Chapter 10: Understanding Individual Behavior

What are the basic principles of Self-Management

1. Clarity of Mind 2. Clarity of Objectives 3. Organized System

What are the steps to Get Organized?

1. Empty Your Head - Collect all the things you need or want to do 2. Decide Next Action - Do it, delegate it, or defer it. 3. Get Organized - Schedule appointments, task; set up calendars, action lists 4. Perform a Weekly Review - Update calendars, action lists; process new items. 5. Do It - Consider time and context, energy level, and task priority.

Ways that an organization can manage stress.

1. Job redesign 2. Role negotiation 3. Employee Assistance Programs 4. Wellness Programs

Sources of Stress

1. Occupational Characteristics 2. Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict 3. Responsibility For Others 4. Interpersonal Demands 5. Overload and Personal Demands

Organizational Distress

1. Performance Decrements 2. Participation Problems 3. Compensation awards

Symptoms of Burnout

1. Physical Exhaustion 2. Emotional Exhaustion 3. Depersonalization 4. Feeling of low personal accomplishment

Things that an individual can do to manage stress.

1. Positive thinking 2. Time management 3. Leisure time activities 4. Physical execise

Individual Distress

1. Psychological 2. Cognitive 3. Behavioral 4. Physiological

Job Satisfaction

A positive attitude toward one's job.

Relationship Management

Ability to connect to others, build positive relationships and respond to other's emotions.

Preventative Stress Management

An organizational philosophy that hold that people and organizations should take joint responsibility for promoting health and preventing distress and strain.

Big Five Personality Factors

Are dimensions that describe an individual's extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience.

Perceptual Distortions

Are errors in perceptual judgment that result from inaccuracies in any part of the perception process.

Occupational Characteristics

Are some jobs more stressful than others? Jobs are more stressful when: 1. Making Decisions 2. Repeatedly exchanging information with others 3. Working in unpleasant physical conditions 4. Performing unstructured rather than structured tasks Physical Characteristics: 1. Extreme Environments 2. Strenuous Activities 3. Global Travel

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Assessment measures a person's preferences for introversion versus, extroversion, sensation versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving.

Locus of Control

Defines whether an individual places the primary responsibility for his successes and failures within himself or on outside forces.

Type B behavior

Is a behavior pattern that reflects few of the Type A characteristics and includes a more balanced, relaxed approach to life.

Attitude

Is a cognitive and effective evaluation that predisposes a person to act in a certain way.

Emotion

Is a mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes.

Stress

Is a physiological and emotional response to stimuli that place physical or psychological demands on an individual and create uncertainty and lack of personal control when important outcomes are at stake.

Cognitive Dissonance

Is a psychological discomfort that occurs when two attitudes or an attitude and a behavior conflict.

Fundamental Attributions Error

Is a tendency to underestimates the influence of external factors on another person's behavior and to overestimate the influence of internal factors.

Self-Efficacy

Is an individual's strong belief that he or she can accomplish a specific task or outcome successfully.

Type A behavior

Is characterized by extreme competitiveness, impatience, aggressiveness, and devotion to work.

Self-Management

Is the ability to engage in self-regulating thoughts and behavior to accomplish all your tasks and handle difficult or challenging situations.

Authoritarianism

Is the belief that power and status differences should exist within an organization.

Perception

Is the cognitive process that people use to make sense out of the environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information.

Personality

Is the set of characteristics that underlie a relatively stable pattern of behavior in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment.

Self-Serving Bias

Is the tendency to overestimate the contribution of internal factors to one's successes and the contribution of external factors to one's failures.

Responsibility for Others

Managers are responsible for other people and thus experience higher levels of stress People can be a major source of stress Need to satisfy subordinates while satisfying superiors

Self-Awareness

Means being conscious of the internal aspects of one's nature, such as personality traits, beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and perceptions, and appreciating how your patterns affect other people.

Overload and Personal Demands

Overload - so much work, so little time Increased with reductions in staff due to budget constraints Workaholism - form of addiction, imbalanced preoccupation with work at the expense of home and personal life satisfaction Signs 1. Over-commitment to work 2. Inability to enjoy vacations and respites from work 3. Preoccupation with work problems away from the workplace 4. Insistence on working at home over the weekends

Interpersonal Demands

People can be a major source of stress More diverse workforce, increased use of teams, increasingly service-based economy Other interpersonal demands: 1. Workplace Deviance 2. Office Politics

Machiavellianism

Refers to a tendency to direct one's behavior toward the acquisition of power and the manipulation of other people for personal gain.

Role Conflict

Refers to incompatible demands of different roles, such as the demands of a manager's superiors conflicting with those of the manager's subordinates.

Organizational Commitment

Refers to loyalty to and engagement with one's work organization.

Stereotyping

Refers to the tendency to assign an individual to a group or broad category and then attribute generalizations about the group to the individual.

Role Ambiguity

Refers to uncertainty about what behaviors are expected of a person in particular role.

Organizational Citizenship

Refers to work behavior that goes beyond job requirements and contributes as needed to the organization's success.

Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict

Role Ambiguity - Stress from uncertainty about: 1. Scope of their responsibilities 2. What exactly is expected of them 3. How to divide their time among various duties 4. How to perform the task Inter-role conflict - caused by opposing expectations related to two separate roles assumed by the same individual

Two Keys to Self-Awarness

Soliciting Feedback plus Using Self-Assessment = Greater Self-Awareness

Distress

The adverse psychological, physical, behavioral, and organizational consequences that may arise as a result of stressful events.

Personality

Unique and relatively stable pattern of behavior, thoughts, and emotions shown by individuals. Influences on personality 1. Heredity 2. Environment family influences, cultural influences, educational influences.

Self-Confidence

Which means general assurance in one's own ideas judgment, and capabilities.