Personality

The difference between the nurture and nature approach to personality is that:

The nature approach says that personality is inherited and that traits of personality can be passed down to people though genetics, for example if a person was a power and successful leader 200 years ago then their descendants would also be successful and powerful people. On the other hand the nurture approach explains that that personality is developed due to environmental conditions this means that dependant on where a individual is will have an impact on their personality. For example if a person works in an office and they had a happy personality before depending on the working environment they employ personality can change in contrast to eh work environment.  Below is explained the Nomothetic and ideographic approaches to personality .

Nomothetic

The Nomothetic approaches are primarily concerned with the collection of group data.  An example of a nomothetic approach is the nature approach to personality.

Nomothetic approaches tend to view environmental and social influences as not very important and view personality as inherited and that it does not change even in a different environment. It does not reduce the difficulty that personality brings but the , Nomothetic approach says that it is possible to measure and predict the ways in which personality types would behave in certain circumstances. (Mullins, 2008)

Eyesenck conducted an investigation of 700 servicemen and was able to use thorough statistical data to test his hypotheses, what  his findings showed was that it supported the notion that there were two major differences which could be measured these were extroversion and stability .

What Eysenck`s theory showed was that an individual could fit in to one of four main personality

types.  Eysenck’s theory and his subsequent Personality Inventory allowed identification of a personality type. From this description it was possible to predict likely behaviours. Eysenck had a clear view about the constancy of personality. He believed that personality was largely inherited and that introverts and extroverts are born with differing physiological tendencies. Furthermore, he argued that the personality we are born with is largely unalterable by environmental influences. Eyesenck`s approach to personality relates to managers in organisations which are concerned with predicting the future behaviour of employees, for Selection and promotion.  (Mullins, 2004)

Ideographic

The Idiographic approaches are concerned with understanding the individuality of people

and development.  An example of an ideographic approach is the nurture approach to personality They regard personality development as a process which is open to change. The measurement of traits is seen as inappropriate in that one person’s responses you may not be abler to compare to another persons. The ideographic approach suggests that personality assessment is not a valid method of understanding the unique

ways in which a person may understand the world. The depth of a person’s personality cannot be revealed in a way such as with paper-and-pencil questionnaires.

 Cattell and Eysenck both used similar  methods in studying personality. He used

Quantitative. He used objective techniques in order to analyse his data and followed traditional scientific procedures in order to understand personality. Cattell used three main sources for the collection of personality data. These are

1 L-data (life record data) – this is used in ratings by trained observers.

2 Q-data (self-rating questionnaire) –  these are responses to a questionnaire which measured

personality traits

3 T-data (test data) – these are observations collected in specific situation tests.

                                                                                                                                          (Mullins, 2004)

In my opinion the dominant influence between the nurture and nature is the nurture approach. The reason for this is that there is no guarantee that personality traits can or will be inherited by people . As times change, personality traits that may have been an advantage in the past will not be necessary in the present day, so if someone inherits some traits form a family member they will not be able to use these personality traits depending on their positions within a business.  Nurture personality approach is more dominant because what it shows is that someone’s personality is affected and can be changed due to their environment they are within , this is true as if someone hangs out with a certain type of people or works in a certain job a persons personality will change.  For example a student in the university personality would change and adapt to a new environment when they go to a job ,  the persons would be more serious and focused on doing their job on the other hand the personality of the student would be happy and wanting to have fun but due to the change in environment their personality would be affected.  For this reason the more dominant approach of personality is nurture.

References

Mullins. L (2004) management and organisational behaviour , 7^th edition : Ft Prentice Hall

Perception and communication

A situation within which my initial perception of someone was incorrect was in school. The situation was that a new person had joined the school and due to the dress code they had, what was perceived by the students was that he was weird. This was due to stereotypical view because the person used to wear a lot of dark clothing and did not try to interact with other people or make any contribution in class. What my initial perception was that this person was odd and that I would not like to be friends with this person. Then one day I was told by the teacher to work with the person in pairs on a project. Instead of being withdrawn and not wanting to speak to, the persons and I got along very well and he had said that he liked gothic music that was the reason for his dress code and that people thought that he was some depressed kid and stayed away from him. After getting to know the person I was able to realise my initial perception was incorrect and that he was the same as other but was more shy, as the project progressed we become good friends until we finished school. In order to avoid making this type of judgment and having an incorrect perception of an individual I would try to get to know the person first and not listen to stereotypes as this could lead to an incorrect perception of someone

After reading the article on “how to improve staff communication”

http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/07/how-to-improve-staff-communication.htm

 I have identified 3 ways in which the university can improve communication with students these are:

• 1.    The university could branch further into social networking and set up face book and twitter pages on which latest information regarding the university could be posted, in regard to any events taking place at the university or if they are taking place in the surrounding area around the university.  By doing this an improvement in communication between staff and students would be established as students and staff would be provided the same information as staff members regarding events.

• 2.       Instead of using the email system that is being used at present by the university, they could notify students by text messages, face book and twitter messages if lectures are cancelled or if the university will not be open on the day, this could be due to bad weather such as snow.

• 3.       Weekly tutorial meetings could take place in order. This would be very good as it would allow students to ask any questions or explaining any difficulties they may be facing in the course with their personal tutors.  the tutors could also sit down with each student in their group and talk to them about the current progress they are making on the course and how they could improve their progress in order to achieve higher grades and they could be told about essential deadline dates or work they need to have completed In order to make sure that all students are up to date on the course.  

Conflict

A conflict is when a issue arises in a group of two or more people about an issue that they both disagree about and by having different views and not accepting the others opinions or suggestions a conflict arises. An example to define conflict would be that while studying at Uxbridge college I was put into a group of three with two other people they where john and James, what we were asked to do was to present a slideshow presentation on airline business in front of the class. After some personality clashes we came to a conclusion and I was nominated to be leder of the group , by acting as leader of the group I assigned tasks for all members of the group to carry out. The members in our group were each given the task to do 3 slides each to describe the content within the presentation. John was meant to do the first three slides that was the introduction to the presentation and gave some background information on airlines. I did the main slides that went into detail about the airlines and included other important information and the James was to do the last slides with a conclusion. The conflict that arose within the group was that I and john felt that James was not contributing to the group presentation and so we confronted him, James was not willing to do the work and was expecting to be able to receive credit fro the work that I and James had done. The strategy that we used was to tell James that if he did not do his part and contribute to the presentation then we would leave the PowerPoint slides blank and he would have to explain to the lecturer why he had not done the work. In the end James did not contribute to the PowerPoint presentation and the group as a whole failed the task due to the work being incomplete.

French and ravens sources of power

Leadership and power are closely linked. People tend to follow those who are powerful. And because others follow, the person with power leads. Most effective leaders use mainly referent and expert power. (mindtools.com, 2011)

The different French and ravens sources of power that were identified in 1959 are:

Coercive power:  It is the belief that a person is entitled to punish others for not complying. (mindtools.com, 2011).  The problem that can be with this source of power is that it can be prone to abuse. Examples of coercive power is that, people in higher positions in a business threatening employees under their control  with being fired or demoting them to lower positions, giving them task that are undesirable and the managers knowing that an employee is not comfortable with  carrying out the tasks.  Most mangers will abuse this power although they may have to punish employees if they do not carry out the job they were assigned to do, the managers do not have the right to threaten their employees without any reasons. This type of power will cause lots of problems for the business, it could lead to employees not willing to work under the mangers and either leaving or asking to be moved to different departments within the business. An example of coercive power within a business is that a manger has assingemd employees a task to complete, an employ has refused to carry out the task because he does not feel comfortable doing the task. The employee objects to the manger and say that he would like to be assigned to another task because he is not comfortable carrying out the task because he may not have much experience in the certain filed. The manager not accepting to give the employee a different assignment they are more comfortable and feeling a sense of non compliance from the employee says to the employee if they do not carry out the task they will be fired. This would be a case of coercive power, in order for the leader to be a good leader he or she needs to make sure that they do not rely on coercive power alone and also instead of just punishing employees also reward them for jobs done well.

Reward power : This results from one person's ability to compensate another for compliance. . (mindtools.com, 2011).  People that have power are able to give rewards to employees these can range from promotions, desirable assignments training opportunities or a compliment.  All of these are rewards given by people that are in higher positions in power.  Although employees will expect to receive big rewards in return for getting assignments completed to the person in power for example a managers standards, they will expect to receive a reward for this. Although this can increase performance of staff and can benefit the business n a positive way , reward power can also be problematic. The reason behind this is that there is not much control in the business in ways to reward employees as even the CEO has to ask permission of the board of directors before handing out rewards to employees, also if the reward given is not of any perceived value by individuals then the power will weaken.  The reward should be used to motivate employees to work hard on getting assignments done and should not be given to employees very easily. An example of reward power in a business is if an employee completed to a high standard a task they were assigned to, the reward given to him or her by the mangers being impressed with the quality of work be a raise in salary or a promotion to a higher position.

Expert power: This is based on a person's superior skill and knowledge. (mindtools.com, 2011)  when a person in a higher position has advanced knowledge and skills to deal with task in the business,  employees will look up to them and try to learn from them new skills that would allow them to develop the skills as well. When expertise have been demonstrated then people tend to respect and trust their supervisors and mangers more. An expert in a specific subject matter, the ideals of the person in power will have more value and they will be looked up to for leadership in the certain subject area.  It is one of the best ways to improve leadership skills as the leaders can use their confidence and rational thinking and expand them to other subjects and issues. An example of expert power would be facing problems at work with a private issue or maybe unable to complete the tasks,  a member of the team or the manager would offer solutions to the problems that they would be facing, the employees would take the advice and apply it to the job at hand the reason for this is that the manger has more experience in the field of work.

Referent power: This is the result of a person's perceived attractiveness, worthiness, and right to respect from others (mindtools.com, 2011) this is thought of as charisma, charm, admiration, or appeal.  Referent power comes from a person liking and respecting another and identifies with the person in a similar manner. An example of referent manner is an employee with some charm and makes everyone around them feel good for this reason they normally have a lot of influence in decision making.  To have referent power is a big responsibility because work is not necessarily need to be done in order to earn it, for this reason people with this power can abuse it quite easily.  An example of this in business would be, if an employee was very likable in a business and hard working and able to make people happy but lacked honesty and would often lie could rise to power and use the power in ways to hurt and alienate fellow employees for personal gains or advantage in getting a promotion.  If a leader wanted to have a successful leadership position and be respected  it would not be a good strategy for him or her to  rely solely on referent power alone.  When combined with other sources of power, however, it can help you achieve great success (mindtools.com, 2011).

Legitimate power: This comes from the belief that a person has the right to make demands, and expect compliance and obedience from others. Social hierarchies, cultural norms, and organizational structure all provide the basis for legitimate power. (mindtools.com, 2011). Legitimate power is unpredictable and unstable, because if the title of position of a person is lost then legitimate power will disappear, the reason for this is that people where influence by the position the individual had and not by the person that position.  An example of this is that if the CEO of Microsoft was to be fired from his position by the board of directors then he would lose his legitimate power as people and employees were influenced not by who he was and what he did but the power and position he had in the business, suck as making important decisions that could lead to increased profits and a better reputation of the business.  In terms of legitimate power ,  the scope of power is limited to the time that people such as board of directors believe that the CEO has the right to control and if they believe they are making a loss then the CEO would instantly be removed form the position and legitimate power would be lost. Also relying on legitimate power as the only way to influence people is not enough, in order to be a good leader you need more and in some job roles legitimate power will not be needed at all in order to influence people.

What can be seen from the work related stress article is that, businesses should make sure that their staff members are not put under stress by giving them lots of work to do, they businesses should make sure that employees are given sufficient breaks and not required to work long hours.  By looking at the statistics mentioned in the article, what can be seen is that stress is slowly becoming a major risk to business; this will have a large impact on how employees work and the business performance.  If employees are under stress they will not be able to work to the best of their ability and as the article shows will take days of from work. This can lead to the business not being able to provide the same services or manufactures the same amount of products which will result in the business losing profits and could lead to employees leaving due to the large amount of work they are required to do and because of stress cannot handle. Work relates stress does not only affect an employee’s performance at work but also affect their home life and health. Business in order to decrease the stress that their employees are having should carry out surveys to find out what they feel is leading to them having too much stress and try to deal with the problems that employees are facing. Due to the recession many business have had to make their employees redundant and this has lead to employees who have been kept on by the business to take on extra work, this would also lead to stress for employees. The article shows that there are lots of different factors contributing to work related stress and that business are not doing anything to deal with it, what the article outlines is that if business do not make changes then employees will leave the business not being able to deal with stress and this will effect the business in the long run.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in order for person to be a successful leader and be an inspiration for their employees , it is essential that a good leader how at least two of French and ravens powers, the powers that would be best to have are referent power and expert , the reason for this is that both the powers go hand in hand and attributes of these powers allow a person within any type of business to be a good leader and get along with employees without problems, employees will also be more comfortable in a working environment if the leader has expertise in certain fields and is also rewarding and encourages employees when they do a good job. There will always be conflict in organisations especially when people with different personalities are required to work together, what can be done to avoid there being conflicts developing the business should know which employees work well together and have the same way of thinking as this will allow people with the same way of thinking to work together, this can be tricky though as in a group there will always be conflicts between members of a group.  As mentioned when at college working with others was very stressful and by confronting the person who there was conflict with a solution to the problem was found and the group although did not pass was able to work well together. 

References

mindtools.com, (2011) French and ravens source of power [online] Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm [Accessed 21 December 2011].