Organisational Behaviour #2 – Perception and Learning

[samvara]

This was much more satisfying as a class and went a long way to making me feel more comfortable.

We talked a lot about techniques for understanding different types of behaviour.

• Individualism versus Collectivism: we had a look at a study that compared different combinations across cultures (the study itself is a bit elderly now and looks at behavioural differences in different parts of the world in the staff of one giant company so it has limitations). You may be interested to hear that Australia/Canada/US score relatively high on Individualism but not so well on Collectivism. Peru was insanely high on both scores and Egypt very low on both – make of that what you will, we didn’t get a chance to talk about what/how/why.
• Power Distance: the degree to which you accept unequal distribution of power. Do all people get to challenge/contribute or does one person set the rules/agenda? They meant ‘across different countries’ but I can use this model to think about feminism (and a lot of other -isms), sometimes people assume a power difference with me that I don’t assume and they get all cranky when I don’t respect them ‘appropriately’ – this would be an example not accepting a perceived unequal distribution of power.
• Uncertainty Avoidance: the degree to which ambiguity freaks you out. High UA means you get stressed when you don’t know what’s going on, I am trying to learn how to be less like this.
• Achievement versus Nurturing. I’m not even going to define these:p This was set up as a scale with Achievement at one end and Nurturing at the other. I argue that this concept has developed considerably since this model was proposed. I Nurture workmates, not necessarily because I am a nurturing person, but because they are more productive and Achieve more when they are well trained, feel safe and are free from stress. Or I am in total denial about my nurturing.
• Long/Short Term Orientation: defined as the degree to which people value thrift, savings and persistence over past, present issues, respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations. I’m struggling with this; I tend to conceptualise Long term as building for the future/community and Short Term as thinking about self and personal goals so I’m trying to find a way to hook this definition in a way that makes sense to me.

We covered the first assignment and related expectations in a way that left me feeling pretty comfortable about asking if I could hurtle off the suggested topics list. I’m doing my assignment on stuff relevant to me and my work, I’ve been introduced to other people in the field and I’m looking forward to doing the literature review :)

• Personality: “Relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person’s behavioural tendencies.” (you wish you had one now, don’t you :p) We talked a bit about personality dimensions, personality testing in organisations and skimmed over the Big Five Personality Dimensions. My old friend Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was covered in a fair amount of detail (I’m an ENTJ who works very hard to remember other people are human – I like to think I succeed some times)

A person in my class talked about their organisation doing an exercise where they looked at your preferred communication style and colour-coded it, You have it on your door/desk so people know how to talk to you and you can let people know at the start of meetings. This struck me as a potentially brilliant idea - you know if the person wants details/relationship/just the facts and can tailor accordingly.

• Locus of Control: This was just fun – do you think you are responsible for events, or that they have external causes? Do you own your successes but not your failures? Do you change your behaviour based on situational cues or do other’s have to adapt to you *is guilty*
• Holland’s Occupational Choice Theory or the Holland Codes struck me as pretty dodgy and I’d like to hear more about further developments in this area – this is just over 10 years old now. The basic idea is that you have six main types of interests and that you could use them to align people with work environments.
• Perceptual Organisation and Stereotyping was all about the way we filter information and make quick decisions – sometimes unwisely. We hit the Johari Window as a mechanism for understanding yourself – the idea being that there are things you know about yourself (and things you don’t) and things other people know about you (and things they don’t). A goal is to maximise the intersection between known to self and known to others.

I’ve also got a group to work in – we will do tests individually then as a group and it will count to our assessment. We did a quite cool exercise where we got a list of conversation topics and had to rank ourselves from 1-10 on where we stood then make short statements to each other and use those statements to predict where they ranked themselves. By the time we got to the last topic we were functioning pretty easily as a group and had incidentally covered how we felt about grades, conflict, communication, asking for help and whether we wanted ground rules. Nice. We traded emails so we can scheme if we get urges before the next class.

Comments

[transcendancing]

That does sound much more satisfying!

Also... you are genuinely nurturing, however much you'd like to pin it on other reasons.

Control huh ;) never would have picked it :P *loves you to bits and back* see you tonight beautiful :)

[samvara]

I don't really want to be nurturing, I don't see it as a high status or high return role and I've seen too many martyr types personalities crushed under the (self imposed) weight to feel comfortable with it. *continues to nurture in stealth*

[transcendancing]

I understand and support this. I model positive nurturing, at not costing to self and becoming a martyr through your way of being and boundaries etc :) So I feel like you have a very positive effect on useful nurturing that isn't devalued or becomes too personally costing etc. Hope i'm making sense.

[samvara]

I'm conscious it comes out of having grown up around some tired, angry women and not wanting to have their lives. I wish there were more women when I was growing up whose lives I *did* want to have and I am incredibly grateful for the presence of the older women who have inspired and/or mentored me. I wish they were thicker on the ground.

...and thank you, knowing I can help pass on what I have learned does help make it better :)

[transcendancing]

Good, because I believe that being able to convey support and nurturing in a positive way that forwards equality and boundaries and doesn't cost against it, is important to me - but it's this kind of behaviour that I want to model in -people- not just women but where there is a significant portion of nurturing and support coming from men too.