Redefining Success in Business - Assignment Example

Business Business The game in this paper involves a total of 6 people (5 colleagues and I) working in the sales and marketing department of a multinational railway firm. I made the team plan and play the game in the light of the organizations declining competitive advantage in the international arena. My duty was to assess how personality assessments like agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism influence human behavior. Formally defined, Agreeableness refers to a trait that depicts individual differences pertaining to a general concern in order to attain social harmony. Extraversion refers to arrange of activities, the urgency of activities falling outside the team context as well as using external approaches to energy creation. Conscientiousness is the habit of depicting self-discipline, acting in a responsible manner and aiming at extraordinary achievements. Openness to experience is the appreciation of emotions, adventures, new ideas and diversity in experience. Finally, neuroticism refers to the habit of experiencing negative emotions like anxiety, anger, as well as depression (Lussier & Achua, 2010). In the marketing game, I saw participants who lost control of their emotions due to the attempt of the other team members to intimidate them thus leading to declining in the overall productivity of these participants. Interestingly, other team members were able to keep up with self-control even in the face of situations that a typical employee would use to act in a different manner. Also, there were team members who could not just cope with the diversities within the team. Many were the instances whereby a team member would propose a new idea only for other people to ridicule the idea. The same team had members who depicted the belief that connecting with other people in a work context brings about heightened productivity alongside a respect-filled work environment. Further, there were members who were free to communicate new ideas thus conveying an ever-learning attitude, and ready to share the new discoveries with team members. Overall, the aforementioned behaviors were to a great extent influenced by variables like emotional stability, personality, readiness to learn new skills and diversity in conjunction with enterprise-based variables like job structure and design, resources and leadership. In a typical work context, the group that was able to keep calm even during potentially intimidating moments would hint managers of working with a lot that is adaptable to pressure, trustworthy and capable of maintaining a good reputation. At an individual level, a person who easily loses his or her emotions is likely to develop a self-justifying attitude often intended to make other team members fall on the wrong, even when that is not the reality on the ground. I did see a set of informal roles in the marketing game. One of the informal roles that I noticed was that individuals who were capable of upholding self-control spared some time to urge the emotional counterparts that acquaintance with the emotional skills alongside the way to apply them in a job context would be a prudent idea. Even though this was outside the initial game plan, it made the victims recognize and acknowledge that self-control is a tool that depicts readiness to cope with the diversities and adversities that are commonplace in the work environment. I found this move useful because failure to eliminate such emotional instabilities is likely to deny the victims to make good leaders along their career ladder. Kezar (2008) further posits that the continued practice of behaviors aroused by emotional instability ultimately affects the efficiency of business enterprises. Another instance of informal roles was the move by other team members to lead their colleagues through action rather that by the word of mouth. This class of members served as an example to their counterparts that success or failure, as pertains to coming up with a proper market analysis, is all about changing an attitude then communicating the new and positive attitude through actions that can inspire other team members. Team members in workforces should follow the examples of these members because attitude ultimately impacts on a persons beliefs, feelings as well as behavioral ambitions. There is no doubt that the broader organizational context could be headed to failure if any of these three factors tends towards a negative direction. I became more excited when I heard a member propose that we would make our analysis better by doing a marketing analysis of our competitor enterprises. For sure, I could not conceal my happy feelings from the member who suggested this methodology. Moreover, the condition revealed to me that I like beings capable of thinking of what other people cannot think of. In another instance, I felt very happy the way one member objectively criticized the enterprise for slaking to embrace a different state of the art utilities to pursue new markets. I was more moved by his effort to appreciate the organizations recent acquisition of a customer relationship management (CRM) software before suggesting that the enterprise should consider tailoring the CRM tool in a bid to meet the growing number of mobile users (Kumar & Reinartz, 2012). In fact, I felt more empowered to face the top management to address the CRM issue. So, the situation made me understand that objective and positive criticism is a good tool to command for action. However, I cannot forget how intimidated I felt when a member insinuated that the diminishing competitive advantage can only be solved by send the top management committee home. Even though I maintained I state of calm, I kept asking myself why some people cannot just think in a broad-scoped fashion especially when taking part in decisions that ultimately have a bearing on the organizations success. As pertains to this, I did learn that I appreciate a more open minded approach to arriving at solutions, more so if the aftermath of the solutions dictates the ability of the organization to survive. Additionally, I kept wondering how some fellows could not just appreciate the efforts that the management had put in making the enterprise relevant in the face of the market dynamics. Here, I did learn that I am better placed working with people who can appreciate the little that is already within their reach prior to craving for extraordinary opportunities. I remember the marketing game being a way opener for me to recognize the "hidden" abilities of my team members. More specifically, I still picture a more elderly and experienced participant to use the short breaks to guide the younger counterparts of what it takes to attain financial success. I felt most impressed when I heard him categorically tell the youngsters that attaining financial success was to a great extent pegged on a persons financial discipline. This statement made me to try picture our expenditure pattern in the broader organizational perspective and began asking myself if our recent decline in competitive advantage could be as a result of us channeling funds towards market adventures that are not feasible. In essence, I never expected a marketing agent is assuming a financial advisory role in a better way than most of the financial experts out there. Besides, I immediately began wondering why our department has often relied on third party services when it comes to financial advisory services while we have one of our own who can do the same in a better way. Elsewhere, I learned of one participants habit to lose concentration in tensed environment. I remember issuing a simple calculation of GDP calculation then issuing a two minutes period for calculation of the right answer. Instead of striving to generate a response, the participant just remained passive and upon being asked, the participant confessed to me that he was weakest at handling pressure. This, to me, was a lesson that while I have to be psychologically prepared to cope with the mental diversities of the teams that I will be leading as long as I take part in this marketing world. To increase the cooperative behaviors in my team, I would need to build trust via more frequent interactions. Basically, the more the participants interact with each other, the more they know one another in details and this practice inevitably encourage cooperation. The Trust would become more instrumental in letting participants believe that team members are each doing accomplishing their respective duties in line with the predefined strategies while aiming at achieving superb goals. To attain this level of trust, I would have my participants improve in terms of their pattern of communication. Examples of a factor that I would particularly emphasize on in order to actualize efficiency in communication is the improvement of the richness as well as the quality of information that flows among the participant. The key factors involved in winning cooperation from people within a business arena include power, social influence, diffusion, team cohesion, relationship building as well as knowledge management. To this far, relationship building has worn the greatest attention. In particular, studies have attributed the success level of the composition of cooperative teams to the old saying that "birds of the same feather flock together." According to Holstein (2012), this state calls on managers to figure out every variable that could predict the effectiveness of the corporate teams that they do form. Going by the historical records, business entities have often paid great attention to team sizes, cohesiveness, structured leadership approach, performance appraisals as well as group-based goals in order to promote corporate effectiveness. However, the recent trends have seen enterprises shift their focus to handling diversities within corporate teams. To address this concern, business entities are already adopting methods like conflict management among partners in addition to addressing national, cultural, operational and demographic diversities during team composition. If faced with the challenge of winning the cooperation of a co-worker, I would strive and strike a deal with the top management in order to structure financial appraisal plans for other colleague workers who successfully accomplish what the victim is slackening to do. Moved by the natural desire for more funds alongside envy that is featured in the human heart, the co-worker is likely to begin seeing some sense in cooperating with other participants. For instance, a sales manager with a "difficult" market agent could decide that only agents who hit sales volumes of $4500 monthly are taken for a trip to Southeast Asia. In this case, it is likely that the difficult agent will try to change though this might be in pursuit of the rewards associated with the improvement sales performance. Regardless of the motive that informs the agents course of action, the manager can still have a chance to speak to the agent to tune his mind towards productivity. To conclude, cooperative teams whose compositions take team diversity into account then put measures in place to rectify the negative consequences of the diversities are better placed in terms of driving an organization to its overall goal. References Holstein, Karin. (2012). B Corporation: Redefining Success in Business and Creating Social Value. Xlibris Corp. Kezar, A. J. (2008). Rethinking leadership in a complex, multicultural, and global environment: New concepts and models for higher education. Sterling, Va: Stylus Pub. Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2012). Customer Relationship Management: Concept, Strategy, and Tools. Dordrecht: Springer. Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2010). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development. Australia: Southwestern/Cengage Learning. Read More