Week 10 - Personality

Week 10 – Personality

Nature vs Nurture -

Personalities are something that everyone has, and everyone’s personality is different. There are two approaches to personality, one suggests that we are born with certain personality traits (nature) and one suggests that we our personality reflects on how we are raised (nurture). Many studies and researches have been carried out on this topic and opinion is still strongly divided. To expand, nature is in your genes. Some believe that personality traits are determined by your genes, and that they will stay the same irrespective of where you were born or raised. The nurture argument refers to your childhood and how you were bought up. Some believe that if you were happy as a kid and well looked after, then the likelihood of you having a better personality than someone who was abused or neglected is more likely. 

Nomothetic and Idiographic –

There are two different views as to whether all traits exist in all people –

Idiographic suggests that everyone has unique personality structures and that some traits are only found in one person, this would mean that it’s impossible to compare one person to others. The idiographic approach also suggests that traits found in people differ for person to person. This approach to personality traits uses case studies, bibliographical info and diaries etc.

The nomothetic approach looks at comparability among individuals but also focuses on people as unique in regards to their different combination of traits. This approach states that traits have the same meaning to everyone, but that trait can differ in people and some can have more of one trait than others. This is how people are unique. This approach uses personality questionnaires and factor analysis etc.

My view on the nature vs nurture debate is that I do believe people are born with certain traits that are in their genes that have been passed down from their parents. However everyone can change and learn to develop their personality traits and thus wean out undesirable traits and work on more desirable traits. This could be done through there upbringing or even when they move out and start to work and live in different environments. 

I carried out a personality report in order to determine my strong and weak points of my personality. The results are as follows –

SHL Great 8 Competency areas
	1	2	3	4	5
Leading and Deciding
Supporting and Cooperating
Interacting and Presenting
Analysing and Interpreting
Creating and Conceptualising
Organising and Executing
Adapting and Coping
Enterprising and Performing

The results have clearly outlined two strong areas, leading and deciding and interacting and presenting. I have also scored poorly in three areas (Supporting and cooperating, organising and executing, enterprising and performing). And I scored moderately in three areas as well (highlighted in yellow on the table). I will now analyse my strong points and weak points.

Strong points -

Leading and deciding - I scored a 4 for this category which would mean that I am able to make difficult decisions and take responsibility for them. This type of personality trait could be associated with leadership and management.

Interacting and Presenting - Scoring highly in this trait means that I could be suited to a sales role, I can make good first impressions, I'm confident, convincing and have good presentation skills. Interacting with others is no problem for me and I can build relationship and appropriately deal with and disagreements or conflict.



Weak Points -

Supporting and cooperating - I think I scored lowly in this trait because I'm not the best at responding to peoples problems, if an employee came to me with a non-work related problem I would struggle to deal with it, I need to work on this trait if I want to be able to work well in a team. I could do this by being more patient with people that have problems.

Organising and executing - I scored lowly in this category because I tend to be quite unorganised, I occasionally miss deadlines due to either forgetting about them or getting distracted and carrying out other tasks instead of the important ones. I will need to improve in this category by getting more organised, I have already done so by inputting all important dates and events into my phone and setting reminders to make sure I don't forget about these important tasks. 


Enterprising and Performing - I know I scored badly in this category because I don't always perform to the best of my ability, occasionnaly I just get the task done so it's out of the way as opposed to doing my best at it. I need to motivate myself more, next year on my business studies course counts towards my final grade, so this will definitely be motivation for me to succeed and get a good grade by handing in assignments on time.

Conclusion - This blog has looked at personality in relatively great detail, from the nature to nurture discussion in which I believe both theories work together in conjunction to create someones personality, from both their genes and past experiences. The personality test has also helped me to idenitfy my flaws and has made me aware of areas in which I need to improve on.

Week 9 - Perception and Communication

Week 9 – Perception and Communication

When I was at sixth form one of my business studies teachers left on maternity leave and a part time teacher was hired to fill in. My initial business teacher was laid back and left you to your own devices after the lesson plan was explained, and talking was allowed as long as it was mostly work related and as long as the work was completed on time. The new teacher however was quite the opposite, he was very strict and made sure silence was kept in the classroom at all times, the lesson plan was very structured and the new teacher would spend a lot of the time explaining every last detail instead of us researching it ourselves. Classmates and I were often told off and disciplined for talking and we had to attend a few lunchtime detentions. From going to one extreme to the other in teaching styles it was hard to adjust too, and the majority of the class including me took a disliking to the new teacher. We all liked our initial teacher and had got used to being able to talk in class and be involved in a more laid back environment. As the year went on the teacher got more laid back and adapted his teaching style to our group, through talking to us he learnt that letting us discuss the work would be mutually beneficial. We then started to do important pieces of coursework that had a strong influence on our grade, and because our new teacher was very structured he helped us all through it and really got on our backs to make sure we got it done. The group and I then gradually started to get along with the new teacher and we were all sad to see him leave after our old teacher returned from maternity leave. To avoid making this mistake in the future I’ve learnt to give people more of a chance, and if we’d have discussed the no talking rule to the teacher sooner the problem could have been solved much sooner. So I’d definitely be more patient next time and look at possible situations to resolve the problem as opposed to sitting there and just dealing with something that I don’t agree with. 

Three ways in which the university can improve its communication with its students are –

1. ·         Keep up to date technology wise – Technology is forever changing and the university needs to keep its communication channels current. The university currently emails students with news about the university or lecture details (time changes, room changes, cancelled lectures etc). And not all students check their emails. A system could be put into place where by text messages are sent out to alert students about cancelled lectures or other important information. Students all check social networking sites like twitter or Facebook more often than emails, so important information could also be sent out on those sites.
2. ·         Keeping the personal touch – I’ve found that personal tutors at the university don’t do enough to get involved. I’ve only seen my personal tutor a handful of times and although I know that if I need to see someone about any uni related problem I can email my personal tutor and sort something out. However I think that personal tutors could turn up at the end of lectures and ask if everything is okay, this way they’d get to know their students more and they’d be more likely to open up to the personal tutors and discuss any potential problems they may have.
3. ·         Cutting down on mass emails. The university send out big group emails to all students even if they aren’t relevant to your course. This just makes students not want to check their emails from the uni because the majority of the time its not related to their course. This should stop as students might not check important emails from the uni as they might think its just another email that’s not relevant to their course.

Week 7 - Conflict

Week 7 – Conflict

Conflict is apparent when at least one party perceives that it exists and where an interest or concern of that party is about to be or has been compromised or frustrated. Brooks (2006)

So basically conflict is a clash in opinions or views, only one person needs to be upset for a conflict to arise.

I have had experience when working in groups in the past, and it isn’t uncommon for conflict to arise, one example is when I used to play for my local football team Leighton Corinthians. There was about 15 of us in the team and one of the boys happened to be the managers son. There was often conflict among the players due to favouritism, as the son started every game as captain. Whilst others often travelled to away games and had to sit on the bench without playing. This often caused conflict among the group, whilst we should have all been working together to achieve our goal of winning every game we often argued over this. The conflict got so serious that the players and I complained to the chairman of the club and the manager was fired. As well as this problem there were also more conflicts, all be it smaller ones. There was often clashes of personalities and arguments would arise in games about who would take free kicks or penalties. This was often resolved by the captain or manager delegating to the role to who they thought was best suited to the role. So the strategy used to get through this conflict was to delegate the decision to a higher power, and let that person make a decision. Although sometimes that decision made other players unhappy, most of the time they moved on and got on with it as they could see it was for the good of the group.

French and Raven’s Sources of Power –

In 1959 French and Raven identified five bases of power. These five bases are –

• ·         Legitimate – This comes from the belief that a person has the right to make demands, and expect compliance and obedience from others.
• ·         Reward – This results from one person's ability to compensate another for compliance.
• ·         Expert – This is based on a person's superior skill and knowledge.
• ·         Referent – This is the result of a person's perceived attractiveness, worthiness, and right to respect from others.
• ·         Coercive – This comes from the belief that a person can punish others for noncompliance.

(Mindtools 2012)

If this model is understood then it can help you to understand why you get influenced, it can help you identify your sources of power and it can help you develop your leadership skills.

Legitimate power -  comes mainly from the role or status that you have, people will listen to you because they know that you’re role has some sort of power. For example people will listen to the prime minister if he decides to issue a hose pipe ban. However if he was stripped of his title as PM, and he tells the general public to stop using hose pipes in case of a drought, the likelihood is that nobody will listen to him, because he’s just a normal person and he has no authority to tell you this. 

Reward Power – People in positions of power, whether it’s a manager or supervisor are likely to be able to give out rewards. These rewards can be anything from a pay increase, promotion or even a simple compliment for doing work well. This power works on the basis that if someone thinks there’s a possibility of you getting rewarded for doing something you want, then chances are they’ll do it. There are some constraints of this power, if you’re a supervisor the likelihood of you being able to get someone a pay rise or promotion is very slim, however they could put in a good work to their superiors. You could also use up all of the rewards that are in your power to give, ths would then weaken your power as you wouldn’t have anything else to offer to the employee. So why would they go the extra mile if they know they can’t get any extra reward.

Coercive power – This type of power is often frowned upon in the workplace, although some coercive action may be relevant depending on the situation. It involves dishing and threats and punishments that can include threatening to fire someone, demoted, denied privileges or given undesirable assignments. Senior employees can often possess the power to ‘coerce’ others, although it doesn’t automatically justify this kind of behaviour. This type of power should often be used as a last resort as it could easily cause dissatisfaction in the workplace. An example of this could be management at a restaurant like McDonalds, if the restaurant is particularly busy it can put stress on all of the staff, including management. If an employee isn’t performing to the standard expected by the company then the manager may tell them they could be fired, have shifts taken off them or face some kind of disciplinary. 

Expert Power – This power is based upon how knowledgeable and how many relevant skills an individual would have, and suggests that if you have these skills and also the ability to suggest solutions and use solid judgement, then chances are you’ll be able to outperform others, and thus other people in the workplace are more likely to listen to you and trust and respect what you say. Through showing expertise in one area your ideas will have more value and thus others will look for leadership in you. I do a bit of work for my step dads company, a furniture business in London, and I was given the task of inputting paper form invoices into their system, when the system crashed I asked the employee who I knew had a good understanding of the system, as opposed to asking my step-dad because I knew that wasn’t his strongest area.

Referent Power - If a person demonstrates referent power the common characteristics they would be expected to have are things like charisma, charm, admiration and appeal. Referent power is about respecting and liking another, this could be through identifying with that person. A good example of referent power would be celebrities. If a celebrity that you liked releases a product or stars in film you are much more likely to be interested in it. 

This article, in HI mag covers work related stress in the current climate. - http://www.hi-mag.com/health-insurance/product-area/income-protection/article397155.ece

The article focuses on how the economic climate is affecting work related stress, and shows some distressing facts, according to a poll in which 1,500 employees took part in 52% said they felt more stressed since the beginning of the downturn. A further 41% feel more pressure at work and 23% are working longer hours. The poll also showed that 14% are having to work weekends and that 12% are taking less holiday entitlement. This is obviously a shocking find as a huge number of people are suffering more stress since the recession. 

Conclusion -  This blog has looked at conflict in the work place and how conflict arises, through researching these areas I have learnt that conflict is not always a bad thing as it can sometimes help motivate employees, however any conflict needs to be kept under strict supervision from the companies superiors. The blog has also looked at five different types of power, and what power is relevant to different situations, people need to be managed very carefully and the management needs to make sure they use the right types of power in appropriate situations. Otherwise it could lead to unwanted problems for the business.