Organisation Equality And Diversity Research: Empathy And Trust In An Organization

Literature Overview

Discuss about the Organisation Equality and Diversity Research.

It is often been controversial that empathy and trust are essential and important for having an effective and cooperative workforce in an organization. It should also be noted that trust is essential in all aspects of life, i.e. personal, professional and social. It imbibes friendships facilitating negotiations and bargaining that minimizes costs of transaction related to inter-organizational exchanges. Conflicts regarding international politics are also resolved through trust and empathy (Basu, 2014). The decisions of an organization, mostly related to investments are also affected. Trust facilitates investments of assets in an effective way by giving assurance to the parties that there would be no event of bargaining power abuse post agreement making. Empathy and trust can be considered to be fundamental ingredients to obtain a productive and positive work process and the environment (Colgan, 2015).

The concept of empathy and trust has become so prominent in academic analysis and public debate. The interest in these competencies, especially in the developed countries is related to the affair of trust declining in both governmental and private organizations and the professionals working. This concern has been raised by debates as social capital motion in the developing countries. Gladman, Porock & Griffiths said that it should be noted that trust is considered as a major factor that influences aspects like relationship marketing, investments of capital, cross-cultural communication and well as various other types of cooperation (Gladman, Porock & Griffiths, 2014).  It has become very important with time to have proper trust management inside the organizations. As per Hill, the assignment deals with the review of empathy and trust in an organization. However, major challenges that are methodological and conceptual that is to be addressed while analysing this vital concept (Hill, 2015).

Trust has been an important factor for prediction of outcomes related to cooperative behaviour, organizational commitment, citizenship behaviour in an organization, and loyalty of the employees. In order to build trust among the employees within an organization, it should be the desired goals of all the employees. As per Heales et al, the challenge is how to develop and efforts to maintain the trust among the employees and by the employees in the organization. Empathy and trust are the fundamentals to have effective communication, understanding, and relationships (Heales et al., 2016). These two factors are essential for developing and improving the solutions, retaining and winning the business along with diffusing or avoiding conflicts. Trust and empathy are necessary to retain the customers and handling the complaints (Henderson & Bigby, 2016). According to the recent times, there is more demand to be more efficient in communication in order to be successful in handling business as well as life. According to Love, Lopez & Kim, the steps associated with sales that are closing techniques, persuasion, benefits and features do not contribute in building relationships and rapport that can be specified as trust, empathy, sympathetic and understanding communications. Persuasion from one side does not sustain for a longer term and is often found to be insulting, mostly while handling the complaints (Love, Lopez & Kim, 2014). Empathy and trust are way more crucial to achieve and have a sustainable business as well as personal relationships. There have been instances; it is hard to sell when many consumers and people associated with business are not much interested in exposing themselves to the circumstances where there are chances of being asked to make decisions (Lewis, 2015).  This results in extra pressure on the arrival process of a deal. For this special skills are required to manage the circumstances under which business is executed. Petersen, Tabita & Agger  said that most of the business gurus who are associated with the areas of management, communications, and self-development are referred in some or the other way to the significance of empathy which the real comprehension of the feelings and position of the other person. Having the ability to step back and make efforts in achieving detachment from emotions is necessary for having constructive and effective relationships (Petersen, Tabita & Agger, 2015).

Diagnostic Tools Used During the Study

Trust has been studied in various disciplines and every discipline has its own definitions, findings, and concepts. Mostly trust is treated as a state, expectation or belief in a positive way. As per Shanahan et al, it can also be defined as the expectations that people, or institutions or groups with which we come in contact with cooperate and interact and act in conductive ways to well-being of all (Shanahan et al., 2015). However, in most of the cases being sure of others is not feasible as others prove to be free agents and trusting them is a kind of gamble that involves certain risks. It is risky for the future and the contingency is the action of others.

There are different models of trust, most of them take the tractor’s perspective or are static. Among the few proposers of trust theories, Zand is one who presents a very prominent interactive model. Consideration is made between "P" and "O" to be two individuals in the scene. If it happens that P lacks trust, he will tend to disclose some accurate or relevant information, become not willing to influence sharing and have the tendency to control O (Tierney et al., 2014). If the assumption is taken that O is lacking trust and perceives the initial behaviour of P as not worth trusting. O will feel the justification in mistrusting P. As P will perceive behaviour of O as not worth trusting, he will get the confirmation in the expectation which he had initially that O would not worth trusting and P will tend to behave with lesser trust than when he did enter. Some features of trust concepts are also found such as:

• Trust is interpersonal
• Trust is situational rather than a global influence
• Trust must be voluntary as it is a choice and not compulsion.
• Trust depends on being conscious as both the parties are very much aware of each other's trust.

Empathy is the capacity of relating and experiencing the emotions, experience or thoughts of others. Empathy can be devoted to be much more than conventional sympathy that is being able to support and understand others with sensitivity or compassion. As per Uppal, in a workplace environment, being empathetic can show respect for colleagues showing the care which is like going reverse of the rules and regulations (Uppal, 2016). It can be considered as a powerful tool in the belt of leadership of a well-respected and well-liked executive. Empathy, in an organization, gives rise to a safe feeling with personal failures. Leaders are also encouraged to understand the main cause of performing poorly.

One of the models of empathy was derived by Fleiss. He stated that empathy is the trial identification and its process can be described as to involve four parts that are distinct. The first part includes the analyst as the object of strive on an individual. Secondly, the second person identifies with the first person who is to be emphasized and replicates him (Walton, 2015). After having experienced the strife of the individual, the analyst reflects it back to the first person with knowledge that in internal. From the stated process, the analyst acquires the basics of emotions for his or her interpretation.

Johari Window:

This is a technique which is used in assisting people in understanding relationships with others as well as themselves. This tool was created by psychologists Harrington Ingham and Joseph Luft in the year 1955. It was used during the study as this tool primarily assisted groups that are self-help by nature and corporate organizations as heuristic exercise. As per Wates, this exercise involved subjects who were provided with a list of adjectives and they had to choose some that appeared to them as describing their personality (Wates, 2014).  The peers of the subject were given the list and every individual had to choose adjectives of the same number that gave the description of the subject. The adjectives were then placed in a grid during the study.

The second tool that was used during the study was the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Questionnaire which had many pairs of statements which described probable responses corresponding to the behaviour regarding a situation of conflict.  One had to choose either A or B among the options if they corresponded to the behaviour of the individuals. If it did not resonate with their behaviour, they were free to select the statement or responses which he or she would feel like using more. Some of the statements from the questionnaire are:

There are situations when I happen to let other people be accountable for problem-solving.

Instead of negotiating things upon which we disagree, I give efforts on those matters on which both the parties agree.

A. I give efforts in finding a compromising solution.

I happen to handle all of the concerns, both of the other party's and mine.

The third tool that was used by during the group study was the Belbin team inventory. It is a tool that helps in measuring the behaviour of each team player and provides the language in order to ensure that proper collaboration and communication of better understanding happens between the teams. Each and every team is its diversity and thus, Belbin team inventory helped in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the team. This tool was used as it finds application in the management of change, management of conflict, coaching, recruitment and development of leadership (Zhang et al., 2014). The development of plans and goals that are professional are complemented by this comprehensive tool. This tool was also used during the study to seek positive impact on individual working environment and relationships currently.

• Understanding of the way the team members saw themselves within the environment of work.
• Learning a language that was common in order to communicate with the collaborations and teammates.
• Understanding along with having a visualization of how the roles of the team would come to life.

The strengths that were identified during the study were that the team members became diligent, earnest, anxious for effectiveness, perfection and having polished results, troubleshooting of issues. The weaknesses that were observed after scrutinizing the entire work in order to find errors are inclined towards unduly worries and being reluctant for delegation.

After proper study throughout the task through the diagnostic tools and literature overview, the following realistic development plan was made.

Conclusion:

In an organization where trust and empathy are low, negative consequences associated with economies can be expected. Every aspect running the organization would be costlier and longer in duration as people in the organization will be needed to take various measures in order to compensate for low trust. The leaders in the organization do realize while calculating and analyzing the costs that how not having standardized trust becomes a hindrance in economic matters in the growth of the organization. Thus, reviewing the significance of empathy and trust in an organization has been able to provide us with valuable knowledge.

References

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