Management: Emotions, Attitudes, Personality, Values, and Behaviours - Assignment Example

 Third, personality traits can be used to predict people’s behavior and values tend to influence behavior through conviction of what is morally right. Finally, the paper explains how consultants can leverage the values and personalities of leaders through motivation.

            Keywords:  emotions, attitudes, values, personalities, behavior, individuals, experiences

How do emotions and attitudes influence behavior?

Emotions are expressed in varying forms of human experiences that occur in episodes and are often unconscious. They are activated from the environmental interactions with people or situations and cause certain physiological conditions that influence bodily reactions towards a subject of the situation. Attitudes on the other hand entail a system of beliefs that influence an individual’s judgement through their conscious logical reasoning of the assessed situation. In the subordinate coordination theory of emotions, Haselton and Ketelaar claim that emotional experiences influence the human system of perception, activate inferences and regulate behavior (2005). As people get sensory information in their brain, based on their perception, they attach emotional markers to it and form emotional responses like happiness, sadness, fear, and anxiety. Under the logical reasoning process, the formed emotion will be used to shape one's thoughts and beliefs toward the subject of interest. Here, attitudes influence judgment. Merging the two (emotion and attitude) tend to determine one’s supportiveness, collaboration, willingness, involvement, and rejection toward a situation or subject. Reaction behavior can be expressed through bodily movement, facial expression, or tones.

How might attitudes and emotions about a particular change initiative affect the outcome of the initiative?

Change initiatives can either be successful when embraced by employees or fail if rejected. Normally, people perceive change to come with restructuring of organizations, and disruption in patterns and habits in a setting. This may introduce a stress factor, which requires coping mechanisms to adjust to the changes. Vakola and Nikolaus's research in organizational change “revealed that highly stressed individuals demonstrate decreased commitment and increased reluctance to accept organizational change interventions” (2005 p. 160). Stress results from highly activated negative emotions that can influence resistance to change among employees. People tend to evaluate the effect of change in their lives before generating a reaction. Positive emotions and attitudes of employees can influence positive organizational change initiatives (Avey, Wensing & Luthans, 2008). If it inclines to their gains, they construct positive attitudes towards it and adopt change, but if it threatens their gains, it influences negativity that results in rejection of the change initiative.

How do personality and values influence one’s behavior?

Individuals are characterized by different traits they exhibit and which they use to interact with others. These traits influence how they behave and interact with their environment, their performance in the workplace, and their reactions to situations. Depending on the dimension of the personality traits that an individual falls into, Bauer and Erdogan claim that it is possible to predict their behavior and reactions in a situation (n.d.). For example, people with introverted personalities shy away from high engagement and mixing with others. They are also more likely to work alone than in groups compared to outgoing individuals.  Values relate to the socially and personally held virtues, norms, and beliefs that convict individuals to choose one action or decision over the others, to what they consider right or preferred. They guide individuals on how they ought to behave and influence them to act based on the importance of their values (Packs & Guay, 2009). That is why placed in a situation of bribery, an individual who believes in integrity would forgo the bribe because it is morally right for him to uphold the integrity value.

How might a consultant leverage the personalities and values of the organization leaders during a change initiative?

Through motivation schemes, it is possible to leverage leaders’ personalities and values.  The consultant has to first establish the leaders’ personalities and match them up to relevant motivational programs to steer change. For example, leaders with high openness to experiences, who are risk takers and are outgoing, can be utilized to lead in change phases, taking critical decisions and mobilizing other employees to change