A Thorough Understanding of Organizational Psychology - Essay Example

Psychology Working with teams necessitates a thorough understanding of the organizational psychology and group dynamics. Being part of a team is a challenging role in any situation and it has been identified that leadership is all about inspiring and motivating the other members in the team. An effective leader or team leader needs to motivate, inspire and support the other team members constantly to accomplish the common goal, and for this he/she should be aware of the major psychological theories of motivation that lie deep dormant in managing the other members and offering them constant motivation. This paper tries to unearth my experiences of working with a team as the team leader in the class room and the paper makes an individual reflection of how I could instil motivation among the team members owing to my understanding of the various psychological theories put forward by psychologists regarding organizational psychology and working in groups. For the last one week I have been working in team as the team leader to prepare a case study report. The team consisted of twenty members of my class room. Preparing the case study was a challenging group task as each of the group members had his own unique way of looking at the case study provided. Therefore, it was essential that the group members shared their views to the group in an open discussion and the best way of presenting the report was finalized. Keeping the motivation level among the team members high was of utmost importance. However, I could find at the initial stage that most of the other members lacked focus or motivation; this resulted in communication gap and lack of interest among the group members. Moreover, a paucity of enthusiasm and commitment was seen everywhere. What might be the reason behind their indifference? I tried to unveil the hidden cause of the gloom implementing my past study experience and knowledge in various behavioural theories, from my own perceptions. The first intuition that struck my brain as every one usually thinks was that it was due to the lack of interest in study because I have seen many students those who consider these kinds of team works as time wastes and put little effort to contribute any thing of their own. But the further study informed me that many of the members were personally good at study and had been doing well with their individual assignments. The major problem I observed was that the team members knowingly or unknowingly were impassive to move as a team. Any how, I was damn sure that some sorts of motivation was lacking in the group. What and how? The passive responses of the members and the given responsibility on my shoulders haunted me. The motivational theories that I had learned proved to be of immense help to me. There are many definitions on motivation and one of them states that “Motivation is a conscious decision to perform one or more activities with greater effort than other competing activities.” (Bloisi et al 2007). Thus it was clear to me that I needed to motivate my team members to come to such a conscious decision. Many of my group members had not yet taken a conscious decision regarding their role. Why don’t they put an extra effort to yield more? Why don’t they differentiate their designation from other competing activities of life? The prevailing classroom system and student motivation strategy might be inappropriate. I tried to analyze the issue relying on Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory. According to this theory every individual has some basic physiological needs. Unless those needs are fulfilled an individual can not be motivated to gain the further need. After the physiological needs like food, shelter and cloth the next priority for an individual is safety; then love, esteem and as the final state self actualization. (Maslow 2009). Thus, drawing conclusions from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I thought of categorizing the team members according to the level of their needs and planned to design a new reward system that suited their various types of needs. However, for a team like mine, there were certain limitations to implement this plan. It is impractical with a group of students to clarify the level of an individual’s needs especially when the members are reluctant to share their views with the other members or with the team leader. If the team is rather small with limited strength and familiar for a long time, the interpersonal relationship would be more effective and the friends or leader can understand the motivating need of an individual. When one studies a team from top to bottom level, one can see different types of individuals who hold various types of needs and requirements. As the part of my experiments I took some deliberate interactions with some of our team members attempting to investigate their unfulfilled needs. The members who were in need of fulfilling their psychological needs were my first target. They were further treated with a reasonable approach and with better working position in the team. The response was not bad. Many of the members looked relaxed though the majority were not so. From this I realized that the same approach and superficial observation would not produce required result. Therefore, I decided to depend a little on Hertzberg’s Hygiene Theory or Two Factor Theory. In the opinion of Frederic-Hertzberg (1959) there are mainly six factors causing dissatisfaction and six factors causing satisfaction. Factors that produce dissatisfaction are company policy, supervision, relationship with the boss, work conditions, salary and relationship with the peers. (Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory)). The satisfaction factors are achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, advancement and growth. In his opinion factors causing satisfaction and factors causing dissatisfaction are entirely different: the opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction but ‘no satisfaction’; similarly the opposite of dissatisfaction is not satisfaction but ‘no dissatisfaction.’ (Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory)). From his arguments I took advantage by implementing one idea that each one in the group is felt as important and that their intrinsic motivation needs are fulfilled. The most striking point I found applicable in my team was that the group work should have sufficient challenges to utilize the full ability of the individual. Following the theory of Hertzberg I started giving increased levels of responsibility to the members who demonstrated increased level of involvement in group discussions and displayed creativity and original thinking. This theory was of great benefit with the particular nature of my group because I found many members having high qualities and education were deployed in lower responsibilities so far where their skills were of little use. It is obvious that they can not be motivated by any means other than putting them in right position. It has another side also. Undoubtedly, Individuals with little skills managing the high posts also could play their own role in contributing to the failure of a team. Making fewer wounds in the minds of individuals I let the conventional team setup got shuffled. Though adventurous, the act showed better signs. Not too late I found my team headed with a number of skilled, intelligent and creative individuals. Yet there were many problems to be solved. The more I examined the members’ behaviour the more I realized that my first notion regarding the individual inactiveness was not actually the major problem. Few members were holding complaints about their study, classroom work or subjects. The main part that was ignored by the teams usually was the intrinsic motivation or the psychological rewards. I remembered the opinion of Kant regarding intrinsic rewards. He says, “Job satisfaction is another reward which can be defined as intrinsic satisfaction and challenge goal congruence. In this case the reward is an emotional well being from believing in or being committed to a super ordinate goal. If the firm needs to stimulate creativity then the job satisfaction rewards of challenge, stretch, autonomy are more effective than the compliance rewards. Moreover, in such conditions the compliance rewards might be counter productive.” (Hunt 1986). Implementing this view I started allotting challenges or targets according to the performing capability of the members. Therefore the high potential individuals could utilize their skills in a creative and different way from what they had been practicing in the previous team works. They found themselves more useful and became more confident. This self satisfaction and the appreciation from my part as the team leader pushed some of my group members beyond the periphery of my expectation. If I had stuck to any of the motivation theories with rigidity I would have failed in my mission. Some times I found too contrasting situations to adopt certain theories in my group. In such cases I relied on the alternatives. For example, wherever I found the Maslow’s theory inappropriate Alderfer’s ERG theory or Expectancy Theory could be applicable. Adler’s Theory is a modified form of Maslow’s Theory which introduces three steps of needs such as Existence, Relatedness and Growth. Existence refers to our concern with basic material existence motivators (biological needs); relatedness refers to the motivation we have for maintaining interpersonal relationships (affiliation) and growth refers to an intrinsic desire for personal development (self actualization). (Alderfer 2005). According to Expectancy theory introduced by Victor Vroom, an individual would get motivated when he/she finds that putting in more effort will help the better performance and better performance offers to organizational rewards and these offered rewards are valued by the employ in question. (Expectancy Theory. 2009). He believes that an individual is always lenient to pleasure and wants to minimize pain. So he would always choose between the alternatives. Therefore the alignment of rewards with employee’s wants is an important factor. From these valuable experiences I came to know that goal setting also is an important factor for motivating the individuals to achieve the intended targets. The goals must be challenging, accurate and sensible according to the level of the individual. The pyramidal structure of leadership also could pull back any team from advanced growth I realized. If the structure could be made flat the progress would have been definite. I gathered this idea when I found the members becoming motivated by a friendly approach and interaction from my part. So instead of sitting always in my chair I went around the areas where I found such an intrinsic motivation would be vital. Moreover sometimes I shared their work and that added to their pleasure. To my hunch any team with extremely different individual behaviours needs to review its organizational structure. The tall pyramidal hierarchy style is more compliance reward oriented whereas flat style with a wide span of control can more effectively run such type of organizations or groups. The targeted goals and offered rewards must be well informed and negotiable to the needs of the group members. In addition to individual rewards like positive reinforcements, appreciation and encouragements at the individual and group level are to be offered and these also have significant role in promoting the expected individual behaviours. When a group of students indulge in team work or discussion always there should be someone to take initiative and usually it is expected from the part of team leader. Yet if the initiative comes from some other members it gives a better sign and the team tend to be more creative. The leader must be able to coordinate the members’ efforts and their creative opinions. Some individuals seem to be dominant in every team and the leader should ensure the equal participation of every individual. Every member needs to be informed of the goal of the team and the role of each individual should be well defined. The possible disparities in opinions should be effectively managed. These are the minimum practical knowledge I gained from my team regarding the applicable theories and better team work possibilities. The individuals and their peculiar behavioural patterns were quite an interesting area of study. To clarify, a man holding high achievements in his studies yet not satisfied, goes overwhelmed with joy due to a mere shoulder pat or by a word of appreciation from the superiors and from his group members; a hard working student yet not happy with conditions, goes relaxed when he is offered a half an hour leisure. The thought provoking experiences taught me more behavioural psychology than what I had learned from my academic subjects. Of course there were situations when my notions went wrong and things turned upside down. Contrastingly sometimes the things happened right way even if I had taken decision according to my own perceptions other than depending on any theory. Communication is another fragile element in a team which requires extreme care. As I have mentioned in the beginning, it was one of the lacking elements in my group too. Almost everything that happens in an organization depends on communication. When the communication is not effective it would adversely affect the production, supply, customer feedback, relationship between the members etc. communication, to be effective, there should be effective group activities, structural changes and healthy interactions within the organization. Team work is the success key of every organization I believe. Working with a team helped me a lot to find out myself and the way people think and behave. I owe to my team members for the energy I gathered from my team success and for the new lessons I learned from my failures. Looking retrospectively, I feel that I could have done better in dealing with many of the problems my team faced if I had fully employed the benefit of team working. A quotation would reveal the significance of team work. To conclude, my experience of working with the team convinced me that “People have to work together and by doing so colleagues will develop more effective working relationships with team members who are new to the team and with team members w ho have been part of the team for some time.” (Benefits of Team Building: Working Relationships will be Developed. 2007). Bibliography ALDERFER, Clayton P. (2005). ERG Theory of Motivation. [online]. Envision: Software Incorporated. Last accessed 10 March 2009 at: http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/ERG_Theory.html Benefits of Team Building: Working Relationships will be Developed. (2007). [online]. Team Wise: Raise Your Game. Last accessed 10 March 2009 at: http://www.team-wise.co.uk/theory/benefits_of_team_building.htm BLOISI et al, 2007:196; MULLINS, 2007:250. Organizational Behaviour: Motivation at Work. By Deborah Knowles. (PowerPoint presentation: slide no. 3). (Provided by the customer). Expectancy Theory. (2009). [online]. Wikepedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Last accessed 10 March 2009 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectancy_theory Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Theory (Two Factor Theory). (2007). [online]. NetMBA: Business Knowledge Centre. Last accessed 10 March 2009 at: http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/herzberg/ HUNT, John W. (1986). Managing People at Work. Institute of Personal Management. MASLOW, Abraham. (2009). Maslow Hierarchy of Needs: Father of Modern Management. [online]. Project Management Course. Last accessed 10 March 2009 at: http://www.abraham-maslow.com/m_motivation/Hierarchy_of_Needs.asp Read More