Job Reflection Issues - Essay Example

? Business Essay Business Essay Job Reflection I always had strengths of communicating withpeople and giving motivational speeches and presentations. These skills of mine led to my first job in HOPES Organization, which works for the welfare of sick and needy people. The prime objective of the organization was to serve Cancer patients who do not have enough money for paying their medical bills and medicines. My job in the organization was to design measures to collect funds for those people. For this reason, there were frontline and rear marketing teams, which had the objectives of advertisements and finding sponsors respectively. I was in the Rear Team and my goal was to present HOPES mission to other companies and enterprises and asks for their kind help through charities. It looked a quite simple job at the first place, where I had to make calls and visit different companies where I can present them with my organization’s objective and what benefit they will get by contributing in our mission. However, it turned out to be an altogether different story as most of the people were least interested in even listening to the call. I was supposed to go for two visits per day, but this started looking very difficult to achieve. On my first visit to a company, my senior colleague accompanied me and my job was to analyze how he conveys the message and convince the next person to contribute funds to HOPES. The most vital thing I learnt from my first visit was that in the business world, people look for their self interest before anything. Hence, in giving charity also, top level managers and executives are not really concerned with benefits it will give to humanity, but how it can be useful in generating more profits. So, the most important thing is to put the correct thing first and that is giving them information about the promotion strategies of our organization that can help increase brand visibility of their company. Another psychological fact that I understood in my first job was that every person can be fascinated by the same incentives. The perspective of an HR manager would be different from that of a sales manager and that is also an important consideration in business meetings (Skinner, 2008). For dealing with different people, I have to learn about the background of the person I’m dealing with and analyze the gap between their expectations and my understanding of it. In the second month, I did far better work than in the first month after better understanding the human physic and business behaviors. Applying the tool of team work also worked well in my job. In the following months, larger groups accompanied me and that increased the impact of our dealing with other office personnel. When we visited a manager in bigger groups, the first impression was of unity and strength among employees and proved useful in lifting the trust of other organizations’ managers in our team. A Theoretical Perspective These experiences of mine can all be related to the theories on Organizational Behavior. The Incentive Theory of Motivation can be best applied to the above reflective scenario. It suggests that people in the corporate world are always seeking for benefits and praises. These incentives can be a factor of their intrinsic or extrinsic motivation and can lead them to do extraordinary things. The Principle Agent Model, as illustrated by Laffont, David Martimort, explains that the approach of people towards incentive vary with the kind of business and the nature of their job. Some people look for short term benefits and others seek out long term benefits. Therefore, it is essential to understand the need description of people to motivate them in buying something or doing business (Laffont & Martimort, 2002). This model defines that incentives can be in different forms and for this reason the need structure becomes further complex. My job was to motivate business people that doing charity in HOPES will be a good investment for their companies; as our promotion strategies will help their business cause. However, many times our incentives do not match their need description, due to not understanding their business perception. I visited a Liquid Hand Wash manufacturing company with the incentive of distributing their products to our patients and in health seminars of HOPES. This would give more awareness to their hand wash product. However, the manager wanted quick results in sales and investing in our company seemed to him as a long term and uncertain benefit approach, due to the less popularity of our organization. In this case, if incentive theory of motivation was analyzed properly, I would have gotten a better idea of his needs and could have presented the company’s plan accordingly (Westmont, 2002). In addition to this, the Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory explains that there are certain roles a group or team plays in an organization and that cannot be always of market research or idea generation. Many times the impact of a disciplined and organized group is far greater than that of a disciplined individual. This relates to my experience of working in both small and big teams. The impact of big teams was surely greater as it augmented the weightage of our organization’s passion and devotion and thus increased the probability of convincing other persons (Smith, 2001). Visual Analysis The following visual demonstrations can be beneficial to evaluate my job experience and its learning. Source: (Miner, 2007) This model / flowchart is a very good illustration of how need derives motivation in a step wise manner. Understanding this flowchart will enable us to categorize the motivation levels and incentives for different kinds of people. The first step is addressing the expectation of the targeted person, so to deliver what he or she wants to be delivered. It is simple to understand that if incentives of money or productivity are offered to a person who is eying on reputation and fame, then no matter how good the incentives are, the probability of acceptance is fewer. Behavior action and goal incentive stages of motivation show that after identifying incentives, it is important to demonstrate the way of getting it. It can be easily related to my experience in the marketing department of HOPES, where I was supposed to highlight all our promotion strategies and their predicted outcome to give a clearer picture to our sponsors. This modifies their behavior about organization’s objective and credibility, after which they can be ask for their funds. Hence, it can be summarized that in the marketing business where one is seeing for sponsors, it is important to make them understand that they are actually paying for their own good and not ours. Source: (Stanton, 2009) I have chosen this picture because of the great symbolic message in this ordinary image. Similar to what is shown in the picture, business teams and groups also comprises of the same nature. Often in marketing teams, the role of only few are highlighted, who make deals with sponsors or run marketing campaigns. However, without the efforts of other team mates it is certain that the prominent figures would not be able to maintain the same quality of work. The significance of team work in my job is not prominent at the outer facet but it is an essential element of the rear marketing unit. The behavior and conduct of a single person represent the entire group and so it is very essential to maintain team harmony for successful deals. It happened many times in my job that the diversity of culture and education helped in better communicating with sponsors. My team was comprised of diverse people and that was the strength of the team knowing different languages and skills. This helped us creating the impression that we are not just sales person, but an organization working for a noble cause. List of References Laffont, J. & Martimort, D., 2002. The Theory of Incentives: The Principal-Agent Model. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Miner, J., 2007. Organizational Behavior 4: From Theory to Practice. New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc. Skinner, B., 2008. Need Drive and Incentive Theory of Motivation. [Online] Available at: http://nicefun.net/need-drive-and-incentive-theory-of-motivation-vt2657.html [Accessed 26 February 2013]. Smith, M., 2001. Kurt Lewin: Groups, Experiential Learning and Action Research. [Online] Available at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm [Accessed 26 February 2013]. Stanton, C., 2009. How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach. [Online] Available at: http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/group-presentations-unified-team-approach/ [Accessed 26 February 2013]. Westmont, 2002. Motivation: Theories of Motivation. [Online] Available at: http://www.westmont.edu/~bsmith/general/lectureoutlines/11motivation/theoriesmotivation.html [Accessed 26 February 2013]. Read More