Individual Behavior at work

Objectives:• The nature of individual differences.

• Basic theories of personality , perception , attitude.

• Their Significance for human behavior at work

• Managerial strategies for the diagnosis and control of individual behavioral problems, such as stress , and resistance to change.

Individual Behavior at work

Ability and Aptitude

Personality

Conflict ,Stress and Change

Individual Behavior at work

Perception

Attitude

Personality

Perception

Attitude

Ability and AptitudeConflict ,Stress and Change

Individual Behavior at work

Personality:-What is personality-Traits and types-The big 5 factors-Self and self image-Personality and work behavior

Personality:• What is personality ?• It is the total pattern of characteristic ways of

thinking , feeling and behaving that constitute the individual distinctive method of relating to environment. Tow main approaches (nomothetic and idiographic )

• Traits and typesTraits are consistently observable properties ,

or the tendency for a person to behave in a particular way. If you say someone is generally sweet-tempered or undemonstrative ,you are identifying traits in their personality

The Big Five factorsThe Big Five factors

The five-factor model is comprised of five personality

dimensions OCEAN

• Openness to experience vs. not open to experience

• Conscientiousness vs. undirectedness

• Extroversion vs. introversion

• Agreeable vs. antagonism

• Neuroticism vs. emotional stability

Self and self image• SelfGeorge Herbert Mead (1934) noted that despite the constraints of

social values and norms, people still display originality and individuality.

Self has two components: I – spontaneous and unique eg: knowledgeableME – learnt through exposure to society eg: leadership, soft skills• Self imagePeople have subjective picture of what their own self is like; this is

called a ‘self-image’.

Personality and Behavior at work• Managers will have to consider the

following aspects:1-compatability of individual’s personality with

the task.2-compatability of individual’s personality with

the systems and management culture of the organization

3-compatability of individual’s personality with that of the others in the team.

• Incase incompatibilities occur , managers will have to:

1- restore compatibility2-achieve compromise3-remove the incompatible personality

PerceptionPerception:-What is Perception- Perception and Work behavior

Attitude

Ability and AptitudeConflict ,Stress and Change

Individual Behavior at work

Personality

Perception:• What is Perception: Perception is the psychological

process by which stimuli or in-coming sensory data are selected and organised into patterns which are meaningful to the individual.

Perceptual Selection• Context – People ‘ see what they want to see’• Nature of the stimuli – Our attention tends to be

drawn to large, bright, loud, unfamiliar, moving and repeated stimuli

• Internal factors – Our attention is drawn to stimuli that match out personality, needs, interests, expectation and so on.

• Fear or trauma – People are able to avoid seeing things that they don’t want to see.

Perceptual Organization-Is the process through which incoming stimuli are

organized or patterned in systematic and meaningful ways.-A complementary process of perceptual organisation deals with the interpretation of the data which has been gathered and filtered.-The brain groups, separates and patterns stimuli to make them recognisable and useful to the individual.

Perception and Behavior at work• Consider whether you might be misinterpreting the situation.

• e.g.: you are in a meeting and doing a presentation about some crucial information. May a part of the information is very awkward and you try to skip it. There are possibilities that this act might make you misinterpret the information.

• Consider whether others might be misinterpreting the situation, or interpreting it differently from you.– Similarly there are times that you say something very nice

to your friend but in a different tone and your friend might misinterpret the whole situation and then might stop talking to you.

• When tackling a task or a problem, get the people involved to define the situation as they see it.– Therefore, it is always suggested that try to get the people

involved i.e. ask them to repeat what they heard before the confusion goes on and creates problems.

Attitude

Perception

Attitude:-What are attitudes.-Attitudes at work

Ability and AptitudeConflict ,Stress and

Change

Individual Behavior at work

Personality

What are attitudesAttitudes are the established ways of responding to people and situations that we have learned, based on the beliefs, values and assumptions we hold. Attitudes become manifest through your behavior.

An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.

Attitudes at work

Behavior in the work is influenced by:-Attitude to work-Work conditions -People -Task-The organization and management-Other people-Politics

Non-work factors-Class and class consciousness-Age-Race, culture or religion-Lifestyle and interests-Gender-Interpersonal relations at work-The self concept of the individualAttitudes to work

Ability and Aptitude:

Perception

Attitude

Ability and Aptitude:-Ability and Aptitude- Intelligence- Learning

Conflict ,Stress and Change

Individual Behavior at work

Personality

Ability and Aptitude / Intelligence

• Abilities are things that people can do or are good at – largely believed to be inherited where as aptitude is the capacity to learn and develop abilities or skills.

• Intelligence is a wide and complex concept. Recent work appears to confirm the commonsense observation that intelligence takes many forms including :Analytic Intelligence (measured by IQ) / Spatial

intelligence / musical intelligence / Physical Intelligence / practical intelligence / intra

personal intelligence / interpersonal intelligence

Learning• Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and

behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the product of experience and the goal of education.

• Learning ranges from simple forms of learning such as habituation and classical conditioning .

The learning cycle by David Kolb

Conflict ,Stress and Change:

Perception

Attitude

Ability and Aptitude

Conflict ,Stress and Change:-Conflict-Controlling conflict-Symptoms of stress-Causes of stress-Change-Overcoming resistance to -change

Individual Behavior at work

Personality

Conflict ,Stress and Change:

Main reasons of conflict: • The need to share scarce resources• Differences in goals between organizational units• Differences in values, attitudes or perception among members

of different unitsStress : Stress is a term which is often loosely used to describe feelings of tension or exhaustion usually associated with too much, or overly demanding work.

•Symptoms of stress:Nervous tension – irritability and increased sensitivity, digestive disordersWithdrawal – unusual quietness and reluctance to communicateLow morale – low confidence, dissatisfaction, poor discipline

•Causes of stress:-Too many demands on the individual-Too few demands on the individual-Uncertainty and therefore insecurity-Personality factors

Change• Change affects individuals in all sorts of ways.

Examples: change in the shift, change in the layout, change in the working conditions

• Overcoming Resistance to change:• The pace of change

• The scope of change

• The manner of change