CSULB / MGMT 300 - Ch. 14: Understanding Individual Behavior
Negative Emotions
- Anger - Fright / Anxiety - Guilt / Shame - Sadness - Envy / Jealousy - Disgust
Role Ambiguity (Task Demands)
Task Demands: - People are unclear about what task behaviors are expected of them.
Steps of Perception (Perception)
Perception: - Observe - Screen - Organize
Two Keys to Self-Awareness (Self-awareness)
Self-awareness: - Soliciting Feedback + Using Self-assessment
Stress
- An individual's physiological and emotional response to external stimuli that place physical or psychological demands on the individual and create uncertainty and lack of personal control when important outcomes are at stake. - These stimuli, called stressors, produce some combination of frustration (the inability to achieve a goal, such as the inability to meet a deadline because of inadequate resources) and anxiety (such as the fear of being disciplined for not meeting deadlines).
Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality
- An individual's personality influences his or her work-related attitudes and behavior. - Four areas related to personality that are of particular interest to managers are: 1) Locus of Control 2) Authoritarianism 3) Machiavellianism
Emotion
- Can be thought of as a mental state that arises spontaneously within a person based on interaction with the environment rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes and sensations. - Can be understood as being determined by whether people are getting their needs and goals met. - Managers can influence whether people experience primarily positive or negative emotions at work.
Trust
- Can make all the difference between an employee who is emotionally committed to the organization and one who is not. - Managers promote it by being open and honest in their business dealings, keeping employees informed, giving them a say in decisions, providing the necessary training and other resources that enable them to succeed, treating them fairly, and offering rewards that they value.
Basic Principles for Self-management
- Clarity of Mind - Clarity of Objectives - An Organized System
Steps for Managing Time
- Empty Your Head - Decide the Next Action - Get Organized - Perform a Weekly Review - Do It
Perception Distortions
- Errors in perceptual judgement that arise from inaccuracies in any part of the perception process. - A result of such errors are: 1) Stereotyping 2) Halo Effect
Positive Emotions
- Happiness / Joy - Pride - Love / Affection - Relief
Threat Stress
- High-stress that is bad because it could lead to exhaustion that becomes unproductive.
Problem-solving Styles
- Individuals solve problems and make decisions in different ways. - Differences results from our preferences in how we go about gathering and evaluating information. - People gather information by either sensation or intuition, and evaluate that information by thinking or feeling.
Attribution
- Judgments about the cause of a person's behavior; something about the person or something about the situation. - For example, Susan missed the deadline because she was careless and lazy or because she couldn't get the information she needed in a timely manner. - People often have biases when making attributions: 1) Fundamental Attribution Error 2) Self-serving Bias
Challenge Stress
- Low-stress that is good because it helps increase motivation and performance.
Are You Self-Confident?
- Managers can accomplish significant results and advance in their careers only when they have the self-confidence to take risks and push beyond their comfort zones. - Individual differences among people, including personality traits, emotions, and characteristics such as self-confidence and self-efficacy influence how people relate to others and behave at work.
Emotional Intelligence
- Managers who are in touch with their own feelings and the feelings of others can enhance employee and organizational performance. - Includes four basic components: 1) Self-awareness 2) Self-management 3) Social Awareness 4) Relationship Management
Emotional Contagion
- Means that managers who express positive emotions such as happiness, enthusiasm, and appreciation trigger positive emotions in employees. - Negative emotions might spread more easily than positive ones. - Good managers pay attention to people's emotions because positive emotions are typically linked to higher productivity and greater effectiveness.
Type A Behavior
- Pattern characterized by extreme competitiveness, impatience, aggressiveness, and devotion to work.
Type B Behavior
- Pattern that lacks Type A characteristics and includes a more balanced, relaxed lifestyle.
Organizational Commitment
- Refers to an employee's loyalty to and engagement with the organization.
Job Satisfaction
- Reflects the degree to which a person finds fulfillment in his or her job. - In general, people experience fulfillment when: 1) Work matches needs and interests. 2) Working conditions and rewards are satisfactory. 3) Like their coworkers. 4) Have positive relationships with supervisors. - Research shows that the link between satisfaction and performance is generally small and is influenced by other factors such as: 1) The importance of satisfaction varies according to the amount of control the employee has.
How to Combat Stress
- Seek and destroy key source of stress. - Find meaning and support. - Meditate and manage your energy. - Find work-life balance.
Causes of Work Stress
- Some kind of decisions are inherently stressful: those made under time pressure, those that have serious consequences, and those that must be made with incomplete information. - The following are known stressors: 1) Task Demands 2) Interpersonal Demands
Perception
- The cognitive process that people use to make sense out of the environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information from the environment. - Because of individual differences in personality values, interests, and so forth, people often "see" the same thing in different ways. - Most differences in perception among people at work are related to how they observe, screen, and organize sensory data. - The steps of perception are to observe, screen, and organize.
Understanding Yourself and Others
- The first requirement for being a good manager is understanding oneself, and that could be done through self-awareness.
Personality
- The set of characteristics that underlie a relatively stable pattern of behavior in response to ideas, objects, or people.
Self-efficacy (Are You Self-Confident?)
Are You Self-Confident? - An individual's strong belief that he or she can accomplish a specific task or outcome successfully.
Self-confidence (Are You Self-Confident?)
Are You Self-Confident? - Refers to general assurance in one's own ideas, judgement, and capability.
Machiavellianism (Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality)
Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality: - Characterized by the acquisition of power and the manipulation of other people for purely personal gain. - Low Machs thrive in a highly structured situation while high Machs perform in a detached, disinterested way. - High Machs are particularly good in jobs that require bargaining skills or that involve substantial rewards for winning.
Locus of Control (Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality)
Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality: - How people perceive the cause of life events; whether they place the primary responsibilities within themselves or on outside forces.
Authoritarianism (Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality)
Attitudes, Behavior, and Personality: - The belief that power and status differences should exist within the organization. - If a manager and employees differ in their degree of authoritarianism, the manager may have difficulty leading effectively.
Self-serving Bias (Attribution)
Attribution: - Giving too much credit for oneself when a job is done well, and blaming external factors for failure to perform.
Fundamental Attribution Error (Attribution)
Attribution: - Underestimating the influence of external factors and overestimating the influence of internal factors.
Clarity of Mind (Basic Principles for Self-Management)
Basic Principles for Self-Management: - Anything you considered unfinished needs to be placed in some kind of trusted system outside your head.
Clarity of Objectives (Basic Principles for Self-Management)
Basic Principles for Self-Management: - Be clear about exactly what you need to do and decide the steps to take towards accomplishing it.
An Organized System (Basic Principles for Self-Management)
Basic Principles for Self-Management: - Keep reminders in a well-organized system.
Openness to Experience (Big Five Personality Factors)
Big Five Personality Factors: - The degree to which a person has a broad range of interests and is imaginative, creative, artistically sensitive, and willing to consider new ideas.
Agreeableness (Big Five Personality Factors)
Big Five Personality Factors: - The degree to which a person is able to get along with others by being good-natured, likable, cooperative, forgiving, understanding, and trusting.
Emotional Stability (Big Five Personality Factors)
Big Five Personality Factors: - The degree to which a person is calm, enthusiastic, and self-confident, rather than tense, depressed, moody, or insecure.
Conscientiousness (Big Five Personality Factors)
Big Five Personality Factors: - The degree to which a person is focused on a few goals, thus behaving in ways that are responsible, dependable, persistent, and achievement-oriented.
Extroversion (Big Five Personality Factors)
Big Five Personality Factors: - The degree to which a person is outgoing, sociable, assertive, and comfortable with interpersonal relationships.
Task Demands (Causes of Work Stress)
Causes of Work Stress: - Stressors arising from the tasks required of a person holding a particular job. - Also, sometimes such tasks can cause stress because of role ambiguity.
Interpersonal Demands (Causes of Work Stress)
Causes of Work Stress: - Stressors associated with relationships in the organization that can cause a role conflict.
Self-awareness (Emotional Intelligence)
Emotional Intelligence: - Being aware of what you are feeling.
Relationship Management (Emotional Intelligence)
Emotional Intelligence: - The ability to connect to others, build positive relationships, respond to the emotions of others, and influence others.
Self-management (Emotional Intelligence)
Emotional Intelligence: - The ability to control disruptive or harmful emotions and balance one's moods so that worry, anxiety, fear, and anger do not cloud thinking and get in the way of what needs to be done.
Social Awareness (Emotional Intelligence)
Emotional Intelligence: - The ability to understand others and practice empathy.
Role Conflict (Interpersonal Demands)
Interpersonal Demands: - Occurs when an individual perceives incompatible demands from others.
Halo Effect (Perception Distortions)
Perception Distortions: - Occurs when the perceiver develops an overall impression of a person or situation based on one characteristic, either favorable or unfavorable. - For example, a person with an outstanding attendance record may be assessed as responsible, industrious, and highly productive.
Stereotyping (Perception Distortions)
Perception Distortions: - The tendency to assign an individual to a group or broad category (e.g., female, black, elderly; or male, white, disabled) and then to attribute widely held generalization about the group to the individual.
Big Five Personality Factors (Personality)
Personality: - Five general dimensions that describe personality: 1) Extroversion 2) Agreeableness 3) Conscientiousness 4) Emotional Stability 5) Openness to Experience
Thinking-type People (Problem-solving Styles)
Problem-solving Styles: - People that base their judgements on impersonal analysis, using reason and logic rather than personal values or emotional aspects of the situation.
Feeling-type People (Problem-solving Styles)
Problem-solving Styles: - People that base their judgments more on personal feelings such as harmony and tend to make decisions that result in approval from others.
Intuitive-type People (Problem-solving Styles)
Problem-solving Styles: - People that would rather look for possibilities than work with facts and prefer solving new problems and using abstract concepts.
Sensation-type People (Problem-solving Styles)
Problem-solving Styles: - People that would rather work with known facts and hard data, and prefer routine and order in gathering information.
Self-assessment (Self-awareness)
Self-awareness: - Reflection to gain insights into oneself from the results of self-assessment instruments (e.g., Development Dimensions International.)
Soliciting Feedback (Self-awareness)
Self-awareness: - Seeking feedback to enhance self-awareness improves performance and job satisfaction.
Organize (Steps of Perception)
Step of Perception: - Organizing the selected data into patterns for interpretation and response.
Empty Your Head (Steps for Managing Time)
Steps for Managing Time: - Collect all the things you need or want to do.
Do It (Steps for Managing Time)
Steps for Managing Time: - Consider time and context, energy level, and task priority.
Decide the Next Action (Steps for Managing Time)
Steps for Managing Time: - Do it, delegate it, or defer it.
Get Organized (Steps for Managing Time)
Steps for Managing Time: - Schedule appointments and tasks. - Set up calendars and action lists.
Perform a Weekly Review (Steps for Managing Time)
Steps for Managing Time: - Update calendars and action lists. - Process new items.
Observe (Steps of Perception)
Steps of Perception: - Observing information via the senses.
Screen (Steps of Perception)
Steps of Perception: - Screening the information and selecting what to process.
Self-awareness (Understanding Yourself and Others)
Understanding Yourself and Others: - Means being aware of the internal aspects of one's nature, such as personality traits, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions, and appreciating how your patterns affect other people. - Two important approaches to enhancing self-awareness are: 1) Soliciting Feedback 2) Self-assessment
