Perceptions and Attributions Please respond to the following:
• Analyze the way you perceive your coworkers or classmates and the perceptual or attribution errors you are likely to make, and discuss what steps you could take to address those errors. Provide specific examples to support your response.
Being in accounting and based on my years of experience, I have developed my own style of working and require things to be done in a certain way. But when I saw that they are not getting done in the way that I want them to, I would get annoyed and uneasy even when people around me were doing things in a more efficient way than I was used to doing. I always believed that I was a perfectionist and expected people to be at par with me when they worked with me. I always had bias over people who had similar traits like mine, though they might not have been the brightest among the pack (similarity error). But with time and education, I have realized that many things have changed with time and I have to adapt to the new ways of doing things even if it meant that I had to put in a lot of effort to learn these new skills. I now have a different view when I see and work with people around me and try to acknowledge good and efficient work when I see one.
When I interviewed and selected people to work in my organization, during orientation of the employees, I would give examples of people whose work I had liked and would make recommendations to the new employees to follow in their footsteps (Contrast Error). Over the years, I have realized that each individual has his/her own identity and asking them to be a replica of somebody else kills their personality. I have found that the maximum output from people comes in when they are themselves and doing the things that they like to do and the way in which they try to do it.
I have been guilty of judging people the moment I saw them and often times my first impressions have proven to be wrong (First-impression error). I have even made some mistakes in selecting candidates for my company who looked impressive during the interviews but have failed miserably when they began work. So I now do not jump to conclusions when I talk to candidate and always reserve my judgment until I have talked to references that the candidate has provided before making my decision. I also have stopped generalizing characteristics I expect in people as I have realized that everybody comes in with a different frame of mind, attributes and culture. My experience with dealing with these scenarios has made me a much more mature leader and I always look for ways to improve myself.
Learning Concepts to Improve Performance Please respond to the following:
• Consider your current work or school environment and make specific recommendations for applying either operant conditioning, social learning theory, or the learning theory you researched in the e-Activity to improve overall performance. Provide specific examples of the type of reward the theory you chose is expected to generate.
My personal experience with operant conditioning is that is a role model based culture where in employees tend to imitate the behavior of a few who have been rewarded thus far in the organization. While this can be a good theory to reinforce success patterns, it in many ways curtails the innovative ability of people and also restricts people from thinking out of the box which is very essential for environments which are changing rapidly due to internal or external factors. Workers need to be innovative to meet the ever changing demands of industries and operant conditioning will stagnate the idea generation to meet those challenges.
I would recommend the social learning theory in my work place because it enables people to set their own goals which can be reviewed by management to estimate throughput of the organization based on levels of performance that an individual is able to provide. Management can assess the self-control of individuals and help the employees to be in line with the overall goals of the organization. This theory also empowers employees by giving them the necessary authority, skills and self-control to perform their tasks. The employees also take personal responsibility for learning and performing the desired behaviors. The organization gains by adopting this strategy because the management is able to set realistic goals based on the performance of its employees, increases productivity and also eliminates need for more levels of management.