Personality and Individual Behaviour of Human Beings - Coursework Example

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR By Location Organisational Behaviour Personality and individual behaviour of human beings is factor a very important in business management especially business process management. Given that in most cases the employee is expected to work as a team in order to bring out the best from the activities of a business organization, the behaviour and character of employee has proved to be a vital aspect of business organizations. This is because personality and individual behaviour of an employee will highly affect their relationship with the people that they are supposed to be working with together as a team. This will in return have an impact on the outcome of the business activities. With reference the presentation earlier given and management process study this paper aims at using the group work process to explain the number of ways that personality and individual behaviour can influence the outcome of activities that involve teamwork. Behaviour can be defined as the manner in which human beings respond to stimulus. There are a number of factors that can be said to affect the behaviours of someone. These factors include: attitude; culture; values; authority; and genetics (French 2011, p. 33). These factors can ether influence teamwork individually or collectively. In this case cultural differences surfaced in the process of coming up with the presentation. The group consisted of a total of five members, three of them being from the United Kingdom while two were Chinese. The first way in which cultural difference showed itself is the manner in which the individuals from the two different cultures responded to complainants. For instance, when someone made a meaningful contribution to the course, the member from the United Kingdom would give complements and when the complements could show gratitude. On the other hand the Chinese culture being a bit modest, the Chinese members would see it as an exaggeration when their efforts were complemented. Instead of showing gratitude they would instead show high levels of discomfort. This does not only happen in such group work, but also in practice business organization with employees having diverse cultures. Another issue would have come in communication. Given that two of the members were not United Kingdom natives, English was not really their first language. This factor must have led to complicated and lengthy communication processes which must have contributed to the fact that they finished the preparation for the presentation later. Another thing that is believed to be an indicator of human behaviour is attitude. Personally, I had a very positive attitude toward the course of the group work. Throughout the period I had done my best to make sure that I would be of positive contribution to the process. This is even indicated in the fact that I was well aware that being that am not a native UK citizen, I would have to work extra hard for me to be of maximum contribution to the process. There are a number of things that are different here from how they are in china. It is because of the positive attitude that I took the adaptation as a personal challenge. A number of individual values and principles made some effect on the outcome of the process. All the members of the group showed high standards of ethical values. Each time that there was a meeting to be held all the members would make it in good time some even arriving long before the agreed time. Whenever tasks were entrusted to certain members of the group, they would do it and get back to the group in good time. On the occasions when some member could not be able to attend any meeting, due to unavoidable circumstances, they would communicate it the group leader in good time. Just as ethical conduct was good for this group; it has been proved that ethical standards can be of high significance to employee involvement in a business organization (Schermerhorn 2011, p. 89). By being ethical, an employee would have higher chances of maximizing their productivity. Employee productivity can highly influence the productivity of a business organization. The group also had a very capable leadership. Good leadership is a very important factor in teamwork. For instance, in this case the leader highly promoted ethical values in the team by making sure that he always set an example to the team (Sims 2002, 111). At some moment he also made sure that he offered guidance to the team members in areas that they were not able to undertake. In order to do this, the group leader was forced to carry out extensive researches on the issues at hand. He was also responsible for the allocation of task. The allocation of tasks enabled the group members to attend to specific time, thus making the research processes less time consuming. Just like leadership has been vital for the success of this team, it also always important to teams in business organizations and the organizations at large. Extroversion is the most commonly used dimension of human personality in the field of business. It is used in reference to characteristics such as: being outgoing, sociable, talkative, or assertive. These personalities usually affect the way an individual interacts with other people in such a setting. Among the five members that the group had it can be said that only two of the members would get high ratings under this dimension of personality traits. The leader of the group would definitely rate highest under this dimension. Unfortunately for me, I was not among the individuals that would score high am not talkative at all and in most cases not outgoing. In a team members who are talkative, outgoing, assertive, and sociable can contribute highly to the course of the team work (Hiriyappa 2009, p. 103). On the other hand, this dimension of personality check cannot be used to gauge a team member’s contribution in activities such as research. Three of the members of the team would score highly under the agreeable dimension of personality check. When someone is said to be agreeable they should have characteristics such as trusting, cooperative, good-natured, and soft-hearted (Tosi & Pilati 2011, p. 123). Many people will agree with the assumption that people who score highly under this dimension are always the easiest to work with. In this case, I can say that I was among the three group members who scored highly in this dimension. I have always had a cooperative character that would make anyone want to be associated. However, it has been observed that people who score high under this dimension can be easily taken advantage of. It has also been discovered that individuals who score high under this dimension are not always as productive as those that that perform well under the Extroversion personality check dimension. All the members of the group had high levels of Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is used in reference to qualities such as: dependability, responsibility, achievement orientation, and persistence. Every time that the leaders would allocate certain task for the team members it was noted that the members did their level best and in the end presented quality work and in good time. It was only on one occasion that such tasks were delayed though it was understandable because it was an accident. One of the members also had questionable dependability. Despite the fact that he would hand in the work allocated to him by the leader, it was at some point discovered that the work that he used to do had questionable quality. Just as shown in this case, Conscientiousness is also used in the business environment. Employees who rank highly under this dimension have over the years proved to be highly valuable to business organizations (Griffin & Moorehead 2014, p. 92). A majority of the member of the group also exhibited high levels of emotional stability. When talking about emotional stability, factors that should be considered include: relaxation, security, and lack of worries. In the group there were very important factors because they enabled the group to work together without there being any problems arising from these factors. The group members had trust in each other’s capability and commitment, therefore, they did not have to get insecure whenever the group leader allocated a given task to any of the five members. The working atmosphere must have been as a result of the personality traits of the members since there was no member who had a characteristic of being emotionally unstable. In a typical business environment, employees with emotional stability will be the highest contributors to teamwork (Nelson & Quick 2008, p. 155). Emotional stability also reduces the possibility of there being unwanted occurrences in the business organization such as conflicts between team members. For teamwork to be successful each group member should be open to experience. Openness to experienced is always gauged by the presence of characteristics such as imagination, intellectuality, broad-mindedness, and curiosity. These are the values that can enable a team member to maximize the impact of teamwork to their personal improvement. A group member who has these characteristics has a very high possibility of improving in performance through learning in the process interacting and working together with the other team members (Dubrin 2014, p. 121). Personally, the level of curiosity that I have helped me in learning allot of things through the group involved. Being aware of the differences in culture, I would seek clarification whenever I thought that there was anything that was not clear. I would also seek clarification whenever I would have the feeling that there was more to a point that was brought forward by a fellow group member. In the same line I would also make sure that whenever I had to put, a point across I would make it as clear as possible. This was necessitated by the knowledge that cultural difference can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations in teamwork. Another form of a character trait that was evident during the process is the self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to the belief that a person might have with regard to their ability or inability. Throughout the process the members showed high level of belief in their ability. There was no instance when a member declined any task given to them by the team leader because of having the belief that they were not able to undertake the task that they were being given. This in a way showed the degree in which the members trusted in their abilities. In a business situation the effect would be equally because it will improve their efficiency and also form a positive public picture if the business’ client, especially if they specialize in service provision, see such self-belief in employees. This will in the end reflect in the performance of the business organization. Self-discipline is also another important factor in group work. Self-discipline enables individuals to maximize their contribution without there being any need for them to be supervised by anyone. Someone who is Self-disciplined will be able to be effective in teamwork even in situations where there is no one to follow up their contributions. In this group the performance of the members was determined by their need to get a good outcome from their involvement. Looking at the way the group handled their task someone can easily noticed that there was no following up of what the members were doing yet the result was outstanding. The members made sure that their contributions came as expected by the rest of the group. Self-discipline is not only important in academic group work such as this one. In a typical business environment, self-disciplined employee would be more productive than those who are not. When involved in teamwork they usually bring out the best without waiting for supervision. It is clearly evident that an individual’s personality and behaviour can have an impact on their contribution to teamwork. In most cases the collective success of a group or a team is always attributed to the individual contributions of the individual members. The contributions are affected by their individual character traits throughout this paper someone can see how the individual character traits and behaviours of the members contributed to the development to the presentation that the group made. Bibliography Dubrin, AJ 2014, Proactive personality and behaviour for individual and organizational productivity. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=677527. French, R 2011, Organizational behaviour, Wiley, Hoboken, N.J. Griffin, RW & Moorehead, G 2014, Organizational behavior: managing people and organizations, South-Western/Cengage Learning, Mason, OH. Hiriyappa, B 2009, Organizational behaviour, New Age International Publishers, New Delhi. Nelson, DL & Quick, JC 2008, Understanding organizational behavior, Thomson/South-Western, Mason, OH, USA. Schermerhorn, JR 2011, Organizational behavior, Wiley, Hoboken, N.J. Sims, RR 2002, Managing organizational behavior, Greenwood Press, Westport CT. Tosi, HL & Pilati, M 2011, Managing Organiza=tional Behavior Individuals, Teams, Organization and Management, Edward Elgar Pub, Cheltenham. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID714161. Read More