Understanding Individual Behavior

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Management, 14e
Chapter 14: Understanding Individual
Behavior

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Icebreaker
• Either individually or in groups of 4–6 people, take a blank sheet of paper.
Draw a star on your individual paper for each “yes” response and an X for
each “no” response to the following questions:
 Are you wearing sneakers/tennis shoes?
 Are you a morning person?
 Do you like to drink coffee?
 Do you play video games more than 5 hours a week?
 Are you an introvert?
 Are you usually on time?
• Compare number of stars and Xs on your own and each others’ papers.
Reflect on how you drew your stars and Xs (size, shape, placement,
etc.). Reflect on how your drawing and responses are unique. For
groups, did you discover someone had the same responses as you?

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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
• By the end of this chapter you should be able to:
1. Describe two methods for enhancing self-awareness.
2. Discuss the importance of job satisfaction and trust for
effective employee performance.
3. Explain the fundamental attribution error, and give an
example of it from your own experience.
4. Describe two of the Big Five personality traits, and explain
how each trait might influence a manager’s behaviors
toward direct reports.

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Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
• By the end of this chapter you should be able to:
5. Describe the value of the four components of emotional
intelligence for managers.
6. Outline a step-by-step system for managing yourself and your
time.
7. Describe two ways organizations can enhance employee
resilience to manage stress and improve health, satisfaction,
and productivity.

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Value and Difficulty of Knowing Yourself
(LO 1)
• Self-awareness: being aware of the internal aspects of one’s nature, such as
personality traits, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions, and appreciating how your
patterns affect other people
• Effective leaders know who they are and what they stand for
• To be a good manager, self-reflection is essential

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Enhancing Self-Awareness (1 of 2)
(LO 1)
• Solicit feedback
− Seeking feedback to enhance self-awareness improves performance and
job satisfaction
− Blind spots: attributes about themselves that people are not aware of or
don’t recognize as problems

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Enhancing Self-Awareness (2 of 2)
(LO 1)
• Self-assessment
− Reflection to gain insights into oneself from the results of self-assessment
instruments
− Self-confidence: general assurance in one’s own ideas, judgment, and
capabilities
− Self-efficacy: an individual’s strong belief that he or she can accomplish a
specific task or outcome successfully
 Self-efficacy is one dimension of self-confidence

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14.1 Two Keys to Self-Awareness
(LO 1)

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Knowledge Check 1
If you are able to accurately assess your strengths and limitations and how your
patterns affect others, you have a great deal of
a. self-awareness
b. self-confidence
c. self-efficacy
d. self-satisfaction

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Knowledge Check 1: Answer
If you are able to accurately assess your strengths and limitations and how your
patterns affect others, you have a great deal of
a. self-awareness

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Job Satisfaction and Trust
(LO 2)
• Job satisfaction: degree to which a person finds fulfillment in his or her job
• Managers create the environment that determines whether employees are
positive or negative about their jobs
• Organizational commitment: an employee’s loyalty to and engagement with
the organization
• Trust is an important component of organizational commitment

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14.2 Rate Your Job Satisfaction
(LO 2)

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Perception and Perceptual Distortions
(LO 3)
• Perception: the cognitive process people use to make sense of the
environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information from the
environment
• Perceptual distortions: errors in perceptual judgment
− Stereotyping: the tendency to assign an individual to a group or broad
category and then attribute generalizations about the group to the
individual
− Halo effect: overall impression based on one characteristic

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14.3 The Perception Process
(LO 3)

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14.4 Perception: What Do You See?
(LO 3)

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14.5 How Accurate Is Your Perception?
(LO 3)

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Knowledge Check 2
Jay is a newly employed emergency room nurse. At work Jay is focused and
serious, seldom smiling except when speaking to a patient. Jay’s coworkers think
Jay is quiet and calm in life away from the hospital, when in reality, Jay’s friends
see Jay as a practical jokester, always ready for a party or a spontaneous trip.
What accounts for Jay’s coworkers’ biased view of Jay’s personality?
a. Stereotyping
b. Organizational commitment
c. Halo effect
d. Self-efficacy

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Knowledge Check 2: Answer
Jay is a newly employed emergency room nurse. At work Jay is focused and
serious, seldom smiling except when speaking to a patient. Jay’s coworkers think
Jay is quiet and calm in life away from the hospital, when in reality, Jay’s friends
see Jay as a practical jokester, always ready for a party or a spontaneous trip.
What accounts for Jay’s coworkers’ incorrect of Jay’s personality?
c. Halo effect

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Attributions
(LO 3)
• Attributions: judgments about the cause of a person’s behavior
− Internal attribution: characteristics of the person caused behavior
− External attribution: situation caused behavior
• Biases when making attributions
− Fundamental attribution error: underestimating the influence of external
factors and overestimating the influence of internal factors
− Self-serving bias: giving too much credit to yourself for doing well and
blaming external factors for failing

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14.6 How We Judge Behavior
(LO 3)

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Personality Traits
(LO 4)
• Personality: set of characteristics that underlie a relatively stable pattern of
behavior in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment
• Big Five personality factors: five general dimensions of personality
− Extroversion
− Agreeableness
− Conscientiousness
− Emotional stability
− Openness to experience

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Discussion Activity 1
• Studies have suggested that extroverts contribute less to teams and are poor
listeners, yet other studies suggest that they are more likely to earn six-figure
incomes. Discuss why you think this might be the case.

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Discussion Activity 1 Debrief
• Studies have suggested that extroverts contribute less to teams and are
poor listeners, yet other studies suggest that they are more likely to earn
six-figure incomes. Discuss why you think this might be the case.
− Having an outgoing, sociable personality (extroversion) is considered
desirable for managers. Extroverts speak up at meetings, make
presentations, and are more sociable and outgoing at conferences and
other professional events.
− However, extroversion is not as significant as is often presumed; traits of
agreeableness are important in today’s collaborative organizations. Team-
oriented leaders who gather information and work collaboratively with
many different people tend to be most successful. Recent research
suggests that traits of conscientiousness are more important than those of
extroversion for effective leadership.

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14.7 The Big Five Personality Factors
(LO 4)

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Attitudes and Behaviors Influenced
by Personality
(LO 4)
• Grit: passion and persistence for achieving a long-term goal
• Authoritarianism: power and status differences should exist within organization
• Machiavellianism: acquiring power and manipulating others for personal gain

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14.8 Do You Have True Grit?
(LO 4)

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14.9 What’s Your Mach?
(LO 4)

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Problem-Solving Styles
(LO 4)
• Jung’s framework:
− People gather information by sensation or intuition
− People evaluate information by thinking or feeling
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): assessment that measures a person’s
preferences for
− Introversion versus extroversion
− Sensation versus intuition
− Thinking versus feeling
− Judging versus perceiving

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14.10 Four Problem-Solving Styles
(LO 4)

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Emotions
(LO 5)
• Emotion: a mental state that arises spontaneously within a person based on
interactions with the environment rather than through a conscious effort and is
often accompanied by physiological changes or sensations
• Emotional contagion: the tendency of people to absorb and express the
emotions, moods, and attitudes of those around them
• Negativity bias: term used to describe how the human mind reacts more
quickly and strongly to perceived bad things than it does to good things
• Negative people and events have a disproportionately large effect on our
emotions and moods and that negative emotions also tend to spread more
easily than positive ones

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14.11 Positive and Negative Emotions
(LO 5)

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Polling Activity 1
Among your friends or people you encounter on a regular basis, which of the
following emotions do you see most frequently?
a. Anger
b. Sadness
c. Anxiety
d. Happiness
e. Calmness, no specific emotion

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Emotional Intelligence
(LO 5)
• Four basic components
− Self-awareness
− Self-management
− Social awareness
− Relationship management

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Managing Yourself
(LO 6)
• Self-management: the ability to engage in self-regulating thoughts and
behavior to accomplish all your tasks and handle difficult or challenging
situations
• Basic principles of self-management
− Clarity of mind
− Clarity of objectives
− An organized system

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14.12 Follow These Steps to Get Organized
(LO 6)

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Polling Activity 2
Which of the following best describes your method of organization when
you need to complete an assignment, study for a test, or meet some other
type of deadline?
a. Set up a calendar with scheduled times for completing tasks leading
up to deadline
b. Set aside a specific single time period to do all necessary tasks
c. Whenever possible, try to tackle a portion of your task every day
leading up to the deadline
d. Method? What method?

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Stress and Resilience
(LO 7)
• Stress: an individual’s physiological and emotional response to external stimuli
that create physical or psychological demands that exceed the individual’s
knowledge, abilities, or resources when important outcomes are at stake
− Stressor: stimuli that produce a combination of frustration and anxiety
• Resilience: the capacity to persevere and to bounce back from adversity,
conflict, and failure

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Challenge Stress and Threat Stress
(LO 7)
• Challenge stress: stress that challenges and increases your focus, alertness,
efficiency, and productivity
• Threat stress: stress that is counterproductive
• Presenteeism: people go to work, but are too stressed and distracted to be
productive

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14.12 The Yerkes-Dodson Stress Curve
(LO 7)

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Causes of Work Stress
(LO 7)
• Task demands
− Stressors arising from the tasks required of a person holding a particular job
− Role ambiguity: people are unclear about the task behavior expected of
them
• Interpersonal demands
− Stressors associated with relationships in the organization
− Role conflict: occurs when an individual faces incompatible demands

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Discussion Activity 2
• Why do you think workplace stress is skyrocketing? Do you think it is a trend
that will continue? Explain the reason for your answer.

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Discussion Activity 2 Debrief
• Why do you think workplace stress is skyrocketing? Do you think it is a
trend that will continue? Why or why not?
− Workplace stress is skyrocketing, in part, because the constant
“connectivity” that today’s technology provides makes it difficult for
people to “disconnect” from work, psychologically or otherwise. As a
result, people experience little down time and have less and less
time to recharge either physically or emotionally.
− The inability to disconnect and recharge leads to increased stress, a
trend that is likely to continue as technological advancements make
the world even smaller and make it ever more difficult to get away
from work.

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What You Can Do
(LO 7)
• Techniques individuals can use to enhance resilience and manage stress
− Seek and destroy key sources of stress
− Find meaning and support
− Meditate and manage your energy
− Find a work–life balance
• Factors managers can apply to protect and enhance well-being of individuals
− Provide social support
− Give employees more control

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14.14 Simple Meditation
(LO 7)

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Summary (1 of 2)
• Now that the lesson has ended, you should have learned how to:
1. Describe two methods for enhancing self-awareness.
2. Discuss the importance of job satisfaction and trust for effective
employee performance.
3. Explain the fundamental attribution error, and give an example of it
from your own experience.
4. Describe two of the Big Five personality traits, and explain how each
trait might influence a manager’s behaviors toward direct reports.

46. 46
©2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Summary (2 of 2)
• Now that the lesson has ended, you should have learned how to:
5. Describe the value of the four components of emotional intelligence
for managers.
6. Outline a step-by-step system for managing yourself and your time.
7. Describe two ways organizations can enhance employee
resilience to manage stress and improve health, satisfaction,
and productivity.