tendency) that occurs as a result of a person’s interaction with the environment. and some of the things that stop it taking place in the context of the workplace
We covered Organisational Learning Disabilities: I am my position: the belief that your role or job position defines you and allowing that to limit how you contribute and resolve issues. Classic example is when someone says ‘that’s not my job’ and refuses to help, rather than recognising that a problem exists and helping to solve it. The enemy is out there: the belief that problems come from outside/not_me and are therefore not mine to resolve. Illusion of taking charge: the belief that if only you look strong and ‘manage’ other people that problems will go away rather than considering the possibility that your approach/status quo is flawed. The fixation on events: the belief that if we can ‘get all this work done’ that everything will be ok rather than looking for patterns and roots causes. Boiled frog story: the interesting (and gross) observation that if you put a live frog in boiling water it jumps out, but if you put a live frog in tepid water and slowly warm it the frog gets dazed and stays until it cooks (ugh). The idea being that it’s better to be sensitive to change and work with it as it happens. The delusion of learning from experience: the idea that policy makers may not see the consequences of their decisions and the need to learn how to anticipate those consequences. The myth of the management team: I think of this as the ‘messiah!’ delusion - that someone with superpowers is magically making it all better rather than having a ‘learning’ team that balances advocacy with enquiry
We talked about the characteristics of a learning organisation by Peter Senge who is apparently an expert is this field. Personal Mastery: I like this one - developing one’s life as a creative adventure. This is about paying attention to what is real, cultivating a view that tries to see beyond what you expect to see (your various filters/assumptions) and constantly re-evaluating what is important. Mental Models: Still getting my head around this; if we’re talking about the way we develop theories about how things fit together and use those theories to predict/influence then yeah, I understand that - and I get the associated danger of not updating/challenging your models all the time. If we’re talking about something else then I’m screwed :p Shared Vision: Absolutely critical to have, I’m not even going to stop and define this, oh OK, I am. Shared Vision is the glue that connects people in organisations to each other. Good glue is important :) Team Learning: the idea that creating the results desired by the team is a process of alignment (shared values), development (personal mastery), innovation, coordination and role identification. Systems Thinking: More glue - how does it all fit together, what underlying processes bind us together, do they work, do they work for all of us?
Behaviour Modification this took me back a few years,. I think of this as ‘black box theory’ but I can’t remember where I got that term from - probably one of my two first year psych units back in 1992. We took a quick survey of Operant Conditioning which I tend to associate with Skinner and think of as old and creaky. I also shamelessly use positive reinforcement on housemates - works very well on
maharetr, less so on
ascetic_hedony. The main theory is about modifying behaviour through modifying your own response to the behaviour - reinforcement (positive = praise, negative = withdraw criticism), punishment (provide unpleasant consequences), extinction (ignore, do not respond). As a primary technique it pisses me off because the subject of it has no freaking idea what’s going on in your head and may very well develop behaviour B in order to please you when you were hoping for and thought you were rewarding behaviour A. I personally vote for talking to people about your expectations and trusting them to manage themselves. We did talk a bit about when to reinforce, schedules of reinforcement and I tangented us off into addiction studies results of erratic positive reinforcement (gambling is terribly attractive because never knowing when you’re going to get VERY positive reinforcement is very motivating to some of us). We talked about learning by copying people we admire, learning by avoiding the mistakes of others and reinforcing learning by rewarding yourself when you are Good (have a biscuit!).
Moods and emotions: moods being more generalised, persistent states without a specific, obvious trigger whereas emotions tend to demand attention and be directed at something/someone. We also talked about classing emotions in terms of Activism (how passionately you feel it) and Evaluation (how good/bad it is) although I’m still unclear on what you then go on and use that for :p The cool bit for me was talking about Cognitive Dissonance (where what you think, feel and/or do doesn’t match) - this is a dealbreaker for me in personal and work relationships, I can only handle so much before I either try to change the relationship, or break it and form new ones somewhere else. Emotional labour is about the work you do to convey a state you aren’t actually in, service roles tend to require a lot. It’s really important in management too because you need to create/support a certain type of emotional culture even when you’re not in the mood. I want to work in a communicative, trusting, positive, enthusiastic environment and that means I need to be that person as often as possible - even when I’m tired and cranky. I look on it as practicing being the kind of person I want to be but this means my work has to be closely aligned to my personal values or it becomes exhausting long term.
Emotional Intelligence: a huge topic - we concentrated on the Goleman model where you start off developing awareness of your own emotions, learn to manage them, develop awareness of other people’s feelings and then learn to manage them (rough and dirty version). I’m told this increases with maturity and that it can be learned - yay!
Last topic for the seminar was Job Satisfaction another monster topic. Let’s just say that lots of factors feed into job satisfaction, some of the obvious ones being the job itself, working conditions, pay and benefits, career progress supervisors, and co-workers. Dissatisfaction can be expressed through leaving (exit), trying to fix it (voice), waiting for it to end (loyalty) or doing less work (neglect). It’s interesting to note that the correlation between job satisfaction and productivity is weak - especially in production line jobs (you’d think it would be higher) although the relationship between job satisfaction and staff turnover, absenteeism and theft is medium strength. I’m interested in how this relates to the fact some people think work isn’t supposed to be fun (work over play) and would presumably have a very different relationship with the concept of ‘job satisfaction’ as compared to the other end of the spectrum (work is play) where you work because your work satisfies/inspires you. This entry was originally posted at http://samvara.dreamwidth.org/418983.html, where there are
comments.