Discussion and Analysis
Organizational behaviour describes the process of interaction between employees working in an organization. It is one of the important topics that falls under Human Resource. There exists a wide range of scholarly work on the behaviour of employees in organization under Human Resource management. It is under constant modification due to the scopes for research and review. Various scholars have proposed various theories on organizational behaviour that has the commonality regarding personalities, emotions and moods.
According to Mohammadi et al. (2015, p. 303) a person’s personality is a combination of variables like habits, thoughts, desires, skills and beliefs. These variables controls the reaction of an individual towards others. The scholars are still under active debate on the origin of personality formation. The scholars argue if the heredity or the environment or both have influence on the personality of an individual. Most of the researches points in the same direction and concludes that it is a combination of both. Both heredity and external environment have equal influence on personality formation of an individual and enduring personality traits or features demonstrated in numerous circumstances (Wood et al. 2016, p. 51).
Personality controls individual’s moods and emotions that we will later discuss in this report. Emotions are the feelings of a person of another human being or anything else that matters. Various factors like time, stressful events, social activities, personal loss plays active role in influencing a person’s emotion. As the way an individual behaves in an organization is partially based on the how s/he sees the organization, it can be said that emotion controls the individual’s organizational behaviour. Positive behaviour in the organization is the outcome of positive conceptualization.
I will be describing my attitude in management while dealing with diversified personalities. I will reflect on the emotions in an organization in the later part of the report. This report is a reflection of what I have learnt from the unit course and my experience working in a group. I will conclude the report with recommendations for the manager as per my understanding of the topic.
Case 1: The second assignment of the full time course I am in provided me my first opportunity to experience different personalities in a workplace as it was a group assignment. I consider the experience that I gathered from the teamwork in the university project is very much similar to the experience of working as a team in an organization. Both the situations offers the opportunity of accomplishing a shared goal. The teamwork brought me in contact with diversified behaviours, personalities and attitudes that contributed in developing my approach of working with different personality traits held by different individuals.
Case 1: Working with Diverse Personalities in a Group Project
Case 2: Second similar opportunity that I received is during the internship in a HR department of a company in my home country. I received the opportunity of working in a pool of diversified personality traits. The HR head of that organization had a temperamental personality that reflected lack of concern for the employees’ emotions. The other employees whom I was working with reflected a different type of personality that can be termed as the type B personality according to the organizational behavioural terminology. Individuals with type B personality tends to reflect a relaxed and calm attitude their work. Their nature does not reflect competitiveness and are happy to take the back seat (Baron, 1989).
I find the authenticity of Situation-Strength theory, as we had to consider individual employee behaviour, attitudes, perceptions, thoughts and feelings from both the personality and the situational point of view (Mayer et al. 2010). Besides these factors, other influences mould the personality and behaviour of an individual in a workplace. They can be self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-esteem or locus of control (Smith et al. 2013, p. 59). Rotter (1966) explained the locus of control as one of the measuring factor of people general expectancies about their control over a situation affecting them and their tendencies to attribute the causes of their success of failures to internal or external sources (Fretwell et al. 2013, p. 60).
Beside this, I experienced from my findings that the personalities can be motivated through diverse desires and needs, and it varies from person to person (Bencsik et al. 2016, p. 184). I can relate the McClelland theory with one of the incident from my group assignment, when one of the group members seek to lead the team. It reflects his/her need of power. Everyone else reflected a high need of achieving as they were busy completing the project on time for securing high grades. I could relate myself with the high need of achievement as I prioritize hard work and quality outcome over power. I like to put all my effort in achieving the best quality of the work I have been assigned. This resulted me to think that everyone is unique and have unique values and needs, which can be motivated by various factors. For example, some prioritise their basic needs like food and shelter, while some have the esteem needs like respect and power. One should consider there needs while motivating the individual.
Case 2: Working in a HR Department of a Company
The self-efficiency theory led me believe that personality is capable of increasing individuals self-efficiency. The theory states that an individual can deliver work that is more efficient only if s/he believes their capability of performing the task. A person with optimistic mind-set, some amount of self-confidence and perception of events as opportunity have high level of self-efficiency. Judge and Ilies (2002, p. 800) in their work related self-efficiency with the conscientiousness and emotional stability.
It is important for an organization to identify the personality traits of its employees, as it is likely for them to affiliate their personalities with the organizational culture and value. Garderner et al. (2007, p. 589) indicates the need of different measures of personality and values in the process of determination the person-organization fit. It will require a common approach for improving employee retention. There are various tools available in the market to conduct personality test among which, Myers Briggs type indicator is popular in the business organizations.
The personality of the leader can also be determined with the help of this tool. The success of an organization demands for an effective leader that makes it necessary for any given organization to run a typology test on the leaders before appointing them for the position (Mohammadi et al. 2015, p. 303). Khoo and Burch (2008, p. 88) on the other hand gave explanation of transformational leadership that inspires the employees to put their maximum effort by transforming their mind-set and caring for them. Transformational leaders tends to have agreeableness and high on extraversion. Bono and Judge (2004) identifies extraversion as an important trait that can exclusively be found in transformational leaders. The employees finds motivations and guidance from their transformational leaders for achieving the goals. It makes it a necessary requirement of a transformational leader to be extrovert for transparency in their communication with their followers for avoiding any misconnection and ambiguity.
Our course suggested us to take a personality test for knowing our individual personality for which, I chose the Five Factor Model personality assessment test. The test indicated my personality as extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and high level of emotional stability. The results were appropriate for me as it relates to my personality. I came to this conclusion after relating the results to the feedback I received from my supervisor during the internship period. According to her description, I had a stable emotion and openness to learn and explore. She further stated my personality as interactive and innovative.
Factors that Influence Personality and Behaviour in the Workplace
The experience I gathered from both my team assignment and internship led me conclude that every organisation is an amalgamation of different personalities. As a prospective HR Professional, I gathered knowledge from my course and developed insights for dealing with individuals holding different personalities and values and directing them to work for a same objective. The course provided me the opportunity to learn my own personality as well as the people I am surrounded with. The comprehensive learning from the unit enabled me to deal with diversified personalities efficiently in my professional and personal life.
Case 1: I encountered various incidents during my internship in the small HR firm that required me to be emotionally stable. My boss became furious during the interviews for the post of Chief Operating Officer. It was due to the technical glitch that occurred in between the interview process as it was wasting the time of the stakeholders of the organization. Moreover, it was her duty make all the logical arrangements, as she was the Human Resource Head. She then immediately turned to me for solving the problem without wasting anymore time. It was necessary for me to be calm and emotionally stable to find a proper and logical solution as soon as possible to continue the interview process.
Emotion is the principle component of human reaction and behaviour, which is controlled by the workplace environment and events while working in an organization. According to the affective event theory, it can be through direct cues or indirect influences or both. Job demands, surrounding, variety of tasks and requirements for expressing emotional labour falls under the above-mentioned workplace events. Affective Event Theory states that both positive or negative emotions and feelings can be triggered by the workplace events that ultimately leads to outcome of the individual’s attitude and behaviours. An individual with the possession of negative feelings for the organisation will reflect negative attitude towards it and might indulge in workplace non-standard behaviour and likely to violate workplace norms and values (Humphrey, 2002).
Robbins et al. (2016, p.114) identifies various other factors take part in translating the emotions into work behaviours that are termed as emotional intelligence and emotional labour. Goleman’s Refinement Model of Emotional Intelligence describes it differently than Robbins et al. as shown in the appendix 1. The degree of emotional intelligence is measured by an individual’s ability to identify and distinguish his or her emotions and implement in managing their behaviour and working relationship within the organization (Bulik, 2005, p.168).
Motivating Personalities
Bulik (2005, p. 174) identified that individuals who have high level of emotional intelligence reflects better coping skills with the stress and adverse health outcomes as they have a higher degree of capacity to recognise and express their emotion simultaneously have the ability to manage and control them according to their will. These individuals have an additional skill of identifying the causes of stress and can formulate strategies to overcome it. It is an additional advantage that makes them stronger form the rest of the population. Individual with high emotional intelligence can make thoughtful decisions and work with different yet difficult personality. It is due to their ability to come up with accurate interpretation and perception of emotional cues. Chien Farh et al. (2012, p. 892) identified it as an additional benefit of the individual. These individuals also reflects high self-esteem and confidence. It helps them to be calm in challenging situations where other fails to deal with the situation and can spread positivity among their team members at difficult times (Shooshtaria et al. 2013, p. 37).
Emotional labour on the other hand is the management of emotions as opined by Grama and Botone (2009, p. 316). He defined it as the individual’s ability to modify personal emotions and feelings either consciously or subconsciously according to the emotional rules for particular profession. Example can be drawn from the employees working in the hospitality industry where they have to deal with the customers and conduct face-to-face communication. These employees have to represent strong emotional intelligence, as it is a part of their duty to be kind to their customers and communicate with them reflecting their happiness in serving them, disregarding the fact that they are not having emotions of content. This can have an adverse effect on emotional orientation that can cause harm to the employee and effect their well-being (Pugh et al. 2011, p. 377). It often threatens the actual emotional identity of the employee and results into distress, displeasure, job dissatisfaction, productivity downfall and intention to quit (Grandey, Fisk & Steiner, 2005).
The leaders often use emotion as a tool for inspiring the employees in any organisation. It is commonly seen in the transformational and charismatic leader who are often feel free to share their emotions with the employees, stimulating emotion for pouring positive emotions amongst the fellow employees for achieving a fruitful result. The leaders have to be aware of the emotional needs of their fellow followers which will help them in providing positive inspiration and conviction (Brown & Moshavi, 2005; Cherulnik et al., 2001). The charismatic leaders have high level of control over his or her emotion as well as on the emotions of their followers that help them achieving positive outcome and behaviours.
Personality Test and Leader Selection
Autocratic leadership is another style of leadership that reflects high level of control over their emotions. According to Freeman and Auster (2011, p. 21) individuals with this leadership style are completely aware of his feelings and emotions, have sefl-confident, reliable, dependable and have the ability to increase the strengths of his followers.
Johari Window is a popular and useful model used for representing feelings, emotions, attitudes, thoughts, intentions and motivations of an individual in relation with the group. The model is composed with four-pane self-awareness window. Each of the pane reflects four different types of self-awareness that are unknown, blind, hidden and open. The course demanded to conduct this test on myself. The result of the test indicated the open category mentioned above, which means I have complete awareness of my behaviour, motive, attitude and values. An employee’s efficient development in an organization depends on the self-awareness of one’s attitude and emotions. Self-awareness of our emotions and attitudes enables us to predict our behaviours under various situations that would help us in controlling the outcomes (Hase et al. 1999).
The organizations should avoid taming the employees’ emotions according to their requirements as these emotions and feelings have a vital role in shaping individual’s work attitude and performance. In early days, organisations used to regulate and control the emotions of their employees that should be limited into supporting the employees and providing motivations for generating positive emotions and feelings of their jobs and the workplace.
The learning I received from the unit of Behaviour of Organizations on different concepts and theories will assist me in dealing diverse and challenging personalities. It will also facilitate in demonstrating my understanding of employees; emotions for creating an unified workplace environment.
I would like to make some recommendations from the knowledge I received for the unit. They are as follows:
A HR should participate in evaluating the employee job, work force, organisational value and culture for finding best person fit for the position. This will enable them to find and fill the positions in the organization with the persons best fitted for the job. The employees will then be satisfied with their job as likely to stick with the organization for longer period. It will stamp out the requirement for recruiting employees under short period.
The role of the manager is to direct the team towards achieving the shared goal of the organization. They should consider evaluating and understanding individual employees personality differences in the process and handle them accordingly.
Five Factor Model Personality Assessment Test
The organisations should use the personality test for understanding diverse personalities held by the employees that can potentially aid the organization in training employees accordingly. It can also help in developing a cordial relationship amongst the team members and establish open communication between them (Barrick & Mount, 2005).
According to Nelton (1996, p. 25), it is impossible to separate emotions from the workplace as one cannot separate emotions from the individuals.
Employees are also liable for regulating their intense emotional cues for avoiding exacerbate situations. Self-awareness of emotions and feelings is the first criteria for dealing with emotions. Only then, one can attempt to regulate these emotions and behave in appropriate manner in the workplace.
Finally, to understand and predict behaviours of individual, it is important for the manager to understand the emotions and moods on each employees. Understanding the moods and emotions can solve the issues faster in the time of conflict and struggle.
References
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