Course: Organizational Behaviour

Answer: 1

Leadership is the ability to make right decisions and motivate others to perform well. It
is the process of motivating individuals to work towards achieving common goals in the
interest of organization. In short Leadership is to get things done from others. Leaders
should possess the ability to achieve challenging targets. Leader should be able to take
immediate decisions.

A leader should posses following people skills:

Assertive Skills: Good leadership require assertiveness, the skill of being able to stand
up for your rights and for other people rights as well in positive and calm way.

Communication Skills: Leaders with god communication skills can communicate their
ideas and views effectively.

Motivation Skills: A good leader will motivate his team with rewards, recognition, goals
and strength to make their work better.

Adaptive Skills: A good leader should posses adaptive skills t take fair decisions, to
manage communication, motivation techniques to solve the individual’s problems and
meet their needs.

Some people step into leadership role before they are ready to take position. Some seek
out position of leadership on their own or sometime it can be the requirement of the time
like if organization looses a key member and all of sudden need to fill the position. But
leadership can not be learned overnight and they tend to make mistakes like they confuse
control with delegation, most leader care about the title than the job requirement, they
take credit for wins and shift blame to other for losses, they work less and expect more
and the most leader treat others the way they were treated.
In Kiran’s case, as a leader her behavior with Shanaya is not appropriate. Her behavior
with Shanaya is dictatorial. She sees herself through an unrealistic lense of pride. In the
cover of perfectionist she severely damaged her personal relations with Shanaya. All her
behavior shows in her is Personal Pitfalls of leadership.

Leaders may experience several obstacles in way of initiatives taken. A leader can be
having following Personal Pitfalls:

Criticism: Leaders needs to be prepared to handle criticism without being personal

.Praises and blames from success and failure should kept separate. Good leaders take
criticism as a mean of improvement.

Dictatorship: A personal pitfall arises in leadership when leader operates like a dictator.
They are unrealistic in demand, use excessive discipline and punishment, does not allow
others to question their decisions. They keep their personal objectives above those of
their team members and lay unrealistic targets for them. But a leader should collaborative
in nature.

Role Confusion: A leader’s responsibility is to serve his team and think of their welfare,
motivate them, guide them by defining their roles and providing them with the tools to
achieve their targets in the interest of the company. But generally in passion to achieve
their objectives leaders often ignore other team members associated with them.

Other than Personal Pitfalls there are Organizational Pitfalls and Environmental Pitfalls
which impact the leaders.

Organizational Pitfalls: it is all about that leader is not able to understand the
organizational culture. Every organization has its own work culture. If leader does not
understand the culture, then he will not be able to realize the goals and objectives of the
company. The rules and principles driving an organization should be well versed by the
leader to understand the consequences of not following it. A leader who misses the
cultural clues will have limited success in helping to lead that organization in new
direction.
Environmental Pitfalls: Due to social, political, legislative and economic changes,
organizations and their external environment changes constantly. Environmental
influences often come from outside the organization and organizations need to respond
these changes by implementing new plans and policies. New services and products may
have to be developed and implemented to overcome competition. Budget cuts, merging
of departments or division within department are common responses to economic
changes in the environment. It will be challenging to keep employees motivated at the
time of crises or change. Leader should bring in changes in his work procedures and
strategies. A leader should adapt these changes and set an example by leading the team
through the change and inspire other to do the same.

A good leader should posses strong communication skills, passion, commitment,

positivity, innovation and collaboration qualities. Good leadership is very important for the
development of an organization. It is the most influential and critical element for all the
businesses. Good leadership provides the improved productivity of the workforce, growth
of confidence in team, improved communication and listening skills, encourage new ideas
and helps in management of crises.
Leader can overcome from pitfalls by inspiring or motivating their subordinate, by
encouraging open communication among team members. As a leader one must have the
quality to extract best out of team members. He or she must use different leadership
styles to overcome the challenges.

Answer: 2
Motivation can described as an internal feeling or psychological process that impacts the
direction, intensity and patience of a person’s willing choice of behaviour. It is a
continuous process and it should not be disturbed. Motivation consists of three elements
need, drive and incentives. Need is created when there is psychological imbalance. Drive
alleviate the need and it increases the hunger to achieve the goals. Incentives are the
end of the process where drive reduced and needs alleviated.

Importance of Motivation

Motivation is very important for the organisations as it is an internal feeling which helps
the people to achieve their personal and professional goals. It comes from within an
individual. Human behaviour get influenced more by self-motivation than external
influences. It gives direction to achieve the targets. Motivated employees are highly goal
oriented, energetic and determined. They are more productive. It influences the behaviour
of employees in positive way which helps organisations in achieving their targets through
their employees. It builds employees interest in work which helps in reducing
absenteeism.

Acting as good leader Anay continuously tried to motivate his team by giving rewards like
gift vouchers, appreciation mails and acknowledgement certificates in lieu of his team’s
good work. This kind of behaviour of Anay motivated his team which results in to high
performance. So his team was highly motivated and determined to work hard and could
manage to achieve pre-determined goals. Here Anay used Positive Reinforcement
theory of motivation to get the desired results from his team.

Reinforcement Theory

Theory of Reinforcement was proposed by B.F. Skinner. This theory works on “Law of
Effect” i.e. an individual generally repeats those actions which are having positive
consequences and ignores those actions which results in negative outcome. An employer
can influence and change the behaviour of employee using reinforcement. Reinforcement
can be positive or negative.
According to this theory following are the elements which can be used to control
employee’s behaviour:
Positive Reinforcement: It happens where the positive response to an employee’s given
on their positive behaviour and likely to impact the organisation well. For example if an
employee is praised for doing his work before the targeted time, then the probability of
that employee putting more efforts towards the work is positive reinforcement. This form
of reinforcement includes bonuses, appreciation or some sort of rewards. It encourages
the employees to keep doing desired behaviour. When employees are positively
reinforced for their good work, they are more likely to receptive to change, excited about
their job and act as team players etc.

Negative Reinforcement: This involves rewarding an employee by stopping, removing

or avoiding a negative outcome. This method can be used to increase the frequency of a
desired behavior. Basically it is a process of taking something away in order to increase
a response. It can be used as a management tool to motivate employees and control their
behaviour by removing undesired conditions.

Punishment: This reinforcement is imposed where there is the requirement of stopping

undesired behaviour of employees. It involves removing of positive consequences to
discourage undesired behaviour. Punishment seeks to decrease the likelihood of a
certain behaviour from happening again.

Extinction: It involves the absence of any kind of reinforcement. Extinction occurs when
you stop reinforcing behaviour. Extinction can undo all the work of positive reinforcement.
But in the absence of appreciation or rewards; morale and productivity of an employee
may go down and can impact the business. For the reason company organisation may
need to continue positive rewards so that positive behaviour continue.

Managers can apply different types of motivation theories and reinforcement tools to
motivate employees to increase their efficiency. In management context reinforcement
includes salary hikes, bonuses, promotions, flexible working hours, paid leaves etc.
Positive reinforcement technique may include incentive programs, encouraging specific
actions, behaviour etc.

Managers are responsible for identifying what behaviour should be promoted and what
kind of behaviour should be discouraged by considering organisation’s objectives in the
process. Incentive programs can boost the morale and loyalty, improve wellness,
increase retention and drive daily performance in employees.

Answer: 3
Conflict, the word conflict has many meanings like simple argument, disagreement and
even quarrel. But in an organisation its definition changes completely. In an organisation
conflict is state of disagreement between people working together by the actual or
discovered opposition of needs, values and interests. There precise forms of conflicts
involving jealousy, personality clash, role definition, struggle for power, rivalries etc. there
may be conflict between individuals, between competing needs and demands to which
every individual responds in a different way.

According to Pondy, conflict can be defined as “The condition of objective incompatibility

between values and goals, as the behaviour of deliberately interfering with another’s goal
achievement and as emotionally in terms of hostility”
There are different point of view or approaches in context of conflict.

Traditional view: All types of conflicts are bad and harmful for an organisation, it must
be avoided. According to this view, manager should try to resolve all types of conflicts
within the organisation.

Human Relation View: According to this view conflict is a natural phenomenon, so

cannot be eliminated. Here conflict is seen in a positive way for success and growth of an
organisation. It suggests that in the presence of conflict; individual’s or group’s
performance can be improved.

Interactionist View: According to this view some kind of conflict is very much necessary
for effective performance of a group.

Conflict can arise because on ineffective communication, diversity in different employees

personality and value systems, unrealistic expectations, resistance to change and
individuals behaviour.

Conflict can have positive aspects as well as negative aspects. In positive way it can lead
to change in organizational culture, which can be beneficial for all he employees, increase
in healthy competition and creativity. Whereas negative aspects of conflict may lead to
performance degradation and low employee retention.
(a) Conflicts can arise at any level in an organisation, it can occur in individuals or in
groups or to the organisation level. Conflict with in groups can often cause by
struggle over control, status etc.
There are mainly three types of conflicts, Interpersonal conflicts, Inter- group conflicts
and intra-personal conflicts.

In Shiva and Sanjay’s case it seems that they are having Inter-Personal conflicts.

Inter-Personal Conflict: This is the most common form of conflict occurs in two
persons. Conflict arise due to cultural differences, family backgrounds, educational
values etc. It may arise due to ineffective communication. Other causes may be
incompatible roles assigned to two individuals in contrast to their functions and tasks
which are interdependent. Environment issues like stress, downsizing, market
competition and certainties may lead to interpersonal conflicts.

There two important concepts in context of inter-personal conflicts:

Transactional Analysis: It was introduced by Dr. Eric Berne. It is a technique which

can help people to understand their own and other people’s behaviour. Ego plays an
important role in human behaviour. People’s interaction with each other in terms of
psychological position or behavioural patterns is called as ego. There are three
important ego states Child, adult and parent. Where a verbal or non-verbal
conversation occurs is called transaction. Basically this analysis outlines that how we
treat ourselves.

Johari Window: Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed this model in 1955. This
model observes one’s personality includes behaviour and attitude that can be know
or unknown to others. This can help people to build better relations with one another
by trusting, solving issues and working more effectively as a team.

Johari Window is divided into four parts:

Open Area- In this area information about person like attitude, behaviour, skills,
emotions feelings and views are represented which is known by the person itself and
others as well.
Blind Area: Blind area represents the information about yourself that you are not
aware of but other know like incompetence, unworthiness, rejection and feeling of
inadequacy etc. and others may interpret it differently than you expect.

Hidden Area: This area represents the information which you know about yourself but
others are not aware of it like past experiences, feelings, secrets and fears etc.

Unknown Area: This area represents the information which is not known to you and
others as well like feelings, capabilities and talent.

The main motive of the Johari window is to expand the open area as this is the area
where all communication happens. As much as this area will expand the relations will
become more dynamic.

As soon as Shiva came to know that Sanjay’s salary is more than his salary, It made
him upset. His behaviour changed towards Sanjay, he got tense and frustrated and
started loading his work on Sanjay.

(b) Shiva could have effectively handled this conflict by trying to resolve the issue. He
could have followed following steps to resolve his conflict with Sanjay.

1. By recognizing the problem and trying to know the reasons why is he getting more
salary than him?
2. By discussing his problem with Sanjay and could get the best solution by focusing
upon real root cause.
3. He could have escalate the issue with HR department and could have taken the
help to clarify his doubts.

It is obvious to have some kind of conflict due to miscommunication and

misunderstandings, when people are involved. Different people have different values
and different priorities and people generally resist to change and all these things lead
to conflict at workplace. Here problem is that of having conflict, but how to handle the
conflict is important. A conflict has to be resolved when it reaches to the optimal level.
Inter –personal conflict can be resolved by applying following techniques:

Problem Solving: In this approach, the person should try to remove the source of
conflict. This is the direct approach of dealing with conflict. Using this approach conflict
is identified and removed.

Work to minimize conflict: People should take steps to minimize the conflict at work
place by trying to develop good relations with co-workers and colleagues.

Work on communication Skills: If you can express yourself clearly, it will you to say
what is there in your mind, you can address your problem well.

Use a mediator if it requires: If the situation arises, which is troublesome, you can
involve a mediator. Mediator will listen both sides and facilitate resolution and
compromise.

Authoritative Command: You can address the problem to formal authority. Manager
can resolve the issue.

Interpersonal conflicts can come across for nearly any reason. It may happen that
people may dislike each other for their opinions or work ethics. These conflicts should
be resolved at the earliest possible. Conflict can’t be avoided, it can be resolved to
minimize. If a conflict is handled ineffectively and is ignored, the result can be
damaging. It can be easily turned into personal dislikes and team breakdowns and the
talent will be wasted as people get distracted from their work.