samvara

Yay for leadership! This was a very theory oriented class and felt a little substance-free - chatting to one of the other students we thought it might just be because it's all theory and this is a hard topic to pin down. We did our last test too, individual was 80% and team was 95% which is looking good for a decent overall grade (if you think I maybe have a spreadsheet for this then you think correct). I also got complimented by one of the men on the shoes I wore last week which was simultaneously flattering and maddeningly reflective of the culture I live in.

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OMG so tired, woke up for the class though. Fourth test today, individual score was 75%, team score 95%. We were asked to give (or not give) permission to be observed by some people wanting to study group dynamics for the next test - for science!.

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This was fun and very relevant, I found myself constantly thinking about how we make decisions in AD&T and looking at how the class made decisions in our group activities.

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...and then we stopped - next week: Teams!

Yeah that struck me as pretty wordy too, it was dead interesting though. I went from sleep deprived to wide awake and stayed there for the next three hours.

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We’re still in introduction-land, some people didn’t register the venue change and turned up at the wrong place. Part of the seminar was house-keeping like agreeing to bringing communal snacks in order to survive the 6-9pm time slot.

So OB: the art of understanding, predicting and influencing organisational behaviour. I’m all for that. The introduction felt a lot like a soft science working very hard to establish itself as a ‘science’ – I remember this from my aborted psychology days! We briefly skimmed over globalisation and workplace diversity (more women in the workplace is a ‘trend’ and we’re ‘not going to touch *delicate shudder* sexual orientation’). There was a somewhat incongruous slide slagging off Gen Y and some talk about methodology, models, motivation and role perceptions. One interesting thing that stood out for me was talking about motivation and how you can provide all the situational triggers you want (money, attractive work environment, interesting work, praise etc.) but the motivation to be there and work has to come from the individual.

We talked about values and how organisations use values as hooks to align members with their goals/tasks then formed groups of seven and did a group activity called Crocodile River (reproduced in a separate post if you want to do the exercise, don’t look below the cut until you have). The stated goals of the exercise were to:

1. Introduce you to the field of organisational behaviour
2. To help you realise the different perceptions, values and attitudes that people have on common, everyday happenings.
3. To give you an opportunity to compare your values with those of the other MBA students in your class.

( Skip this if you want to do the Crocodile River exercise without my views clouding your judgement )

The other notable event was 46 people trying to leave the building and having our swipe cards not work on any of the exits. A *cough* representative of the group eventually hit the ‘break glass to escape’ panel with a water bottle – effective but I’m feeling for the security guard who presumably turned up to deal with the aftermath and I am wondering why the need arose in the first place.

Next week: Personality, stereotyping and the Johari Window!