What Individual Dynamics In Organization (IDIO) gave me!
Hello buddies,
This is my first blog series through which I'm going to share my learnings from the course 'Individual Dynamics In Organization (IDIO)' which is facilitated by 'Prof. Vijayalakshmi V ' from management department of IIT Madras. I have started working on this writing after initial 4 -5 lectures.
Honestly speaking, being from the engineering background, I was having zero idea about this course but course outline was seems to be very interesting as well as excited as there was no EXAM for the course (bubbling over with joy). So at the first glance, I choose the course for the sake of completion my breath level courses only. From now on, I'll be sharing my experience, learning and my personal views regarding the course after every lecture.
Looking forward to learn something new here other than academics 😜.
(A)
WHO WE ARE
INFLUENCES WHAT WE DO
You must have encountered these types of situation throughout your life and must have wondered what makes people do such things? Why does someone behave like this? There are many factors responsible for this which we will be trying to address in this blog.
Out of the many factors, we will be starting one of my favorite topic ‘PERSONALITES’.
Who are you?
What makes someone who they are? Basically, it is our personality which influences every bit of tiny things in our life. Oh! But wait a second, what constitutes one’s personality? Personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique. There are many things that contributes to our personality ranging from our upbringing to experiences which can be broadly categorized into 3 things
Personality – Static or Dynamic
Evolving?
“You seem so changed! How did you manage to do so?”
Traditionally, it was believed the personality is stagnant thing & you cannot change it but as the research progressed, it breaks this belief but still changing personality is not a easy-peasy thing I believe. Means it is not like you woke up in the morning and met the completely different person relative to whom you met yesterday.
Personality keeps evolving steadily with the passage of time.
Understanding
different PERSONALITIES!
Preference Dichotomies
1)
Introverts are not
as talkative and prefer to work in quiet and independent atmosphere whereas
extroverts gain energy from being around other people.
(2)
‘S’ – Focuses mainly on what is perceived by 5 primary senses.
‘N’ – Tries to find pattern & read beyond lines.
(3)
Thinking – These people
strives for fairness, equal opportunities to all and justice is the primary
value to them. There is a myth in the market that these people are inhuman and
are very stone hearted but that’s not the true essence of this personality.
These people
moreover are emotionally balanced and doesn’t allow feelings to affect their
decisions.
Feeling – High ‘T’ people
usually address these people as ‘over-sensitive & emotional’. These people
virtually put themselves in the position of other people and try to understand
their condition. High ‘F’ should control them upto some extent otherwise it may
result in damaging the health of an organization. Personal and social values
are the most important for this type of people.
4)
The last one talks about the following
preferences -
A word of caution is here, don’t go by names like ‘Judging means judgmental’ and ‘Perceiving means perceptive’.
High ‘J’ people prefer planned or orderly way of life rather than just going with the flow. They tend to have control over time & feel more comfortable when decisions are made much prior to the concerned actions. They always have to-do list with them. They plan their work to avoid rushing just before deadline.
High ‘P’ person is completely
messy with his/her schedule. They are stimulated by approaching deadline (Resonating
so much with me, submitting this blog on the last day). These people are much
flexible to last minute change (Indian people up to some extent) in any
schedule. They are open to respond to whatever happens. They believe in adapting
the world rather than to organize it.
Why should I try to understand my own and others' personality?
We all have some preferences and strengths. Knowing what our strengths gives us relative idea of other person and reason why he is behaving so. By understanding your personality, you also understand what your personality is not, and can start to see differences in those around you in a deeper way. Until & unless you are unknown about these things, you would just keep wondering and blaming the people about their doing instead of accepting the people as they are.
At some point by
understanding these things, you can put yourself in shoe of opposite person and
try to understand things from his/her perspective. Understanding your
personality gives you an slight exposure of what are you good at and what your
weaknesses are. It talks about the situations that allow you to perform your
best.
Takeaway – Understanding own and others’ personality teaches us the adaptability while working in different environment, different peer group and helps us to get the best out of it.
(B)
PEELING THE LAYERS
What do you think
about this act?
Did boss serve the
justice?
There are
basically 2 types of people
|
Type I |
Type II |
|
Yes, whatever boss has done is
definitely correct because mistakes are tolerable for a certain period of
time but failing to perform continuously for six months and giving some
foolish excuses to hide your regress is a sufficient reason to get fired. And
even if he is having some personal problems, that shouldn’t be reflected in
professional life. |
Why the hell boss is behaving so rudely He should have at least listened what an
employee has to say.
|
Welcome to the class of PERCEPTION!
Now let’s hear what an employee has in his defense
Can you manage
your perception?
Do you find any
commonalities between how you perceived by yourself and how you perceived by
world or you always think like, ‘I’m always being misunderstood by people.’
You can’t manage your perception on the others. Pleasing or convincing one class of people leads to displeasure to other people. Every person has different personality, different thought process, different background, different mental state due to which we cannot be perceived as what we are by each individual.
So, should we
ignore what people has to say about us?
Is it even
necessary to manage your perception?
Yes, up to some
extent it is necessary to manage your perception as it literally drives your
personal as well as professional life. If people able to perceive our strength,
then officials can be used this information for the well being of an
organization and can assign the type of work that suits our strength &
skills. It helps to understand what are our competencies and further building
them.
As mentioned before, it is not possible to satisfy everyone’s expectations and make the perception of us which we wanted. But at the same time, we should also take inputs from our parents as they are the most selfless character and always wanted to make good out of us. We should consider taking suggestions from the parents, close friends and people who matters in our life as there are instances where we must be doing something wrong and may be these people are trying to lift us from that hole. Being myopic to our good picture may hinder our growth at both levels professionally as well as personally.
BIASES – An
obstruction to perception?
When it comes to how we view our environment and the people we interact with, there is often a disconnect between what we think should be and what actually is. There exists a gap in between these two and biases being one the reason to it. As you make decisions and take action based on your perceptions, there is a risk that these unconscious biases could negatively affect the outcome. People have tendency to derive the meaning out of something which feels in their comfort zone. There are many biases that unconsciously affects our power of perception which is discussed in details in one of the upcoming articles so, restricting this to limited words.
The Ladder of
Inference
The ladder of inference is the powerful tool to check our decisions whether they are influenced by any bias or not. Any step on this ladder can be influenced by the biases but I think selecting the data is the crucial step where there are more chances of involving bias relative to others. Our belief which we have derived from entire process affects the type of data we select in future scenarios. The ladder of inference demonstrates how we make these assumptions and judgements and how this influences our behavior.
Can’t get though? Here is a relatable example -
How the ladder of inference is useful to you?
It
is important to question your potentially biased assumptions to make sure you
are not jumping to any conclusions and acting fairly and appropriately. The
ladder of inference serves the purpose. By asking appropriate questions, ladder
of inference helps us reach the core of our assumptions and biases.
- ·
On
what basis, did you select the data?
- ·
What
assumptions did you make before jumping over conclusion?
- ·
Are
your conclusions even real or it just brings you in comfort zone?
- · How beliefs you adopted affecting your actions?
Many people believe, ladder of inference helps to clear the barrier in communication and helps to improve our communication skills as well as alerts us if it is you or your biased assumptions which making you do such things?
(C)
Unleashing
your creativity
Today’s session was slightly different than what we were doing since last 3-4 lectures. Today, Viji had invited guest Prof. Shiva Subramaniam to deliver us lecture about creativity. After initial 5-6 minutes, we realized that this won’t be the boring lecture where professor is explaining us some complex concepts of creativity and all. He was very very friendly and let us all freedom to speak and appeal students to have an interactive session rather than to be monologue.
Before moving further, I would like to pose a question - What is needed for creativity?
You might be thinking about some of the following things – creative thinking, tools for creativity, free time etc.
I too thought the same way but the primary thing that is needed for creativity is the ‘EXISTENCE OF PROBLEM’ & then we move towards the other things mentioned above.
First of all, Prof. Shiva Subramaniam make us feel comfortable by asking some introductory questions and started off with the topic ‘SIX THINKING HATS’
What are basically these six thinking hats?
These six thinking hats helps us how to think separately and independently. Whenever we have to take decision regarding something, there are tons of thoughts that comes to our mind that affects our decision making and further the outcomes. So, six thinking hats basically ease this work by proper segregation of thoughts.
- Each thinking role is defined with one colored thinking hat.
- You can mentally wear hats as well as switch the hat.
- Whenever you are wearing any hat, focus on the thoughts that are only relevant to specific thoughts or conversation.
Still if the picture is not clear to you, I would like to explain the significance of each hat by giving one common and simplest example – ‘Me and my friends had decided to go goa for vacation after graduation’
Now, if you are thinking to go goa as a broader term then your brain must be flooded with numerous thoughts, that’s where six hats serves as tension breaker
Let’s assume I’m going to wear ‘White Hat’ initially-
White hat refers to the information I already known about Goa and the information I wanted to know such as picnic spots, hotel, accommodation, travelling etc.
Look at the information that you have, analyze past trends, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and try to either fill them or take account of them.
Now I switched to the ‘Yellow Hat’
When we wear yellow hat, you seek to find the benefits of taking a particular decision. Under this hat, you explore the positives and probes. One wearing yellow hat always expects the best outcome.
I have virtually switched to black hat now.
This hat is considered as the opposite of the former one. It talks about the negative aspects and potential outcoming. It calls out the ways where situation can go wrong. It is one of the essential step of the process so as to prevent from going into the potentially disastrous condition.
Green hat is all about creative ideas, alternatives, possibilities and solutions to the black hat problem. The only care to be taken is the creative thinking should be free from any judgments and criticism.
Similar type of conclusions can be drawn for the 2 above mentioned hats -
Key Learning from discussion
Now
you may think we already knew this it why are we even doing this childish hat
switching stuffs?
The
problem in our thinking is we usually don’t think negatively before taking some
decisions and follow our assumption-based thinking. Adding to this only we
don’t have specific directions as such when we start to think making things
more complicated. These hats check out
every possibility out there which is going to happen (Positive as well as
negative aspects) that is being neglected during our normal thinking. The
technique helps individuals and groups adopt a variety of perspectives,
broadening their thinking and potentially encouraging fresh solutions.
Though
an individual can use the six hats technique to find all possible solutions and
projected aspect of the problem but six thinking hats are also extremely
important in the organizational meetings to work effectively as a team. Six
thinking hat technique creates an open exchange of ideas where people present
their perspectives. For this
method to be used effectively, each person in a meeting can and must be able to
wear each hat in turn.
Creativity
in the workplace is absolutely important. If you can apply creative thinking to
your everyday work life, you’ll find that not only will the day stop feeling
like drudgery, but you’ll be unlocking more meaningful results
Then the discussion of these hats is followed by numerous daily life examples as well as interaction with students and then professor just given the introduction of the topic biomimicry
(D)
Keep
Filters Updated
Viji
considers her students an experimental setup and never leaves a chance to
experiment with us. This time she uses her husband’s video (which we were not
aware of) to explain us one most important concept.
What
was experiment all about - ‘Viji divided the whole class in 2 groups and
provided 2 different videos of her husband in one of which her husband was
talking enthusiastically (all positive) about astronomy & in other he was
telling completely opposite to the former one. Then Viji asked a couple of
questions about her husband that were completely clueless as far as video
content is concerned’.
Further she posted a question - ‘What biases made you answer the questions post the video?’
People came up with different answers that how did they judge the person on the
basis of barely 60-70 seconds video.
I would like to express my personal views on what my thought process was!
So, when I started watching video, after first initial 10-20 seconds, the way guy expressed himself in the video, I took a guess that guy must be south Indian. We have the image that south Indian guys are extremely smart, intelligent and good in research specifically. On top of this the guy was talking about astronomy being one of the greatest and emerging subject to study and pursue career in it. So, I was be like, ask me anything about him, I’ll be rate him only on higher side regardless of what Viji had asked.
So, I
have this bias based upon the geographical locations of people where they came
from. Similar to me, many students expressed their side of story.
I would also like to give my own example of viva during under graduation. Since my CGPA was very high relative to others then professor tend to ask me only 1 or 2 questions whereas others’ interview is lengthened to 20-30 minutes even though they had prepared very well.
What is bias – ‘He is having good CGPA,
so must be intelligent’
Based
on the discussion, Viji coined a term known as ‘The Halo Effect’ which is bias in which our judgements of a person’s
character can be influenced by our overall impressions of them.’
Is 1st impression sufficient to make the judgement about the person ?
It is obviously not sufficient but still people tend to make one’s perception on the basis of that short duration which should be avoided or at least minimize
Conclusion - We should keep updating our filters which we have before judging or determining one’s personality in our mind.
Johari Window
The model consists of four quadrants, each of
which determines a different combination. These combinations are a result of
facts known or unknown by oneself about himself along with the facts known or
unknown to others.
(E)
Making the correct decision
OR
Taking the decision and proving it right!
- First of all, we gather the relevant information required in direction of making a particular decision
- Based on our past experience we look for the pattern of wrong decisions which then serves as learning for further decision and action.
- We must broaden the window of possible happening and shouldn’t be myopic.
- Biases must be avoided in decision making.
“Brace for Impact”
Many of you must have watched the movie ‘Sully’ - The story of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, an American pilot who became a hero after landing his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew.
Three Conscious thoughts that came into pilot Sully’s mind after being hit by the flock of birds resulting into engine failure
- This can’t be happening
- This cannot happen to me
- Realization that this won’t be a normal fight landing on the runway without damaging the airplane.
- ‘Multitasking is a myth’. In multitasking, we are basically switching rapidly between tasks not doing either well.
- Collaborating with the colleague is the key to handle such decisions
- Never give up & don’t turn back once you have made the decision
The best decision making – Intuitive or Rational?
Rational Decision Making – Rational decision making is considered to be very analytical & supports the argument with some facts. It also involves the sequence of steps through which decision is made.
Intuitive Decision Making – Intuitive decision making is based on the ‘Gut Feeling’ or we can say ‘Inner voice’ of individual. These types of decisions varies from individual to individual. There is a myth about intuitive decision making that it is a process of decision making without having any information but actually it is based upon experiential patterns and non-conscious recognitioning.
Simply putting -
- Rational Decision Maker – Follows brain
- Intuitive Decision Maker – Follows heart (Inner Voice)
There are many factors which affect our decision making -
1) Availability
of data & information – If sufficient amount of data & information is
available to us then organization always tend to make rational decisions as it
has various arguments to support the decision.
2) Time
– Lesser the time available, more intuitive decision would be.
3) Expertise
available – As per research, only those with a lot of experience could trust
their intuitive judgements.
4) Risk Associated –
Intuitive decision comes with risks. If decision made turned out to be wrong,
people will reprimand you for it and if it turns out to be effective, you will
be praised for the same decision. So, it is quite difficult to make someone
understand about your intuitive decisions and also it doesn’t have any paper
document to prove so. Thus risk associated with intuitive decisions are high.
So as you can see from the above paragraph, No decision making is right or wrong. Each decision making comes with Pros and Cons. Sometimes rationality as well as intuitiveness can exist cohesively while taking decisions.
Prove me – You are not biased while decision making!
Humans aren’t very rational. Biases are always there in our decision-making process. Biases often leads to poor decision making. Following are the top 4 bias that cloud our judgement either consciously or sub-consciously.
1) Self-serving bias
We attribute success to ourself and blame others for failure. This bias protects our self-esteem but also affects our ability to learn from failures. This bias disappears when you are with your very close friend.
Ex. We often come across this bias usually after failure in an interview or exam saying like – ‘Interviewer himself/ herself was not aware of the questions he was asking’, ‘This time, paper was too hard than previous year’.
Yes, paper can really be tough but that’s not the case only for you.
2) Cognitive Fluency
It is based upon how an idea is easy and fluent to understand regardless of it’s possibility of success often results into illusion of truth.
Ex. Personally talking, this bias affects decision of courses needs to be selected as ‘Course Name’ is our first information about the course and we get anchored to it without even looking to the course outline.
3) Sunk Cost Fallacy
We have wasted some resources on something which motivates us to carry out the same with slim chance that it would get better. There is no such defined limit btw which can give us hint about when we should stop the same. Instead we should look for better future opportunities leaving past behind.
Ex. Bad relationships. Money spent on trash movie.
4) Confirmation Bias
“Good people always look for good aspect in the opposite person”
This is considered as the most dangerous and common bias people have. When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. People with this bias fails to get the other side of the story. This bias can be avoided by asking contradictory (Why?) questions to our judgement.
“The main takeaway from this is learn to ask questions to our decisions and don’t
let these biases affect our decisions”
(F)
I am ethically right, ain't I?
Ohho! Now don’t tell me this doesn’t
look familiar to you. Whether you are student or working professional, everyone
has gone through this phase.
Finding hard to differentiate between ethical and unethical behavior?
Let’s put our focus on this blind spot and have some quality discussion about ‘ETHICS’
As I also mentioned previously, Viji
never leaves a chance for experimenting. To start with one of the most debated
topic i.e. was it right or wrong? Is it ethical to do so? I haven’t done any
crime, have I?, Viji gave us some random memory based questions based on the
curriculum and permitted us 10 minutes to answer. Being known to the nature of
Viji along with the well-known topic of today’s discussion, I guessed in the 1st
place itself, the drama is being staged which is also confirmed by her later.
Why Ethics is a part of IDIO curriculum?
After Domain expertise knowledge, the most important skill
demanded from corporates is ethics and integrity. Since I am fresher, I don’t
have any working experience right now but going through many case studies, I
realized ethics & values are one of the important aspects in order to
sustain in organization or to sustain organization as whole. Being fair, honest and ethical is one the basic
human needs. Every employee desires to be such himself and to work for an
organization that is fair and ethical in its practices.
There are numerous examples where people have
done many unethical things and then later have confessed about it.
Ex. Many actors have confessed of buying awards at young age
First of all, it needs courage to confess our unethicality
which we has done in the past or present
So, is it right to first do unethicality and then feel sorry
for it or confess it?
Answer basically varies from people to people depending on
their perception and many other things. Some accepts confession by considering
it was mistake whereas some still go on making story out of it.
Ethics - Absolute or Relative or both?
This turned out to be the most interesting and
debated part during class discussion. The most controversial trending topic which I
want to quote here is ‘Harshad Mehta Story’.
There are 2 angles to Harshad Mehta story
1) A group of people who considers Harshad
Mehta’s strategies to be ethically right & assumes that he just used the
loopholes of the system which everyone in that field was doing
2) Another group of people who clearly alleges Harshad Mehta
for using Nation’s property and making personal use of Nation’s Assets.
So, there is no absolute parameter on the basis of which
ethicality can be measured. It basically depends on people how they perceive
things and perception itself is a very very subjective term and depends on many
factors.
Ethics of Intent
(The Role of
Intent in Ethical Decision Making)
Ethics of intent basically talks about the intention with which we are making a particular decision. It is very much necessary to clear COMMUNICATE the intention in decision making otherwise misinterpreting the same, results in drastic failure. Window of perception must be wider enough to get feel of what the opposite person might think or how would he take the decision made by us.
One Incident
during my under-graduation -
We had a professor
who had given us an assignment of writing 10 previous year paper question and
answers with the intent being that it would be very helpful for your semester
examination as stated by him.
How majority of the student perceive this –
- The syllabus has changed over the years, so how solving questions out of syllabus will help us in semester exams?
- I like to study by reading only. Why should I indulge myself into unnecessarily writing?
- Shouldn’t we invest our time in some creative & innovative project ideas rather than this rote learning?
That’s where ethics of intent plays an important role as with what intent you are forcing students to write assignment -
Are you really worried about students’ semester exams and really want students to perform well in the same?
OR
You just unnecessarily want to trouble the students? (I too believe this must be an intention because of the very known nature of professor)
Avoiding the ‘Ethical Slippery Slope’
The slippery slope
describes the beginning of the trend that tend to increase our unethicality
over a period of time. If you could get the time to look for your own history
of unethicality you will find some trend in the decisions you had taken which
is responsible of the ethical slippery slope
- · Peer Pressure
- · Frustration
- · Greed
- · Fear
- · For maintaining good relationship
We often lose the
sight of bigger picture for the short term gain.
Ethical dilemma
We had made to discuss this in groups by referring to one of the mythological character & it was quite fun hearing the debate of people over the one’s decision and then also stating our own stand out of it. Some colleagues were really having some good points to make which made me to question my stand.
What is ethical dilemma actually - When it is
difficult to choose one decision out of two possible morale imperatives neither
of which is morally satisfactory
Example of ‘Karna’ – Karna was
having choice to fight Mahabharat from the side of ‘Pandavas’
(Brotherhood) or from the side of his friend ‘Duryodhana’ who was there
standing with him when everyone was cursing him for his caste.
Ethical dilemma is basically ‘Dharma Sankat’ type of thing that you have to choose something one, effect of which some other has to make sacrifice. In daily life also, we came across many such situations but we often don’t notice it.
Any Ethical dilemma you had came across?
So we were having the project group of 4 close friends during
my polytechnic days out of which one had not contributed for the project
(financial as well as other contribution) in the equal shares like other 3 of
us. Basically, he was free riding type of guy. I reminded him several times
about required contribution but still he didn’t contribute to the expectations.
So, The ethical dilemma here was to keep him within group as
he was one of the closest friend or kick him as we 3 were had the overburden of
project work.
‘Akhir kre to kre
kya, bole to bole kya’ type of situation for us ..
Can you decrease your
degree of tolerance to unethicality ?
According to me, the degree of unethicality can be decreased only when he/she is sure of the unethical work he/she is doing. In many cases, person himself/herself is not aware of these unethicality and this unethical work becomes ‘New Normal’ for him. So a person must himself recognize internally that this is not fair work we are doing then only degree of unethicality can be reduced that too if he/she wishes so.
An ending to the course but
starting of a journey!
In the 1st lecture itself, Viji had told us what the course is all about. She mentioned that we’ll try to enable meaning & purpose, fulfillment, perfection, flow, excellence in life as well as at workplace. I would not say I have found all these things throughout the course (that’s not like wake up in the morning and yeah! I found meaning & purpose) but the course has definitely served as an introduction to what these things are! That’s why I have mentioned 'IT IS THE STARTING OF A JOURNEY!' I would like to thank Prof. Vijayalakshmi (Viji) for this amazing course that has taught us many aspects regarding human behavior.
Reflected best
self (RBS) exercise, IDIO everywhere, mentoring & coaching these all came
as a surprise with IDIO package which made the course worth attending.
The course has definitely added value to my learning and I would like to end with
“Yes! We have
learned at least upto an extent,
why people behave the way do!”
Classy
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ReplyDeleteEk no bhau.. fakt tuch
ReplyDeleteVery well written
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