Combined Effects Of Perceived Politics And Psychological Capital

Discuss about the Combined Effects Of Perceived Politics And Psychological Capital.

How psychological traits affect behaviors in diverse teams

The aim of this reflective essay is to discuss diversity to be the reason of conflict within the teams and how proper knowledge of the personality traits of the others can mitigate such issues in the organizational setting (Ten et al. 2015). This essay will discuss the importance of different psychological traits of the people working in a team with different diversity. These psychological traits will be analyzed though some efficient tools such as Myers-Briggs personality test, DISC model, Johari window and TA models. Based on these tools, the impact of personality on the behaviors, understanding and responses to the situations will also be discussed. This essay will be sharing personal examples centering round one particular situation and finding solutions through these models.

This particular conflict is associated with the new project where there were only ten members in a group for operating in a group project of the company within two months. In this project, I was the project managers who was responsible to incorporate the ideas of these group members and achieve the target of this projects within the assignee time. However, the conflict a situation arrived when the group members compliant about the inability about some of the group members due to their ethnic and cultural background. As the attitude, behavior, understand and communication all depend upon the cultural and national background of the people, the cooperation level of these members did not match with the rest. However, it was acritical situation as I was responsible to complete the project within two months and the complete assistance of these members were needed, I used Myers-Briggs personality test, DISC model, Johari window and TA models to solve this problem. These models have helped me and my group members to identify our personal traits and improve the collaboration quality as efficiently as possible.

The Transactional Analysis or TA model is one of the major tools that I applied to myself as well as my group members. This model reveals that there are three ego states present in the human psychology and each of the individuals comes under one particular ego state that decides how they will behave and act with the others. These three ego states include, parent state or the taught state, an adult state or the thought state and the child state or the felt state. The people with similar ego state can communicate or collaborate efficiently with one another but the real problem take place when the different ego states communicate one another. Despite the fact that there are some factors common but these common factors do not help the individuals to ease the criticality. The people having parent ego state have this state as they are formed by he values and beliefs that are already imposed upon them  (Wu and Lee 2017). These people are dominating and forceful on the others and direct others to follow their path. They have patronizing gestures and impatient body language which affect the other ego states intensely. The child ego state is based on the internal reactions and sentiments to the external events. The emotional quality of these people is high and gets dominated by the other two ego states as they remain uncertain much of the time. In most of the cases the body language of these people needs more improvement so that they can effectively fit the business requirements. Finally, the adult state is the more dependable ego state as these people are able to form opinions and make decisions based on information (Leutner et al. 2014). The people with adult ego state is open, clam and composed which help them to control the other two ego states efficiently. Hence, I first let the group members identify their ego state and find out the root of the problems. This tool helped me to motivate them to start communicating with one another effectively with adult ego state so that critical issues do not affect the project.

Efficient tools for analyzing psychological traits

Johari Window is another efficient tool that helps the individuals to identify their open and hidden traits and qualities. This tool has four window pane or cells namely, Façade or hidden, open or area, bind spot and unknown. There are some adjectives or qualities also that fits in these four cells. The qualities in the open cell are known to both the individual as well as the people who communicate with them or understand them. The hidden cell allows the qualities of the individuals to identify the qualities about which only the individual has the knowledge but the people around him or her do not know (Baron, Franklin and Hmieleski 2016). The blind spot qualities are those about which the individual does not know anything but the people know or understand him know greatly and finally the unknown cell allows those qualities about which neither the individual not the people around him have any knowledge.   Johari Window helped myself to know my hidden or bind spot qualities based on which I usually respond in a critical situation. This also helped my fellow group members to identify theirs so that they can change their weaknesses into strength and match their personality in the organizational context.

DISC model or dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness model mainly deal with the behavior and task or people orientation of the individuals. The influence, steadiness factors are more associated with those people who are more people oriented and capture the personal qualities like enthusiasm, optimism, patience, accommodating and humbleness (Abbas et al. 2014). These people are more accustomed with diversity in the group and do not feel problem with the diverse ideology at the time of work. On the contrary, the people with high dominance and conscientiousness qualities are more focusses on the tasks. They are forceful, direct, result oriented, analytical, and reserved yet systematic ad strong willed (Siu, Cheung and Lu 2015). This is the reason why the conflict started to affect the group as these people do not match themselves with the ideas of the others and more direct to share their comments. Based on this personality traits, I decided to distribute the works among the group member in such a way they do not depend upon the ideas of the other and if they need so, they would have to ask me as a project manager for all the details. This effectively reduced the effect of conflict among the team members.

Impact of different personality traits

Myers-Briggs personality model is another effective tool to identify the personality traits of the people. This model also has four scales such as extroversion and introversion, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling and finally judging and perception scales. The EI or extroversion and introversion scale decide whether the person prefer to communicate other the external environment or not and whether he depends on the self-discovery of things and then make decisions (Bouckenooghe, Zafar and Raja 2015). This scale assisted me to identify the communication gap in the members of the group which I needed to mitigate within a limited period of time. The judging and perception scale deals with the people’s focus on proper identification of method and willingness to work out the task. This scale has helped me to identify which of the group members are interested to judge all the aspects of their responsibilities and who depend on the perception only to do the task. Thus, I identified the group members who believe in purposefulness and preference of organizations of plans. Based on this revelation I distributed responsibilities of tasks among the members without discriminating based on their cultural an ethnic background.

The thinking and feeling scale determine the decision-making process of the people. The people with thinking qualities, do not rely on the values and beliefs but use logical criteria to make decisions and act upon them (Newman et al. 2014). On the contrary, the people with feeling nature make decisions depending upon their beliefs and values hence their decisions do not get logical base and firmness. This scale thus helped me to identify the logical people whose decisions were to be depended upon. The sensing and intuition scale revolve round the idea that the people gather information form the external sources though their senses or their intuitions. The people who depended upon their intuitions not always helped them to understand all the matters related to the project but on the other hand, the sensing people listen to others and see things so that they can gain knowledge and make decision according to rh need of the situation. In order to come out of the conflict I used these personality scales effectively so that I can mange every situation in the project.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the four tools are effective to identify the personality traits of the people and identify the psychological causes of the conflicts. Thus, proper undertaking of these personality factors is important to know so that self-awareness of the people increases and help them to manage their ideology and preferences. These tools also supportive of understanding the skills and expectation of the project managers as these helps to find quick answer to all complicated issues associated with response to diversity.

References:

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Bouckenooghe, D., Zafar, A. and Raja, U., 2015. How ethical leadership shapes employees’ job performance: The mediating roles of goal congruence and psychological capital. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(2), pp.251-264.

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Ten Brinke, L., Black, P.J., Porter, S. and Carney, D.R., 2015. Psychopathic personality traits predict competitive wins and cooperative losses in negotiation. Personality and Individual Differences, 79, pp.116-122.

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Wu, W.L. and Lee, Y.C., 2017. Empowering group leaders encourages knowledge sharing: integrating the social exchange theory and positive organizational behavior perspective. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(2), pp.474-491.