Transcription

Drivers of Individual Behaviour-II

So, we now move into to the topic, Perceptions. On the platform, I hope you have enjoyed that video clipping, Eyes of
The Beholders. Now, what you've seen in the Eyes of The Beholders?

Now, look at these two circles. In the top circle, which is actually Michael Gerard is, and how his mother perceives
Michael Gerard is. She perceived Michael Gerard does not understand me, as against if you see the original Michael
as the real Michael, he feels that Esther understands me better than my mother. I want to draw 20th century Madonna.
That's his passion. But the area which his mother able to see only the overlapping part in this circle and that builds his
perception.

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You go to the next, and if you look at each actor in this video clipping, how they are perceiving Michael Gerard. They
see part of him. Like this cabby, he saw the way he behaved in the car, the way he entered the car the way the pistol
was seen from his jacket. He only got the view of that and he believes he is a real hood.

As against if you look at again this waiter. From his actions and movements, he perceives Michael as a womanizer. He
thinks he's a ladies’ man. If you look at now the landlord. The behaviours of the landlord and his interaction, landlord
concludes he is a lunatic.

The cleaning woman only seen the part of some movements partially and see the last scene, and she concludes Michael
is a murderer. So, everybody, he is the same person being viewed and perceived by different people by different way
and they consider him, his personality, in different manner. Somebody thinks lunatic, somebody thinks a murderer,
somebody thinks he is a real hood, somebody thinks he is a ladies’ man, but what is Michael Gerard actually is?

Michael Gerard actually is an idealist person who is passionate, ambitious, who is artistic. So, this is actual Michael
Gerard is. So, this movie gives you, or the video clips, gives a clear how we perceive people having a partial view of the
people and then develop or interpret those information and attributes, or suggest or conclude what the person is like,
or an object is like. So, this is the way perception builds.

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So, I am going to the next part. What is perception? It is the process of gathering or collecting information around us
and interpreting it and making sense about the world around us. There is another called social perception. We, the
process of receiving information, integrating this information, combining the information, and interpreting to interpret
the type of person or type of object, or type of event it is. So, this is the two perspectives. The way social perceptions
are built, the way the individual perceptions are built.

So, what is the process of perception building? Environment stimuli bombards us with lot of information continuously.
But we process this information through our five senses. Our feeling, our hearing, seeing, smelling, and testing, and
then we have a selective attention to each of them and therefore, thereafter then we, our perception or the perceptual
combination and integration process starts.

From there we judge about, or interpret about the attitude that behaviour of a particular object, person, or an event.

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What are the factors that affect the perception building? The first factor is the characteristics of the perceivers. You
see the way it has happened in the Eyes of the Beholder case. Each perceiver, whether it is a cab driver, or it is the
waiter, his character is very important when he is doing the perceiving. And also, the characteristic of the object which
is being perceived, or the person which is being perceived.

So, the first part is his own attitude, own model, self-concept, and his cognitive structure is the factors that influences
perception building. The other part is the characteristics of the objects, the physical appearance, the verbal and the
non-verbal communication, the interactions. That's also influenced in building the perception.

And third is also the characteristic of the situation, the context of the interaction. Like, look at the context which is
happened in case of the cleaning woman. The cleaning woman saw movement of that person, then model up, and
then she sees the last scene of the shout and this. So, the context itself wields an influence on the perception building.

So, these three things are also filtered through the barriers of perception. There are various filters also. So, it is not
only I selectively see, selectively process, selectively get my attention, it further gets filtered through certain barriers.
The barriers like, you have a categorical thinking which consists of stereotyping, or first impression, or projection, or
self-fulfilling prophecy. So, those are the things which goes in building of perceptions.

So, this is a way the perception building. I'm going to discuss also what are these means the barriers, each of the
barriers, but before that, let me again explain you, there is a personal identity and there is a social identity.

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Personal identity, what is the unique character one has? That's what, he is a very good thinker, or he is a very good,
compassionate person. This is the way, the unique character that gives the personal identity. And the social identity
comes with it or association in the hierarchy of the social associations, which I feel in terms of the importance.

I have seen my friend, who is heading the HR in Asia, Vikramjit. In every interaction you will see, and nothing wrong
with him, he is a very fantastic guy, but he will try to make his social identity attributing with Harvard, because he did
some courses in Harvard, so he will make it. So, his social identity comes with the alumni of Harvard. So, that's what
Harvard association gives him. He would like to give his own social identity accordingly.

Okay, let me explain what are the barriers of perceptions:

• First is the stereotype. We tend to attribute or assign a trait to somebody or some object based on the
belonging of that person to a particular social group.

• Another is the first impression. First impression is always a gives a lasting impression. It is a dominating force,
which creates an impression, and often I have seen what people first have the belief and that becomes their
last choice also.

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 • Another thing is the projections. We overestimate about the number of people who share our similar thoughts
and behaviour.

• Another unique barrier is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy is that what I believed initially
in subsequent all interactions, I'll try to justify that my belief or expectation is correct. This happens often in
the recruitment process.

I have seen the interviewer, what he believed, or he is expected at the initial few minutes, rest 10, 20 or 15 minutes
you're going to spend with that candidate to justify that what he believed or expected is correct. So these are the few
barriers that hinder our right perception building.

Beckenwelt is a leading international BPO in Gurgaon. They are a large organization employing thousands of
employees. As it happens with large service organizations, Beckenwelt is constantly looking for people to hire.

One such method they use is large job fairs, where on a chosen day, hundreds of candidates are invited to appear for
a mass selection process through a newspaper or radio advertisement. The hiring team is lining up one such job fair
to hire humanities graduates for the simple tech support customer service team, which has several vacancies.

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The service delivery leader of the customer service team is Jagdish. Jagdish was hired into Beckenwelt from a software
services company a few months ago. The hiring team leader, Roopa, meets Jagdish to discuss the plan. Jagdish
immediately rejects the plan. He says these massive job fairs just do not work. They are a waste of time and money,
in his experience.

These were tried in his previous organization when they needed to hire engineers in bulk, and they were useless. He
feels they don’t yield enough good-quality candidates. Instead, he wants the hiring team to focus on hiring people
through Naukri and Monster.com or through hiring consultants.

Roopa explains that given the large number of vacancies, job fairs are the most effective method. She explains that at
Beckenwelt they have had success with job fairs in the past. Jagdish, however, continues to disagree.

She tells him the hiring team does not have the bandwidth or budget to get into calling individual candidates or use
hiring consultants. Jagdish reminds her that meeting external business targets for the clients is more important than
internal performance metrics of the HR team. This irritates Roopa who believes Jagdish is being high-handed and
unfair, just because HR is a cost centre and he runs a P&L.

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A heated argument follows and the discussion reaches an impasse. What do you think happened here? In the case of
Roopa and Jagdish, we see evidence of a few biases at work, born out of previous experiences. These experiences
colour our perception, thereby deepening the bias.

Jagdish is clearly influenced by his previous experiences where job fairs were not a success. Also, he obviously has a
view about the HR function. He believes that HR is not external focused. He believes that HR is only interested in
meeting their own metrics and does not care about the customer. And because Roopa disagrees with him, he assumes
she is as incompetent as her counterpart in his previous company.

Roopa also has a perception about business leaders. She believes they are arrogant and disrespectful of the HR
function. Jagdish’s behaviour with her only strengthens this belief. Now, she is in no frame of mind to listen to Jagdish
and understand his concerns.

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If they had both set aside their biases and agreed to listen to each other, they would have understood that, number
one, Jagdish’s experience comes from a company with a different business which possibly employed very different
people. Or perhaps, they just ran hiring in a different way. Maybe they didn’t use the right media for advertising.
Perhaps they didn’t give notice to the candidates. Maybe crowd management wasn’t done well.

Number two, Beckenwelt has a success track record of job fairs. Perhaps they do all of the above differently. Therefore,
if they had gone one level deeper into the discussion, perhaps they would have understood each other and moved
ahead. Now, even if they resolve this and move ahead, the first impressions they have of each other have not been
positive, and these will stay embedded for a long time.

If you see someone is staying back in the office for late hours, will you assign that the person is very hardworking, or
will you consider that he is unable to manage his time? So, this is where we begin thinking about or talking about the
attribution.

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What is attribution? Attribution is the cause that we assign to someone's behaviour. The attribution or the cause can
be internal cause, so we assign an attribute, a cause, that is the individual’s motivation or ability, or we can assign a
cause to the external factors or the task difficulties. So, it can be external or internal. So that is where is attribution is.

Now, Kelley has given a very powerful theory, the way we judge people by assigning a meaning through the attribution
of his behaviour or as giving a meaning to the attribution to the behaviour.

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In this aspect, there are three perspectives, three types of things happen. The consistency, the distinctiveness, and the
consensus. So, if there is a consistency of behaviour and this is being frequently observed upon, suppose one regularly
comes to the class absolutely on time, or he comes to the office and has never been late, we will normally assign it to
be his internal cause or attribute it to his internal reasons. But if somebody is consistent but once he has failed it, we
will define it as maybe it is because of external cause.

The second is this distinctiveness. So, one in a particular setup is consistent, is he also consistent in another setup? Or,
this consistency in a particular event or particular setup, in different setup he behaves in a different way.

So, suppose he is regular in his attendance or in his office coming every day on time, but he does not do so in other
events. Suppose in attending a meeting or attending any social functions, he is always late. So that coming to the office
on time we will say that is distinctive but will assign the cause of that kind of behaviour to the external. But if he does
it only couple of times or seldom, then we will assign it to the internal causes.

The other is called consensus. Suppose everyone in the office comes on time. It is not that particular person. So there
is a consensus. Everybody is coming and everybody is demonstrating a behaviour, we tend to assign for the external
reason. Maybe this is the culture in the company, maybe if you do not come you will be deducted salary or some other
punishment may be given, and that's what there could be external reason.

But when there is a consensus, everybody is behaving, but you are behaving, for different reasons, you could not come
on time, then it could be your internal reasons. So, this is this model that works, consensus, distinctiveness, and
consistency. That three type of styles which explains whether we will assign a particular behaviour to the internal
cause or to the external cause.

So, there are also two key attribution biases: One is fundamental attribution biases. The fundamental attribution
biases for the people, the other people, when they attribute, they have a tendency to attribution to their internal
causes.

And the other is the self-serving biases. Self-Serving biases, which we all suffer from, which are favourable outcomes,
I am contributing, so I am responsible for that. So my attribution to me, my internal factors, and if something going

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wrong which is unfavourable outcome, I will assign the attributes to the external causes, and if I don't get anyone to
give it to, it will be the God. So because of that this happened.

So, favourable things I am responsible for, unfavourable things I am not responsible for. It is not due to my fault but
due to somebody else. This is a typically self-serving bias that we all suffer from.

So, there are also biases that happen based on how proximate I am to an event or a person, and also when this
happened, time of occurrence, the distance of time. So one is the primacy effect: So, the primacy effect is the one is
your halo effect, which is that some positive characteristics of a person I assign him, that is the main attribute of the
person and I ignore the other aspects of the person.

And the other is horn effect. It is the opposite, the negative characteristics. I never focus on the positive characteristics
of the person to describe the person or perceptions about the persons, and I forget, ignore the rest part of this.

Recency effect is if something has happened very recently and that overshadows my perception building about the
person.

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Another effect that happens is the spillover bias. That not happened recently, but something happened but very
distant incident that I do remember, and I build on my prescription based on that particular event which has happened
some time ago.

Modela Cred is a new and fast-growing bank in India. Through the initial years, they have focused on opening new
branches, hiring staff, and getting digital platforms ready. The teams have performed very well and have been
rewarded with good bonuses and equity. Since now, Modela Cred has a sizable population, the leadership decides to
conduct an employee engagement survey. They expect the results to be good.

When the results come in, in many parameters like brand image, vision, work processes, and benefits, the scores are
good. However, what comes as a surprise is the average score on performance management. In fact, in the digital
initiatives team, the score on performance management is abysmally low. They have scored low on fairness and
objectivity of the process.

The digital head, Kranthi, and the HR head, Lakshman, decide to personally conduct focused group sessions and in-
depth analysis to understand why such a key team is feeling this way. The general finding is that, yes, there are a
number of biases at play during the performance appraisal process.

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A couple of weeks later, they present their findings and suggestions to the executive council. The first observation is
that there is evidence of primacy effect, also called the halo and horn effect. The major milestones achieved by this
team in a very short time, has created local heroes. The same individuals who have been part of this journey are the
ones being rewarded more than others. The newcomers see this as an old boys’ club.

There is also a tendency among managers to give credence to more recent achievements, and hence it is only
performance in the last two quarters that matters. Achievements in the beginning of the year are not recalled. This is
indicative of recency effect, as well as availability bias.

The recommendations and subsequently the changes that Kranthi and Lakshman make are fairly simple, yet effective.

1. Number one, goal achievement for the year would be tracked on a quarterly basis. This would ensure that
credit for a goal achieved in one quarter is earned in the same quarter and does not spill over to the entire
year.

2. Number two, each goal will carry a weight in proportion to the importance of the same. This way, the final
performance rating would be arrived at in a more scientific way, instead of a subjective method, and
perception of one's performance is not excessively coloured by the few wins alone.

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 3. Number three, ratings and performance of all employees will be discussed and calibrated in a joint meeting of
managers with their manager. This would eliminate a single-rater bias and introduce new and holistic
information about every employee's performance.

These changes in the way they did appraisals in the digital team proved to be a good practice. While there was initial
resistance, once adopted, the new process began to be seen as slightly rigid but extremely fair. Eventually, the whole
organization implemented the same changes in their performance management process.

In this session, now we are going to discuss emotion and attitude. It's a very important part of the course
Organizational Behaviour. Actually, one of the core parts of this course.

Emotion is a very powerful asset that people have. You have to succeed, you have to excel. If you have to excel, you
have to be passionate. And passion is nothing but your emotion. Provided you know how to use your emotion.

Look at Tendulkar and Kambli. Both are very talented cricketers, but one has not played. Kambli has not played any
international cricket after age of 21. That's his last game of international cricket. Because he could not play the
bouncer, so Kotnis when he was throwing bouncer, he failed to do that, but he did not try to bounce back. As against
with Tendulkar, he bounced back. He did practice for 55 weeks in a row, sleeping for two hours, again practicing, and
that is the attitude.
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Your talent will not take you where you want to go. Your attitude will take you where you want to go. And your attitude
is again based on your emotion. So, we must first understand that emotion part of it before you go to the attitude.

Emotion is psychological, behavioural, and the physiological episode experienced towards an object or an event or a
person that creates a state of readiness, like fight or flight.

So, what are the key components? And it's an experience. So what are the key components? The key components of
emotion, is one, it is an episode. Second, it is directed towards an object, person or an event. Third, it is an experience.
Fourth, it creates a state of readiness. And the whole process is spontaneous and involuntary.

So, there are various types of emotions. One, you know, is pleasant emotions, another opposite of it is unpleasant
emotions. So, one side, your happiness emotion, you are unhappy experience of emotion. The other side, your
activated emotions. When you express your emotions externally. Another is your passive form of or inactivated
emotion.

So, this is the emotional matrix if you will see. So, if have unpleasant emotion, emotional experience, and you activate
the way of do the jittery, your distress feeling, your tantrums, so these are something which is very, very harmful.

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So, one has to be succeed, he has to concentrate a pleasant and non-activated as much as possible because that is
drives that internally and creates an internal force to succeed. So that is very important to realize how emotion plays
a very crucial low in our personal life.

Then I move to attitude. What is attitude? Attitude is the assessed beliefs or your cluster of beliefs, assessed feelings
and your behavioural intention again towards any object or a person or towards an event. And that's your behavioural.
So, it has three components, A, B, C components. A is the effective side of it, b is the behavioural intention part of it,
and c is the cognitive structure, your cognitive part.

Let's look at this to understand how this emotion and attitude are interlinked. Why? Because emotion is an experience,
an attitude is a judgment. But in this creation of the judgment, emotion plays a which is an experience and your
accumulated experience forms some kind of attitude.

And how does it happen? Let us look at this graphics. This graphics gives you the understanding very clearly that if you
look at this graphic, this one side, you see this beliefs or cognitive structures. You have belief, feelings, or behavioural
intention. That forms your attitude.

But in reality, what is happening is, when you are getting an information, if that information continuously pours to
you, information comes to you, information when it comes to you, it is submitted to two parts of your brain at the
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same time. It goes to your rational side of the brain, it goes to the emotional side of the brain, but it is the emotional
side will act much faster than your rational side, because emotion is involuntary, emotion is spontaneous.

So, before even rational side goes to the, you know, thinking over that information, emotional side has already
experienced that emotion and that will advise and it will control and influence your rational thinking, whether fight or
the flight.

So, that is what emotion does, and ultimately you rationalize your thinking through your rational mind to behave,
either if you have a very pleasant experience, how to sustain that emotional experience and enjoy that. Or, if you have
a very negative emotional or unpleasant emotional experience, your signal is to rational mind, find rational what you
need to do to reduce that unpleasant experience.

So, that goes to you and that creates your attitude and strongly influences your attitude towards an object or an event
or a person. So, that is the interplay. You have emotion on your attitude.

Now, in that context in organizational setup, you often might have experienced two things called cognitive dissonance
and that drives the emotional level. What is cognitive dissonance? And you might have several times experienced it.
It cannot happen you have not experienced it.

There are some developments you are experiencing, unpleasant or negative emotions, while you are required,
according to your position or according to your role, to express a different emotion to that, a pleasant emotion. And
this gap creates a cognitive dissonance within you.

So, if dissonance you want to neutralize with a surface level, it becomes stressful, but when you do a deep dive and
accept it and start acting on it, the stress comes down.

And that leads to your emotional labour. In emotional labour, that effort now you put in to, you know, to express that
expected emotion while you have a opposite directional emotional experience you are undergoing.

It often happens in a boardroom by the senior managers, by your managing director, the CEOs or other senior
leadership team, because your organization may not be doing very well but you have to express and convince them
that you are going to do very well. So, you have to keep a different emotional expression inside the boardroom. As
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you grow up in your hierarchy, the pressure of doing that, you know, the emotional labour demand goes up. So, this
is a very simple concept, but you need to internalize it.

Sameer works as the CFO in a large and old promoter-driven steel company that is struggling to remain profitable. He
is very young and very competent and has the magic triple qualification of Ca, CS, and CFA. He is very thorough in his
work and keeps tabs on everything that is happening in the business. He is considered first among equals, and second
only to the CEO.

Sameer is feared or disliked by many within the company. This is because Sameer has a nasty temper and doesn't
mince words. He often berates his peers at their teams during reviews. However, because he is considered a star
performer and rumoured to be close to the promoter, people excuse his behaviour, and, as a holder of the purse
strings, Sameer can come down heavily on anyone who dares to defy him.

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This fear and apprehension among the other departments leads them to be very wary of review meetings where
Sameer is present. They often try to manipulate information in a way that doesn't attract attention to any misses or
mistakes. This could be related to cost of raw materials, production losses, order booking, collection of payments etc.

Ironically, Sameer is aware of this, and hence is doubly vigilant. He has cultivated informers in every part of the
business, and so he catches mistakes and is severely critical of them. It angers Sameer that people are not trustworthy.
He recalls how early in his career people did not take him seriously or violated his trust. He swore he wouldn't allow
that to happen again. This negative emotional experience has shaped his attitude toward others.

Fear is a powerful emotion and motivator. The fight or flight syndrome enables the organism to survive potentially
dangerous or fatal situations. However, when it is constantly present, fear begets fear.

Sameer's formidable reputation creates apprehension in people even before they meet him. Then, they see him in
action and the apprehension becomes fear. They also see that there is no one to check him and that creates more
anxiety because of the power he wields with impunity. They try to hide things from him because of this fear, and play
right into his hands, and they meet their destiny on the path they take to avoid it. The result, more punishment for
them and more fear.

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For all his fiery persona, Sameer is also shaped by unpleasant experiences from the past. He is also constantly feeling
fear of being betrayed, the fear of being considered not good enough because of his age, and the fear of failure. This
has led to an attitude of fear and distrust in Sameer.

Sameer doesn't trust people and, by his behaviour, evokes a fear-based response among colleagues. They then actually
behave in an untrustworthy manner, thereby completing this vicious feedback loop.

Unfortunately, this fear also creates another negative emotion: anger. There is anger against Sameer, and that leads
to politicking against Sameer. Sameer knows that if he lets his guard down, forces can align against him.

Sameer, therefore, remains in a highly agitated state and can never truly be at peace or allow others to be at peace
themselves. The status quo must be maintained even if ultimately harmful to the business.

Attitude has got a strong relationship at the workplace. So, managing people’s attitude at the workplace is manifested
in three kinds of behaviors that we observe. One is job satisfaction. The research says that job satisfaction and the
individual attitude has got a strong connection. Managing attitude, because satisfied workers are more productive
workers.

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However, as I said, the general attitude is not strongly connected to create your satisfaction, job satisfaction. Job
satisfaction has many other factors that influence it, but attitude of the person towards the job can be created by
understanding his emotional cues.

The second part of this is Organizational Citizenship Behavior. It is actual attitudinal manifestation of the people. The
people’s positive attitude towards the organization and their professional attitude, this is a typical professional
attitude, because when your first love is your profession, you live because you are a professional in your organization
setup mostly, even if you are a worker you are a professional, you are selling your professional skills to the
organization.

So, this attitude of loving the profession and connecting with the organization and going beyond your desired role, or
your required role, and taking and behaving like a citizen in the organization, meaning you extend support as required
beyond your calling from the role.

Another manifestation or strong relationship is the Organizational Commitment. Your effective commitment that plays
an important role. There are two kinds, Continuous Commitment and Affective Commitment.

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Affective commitment is your emotional attachment or emotional commitment towards that. It happens if you have
a positive experience with the reciprocating commitment comes from the organization. That can lead to the affective
commitment.

The other, continuous commitment is also the commitment that is something that you want to commit because
otherwise, you know, leaving the commitment might be costlier for you. So, it does not happen so spontaneously, but
affective commitment is something you reciprocate against the commitment that the organization makes to you, and
that creates your belongingness, your organizational loyalty.

So, these three things, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and your own job satisfaction
has a strong relationship with the attitude.

Attitude governs how an individual performs in the workplace. A positive and can-do attitude even with average skill
can lead to better performance than superior skill with a negative attitude. If skill and knowledge are tools, attitude is
the hand that guides them.

Measuring attitudes is an exercise some organizations undertake to understand how employees feel about and behave
at the workplace. The most reliable method is of course an attitude survey or the use of various attitude scales like
rank order, paired comparison scaling, etc.

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Most organizations get a sense of the attitude through employee engagement surveys. For instance, the Aon model
of employee engagement measures responses of employees on the following aspects:

o Number one, will they speak positively about the organization to coworkers, potential employees, and
customers? A dimension called say.

o Number two, do they have an intense sense of belonging and desire to be part of the organization? Which is
called stay.

o And finally, if they are willing to exert effort towards success in their job and for the company? This is called
strive.

Well strictly speaking this is a measure of engagement, it does tell us how employees feel about the organization and
how committed they feel to the organization. Companies believe that these attitudes are worth tracking because they
are often associated with important outcomes such as performance, helping others, absenteeism, and turnover.
However, while a survey is statistically a very valid tool, it cannot and is not deployed that often.

Organizations also tend to use the impressionistic method which, while statistically not the most robust, is still
indicative. The impressionistic method refers to observation of behavior and attitudes directly. This can be done in a
variety of ways, like pulse check meetings, where leaders or HR managers meet small groups of employees that are
usually randomly selected or chosen basis a representative sample.

This can also be done in larger settings like employee town halls or interactive webchats where the most topical issues
among employees can be identified and addressed.

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Technology has also enabled artificial intelligence powered chatbots to be used as a way of gauging the mood. these
are usually easy to use apps that can be operated from a smartphone. The chatbot engages with the employee and
asks questions designed to elicit responses that can be analysed to understand the state of mind. Of course, these are
still not very prevalent, and the algorithms are still being perfected.

So, emotional intelligence, you might have heard these things, is a very powerful concept and many organizations now
even doing special efforts, how do you improve the emotional intelligence of the people? I told you at the beginning
of this session, emotion is the most powerful and meaningful asset that you have, provided you know how to use the
emotions. And I said that emotion drives our success, drives our productive behaviour. And emotional intelligence is
based on this concept: How do I use my emotions in a more productive way?

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So, what is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence is perceiving emotion, assimilating emotion, then expressing
emotion and reasoning out the emotions with emotions, and also controlling and regulating others’ emotion. So, this
is emotional intelligence.

So, if we look at that emotional intelligence, there is the last part of it, how do I regulate others’ emotions and how do
I regulate my emotions? So, there is a balance happens between regulating my emotions and others’ emotions. In the
process if I can have my emotion and internal emotion that drives me by controlling others’ emotion and also
regulating emotion, is my ability, or my extent of emotional intelligence that I possess, will support my growth.

So, let's look at this graphic, the matrix of emotional intelligence, which has got the four blocks. One is that self-side,
and the others, and in the Y axis or the vertical axis, you have Recognize Your Emotion, Regulate Others’ Emotion. So,
this is the block.

A. In that first block is Recognize Your Own Emotion. It's very important to recognize your own emotion. That's
what, you know, we discussed at the beginning of this OB session, is the Johari window. The Johari window
helps you to create your own self. You must know who are you? What are the assets you have? What are your
uniqueness? And that's your power that you hold on yourself, and accurate self-assessment is very important
understanding, because if you have false feelings about yourself, you will land up with a problem on your
emotional issues.
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 B. The second part is, how do you recognize the others’ emotion? Your feelings of empathy to others. So, this is
an important part of that, to recognize other information. It is always you attempt to try to understand how
my action can affect others’ emotion is a very important way to control others’ emotions, but before that,
how do I recognize the information? What triggers them for a better performance or better relationships or
better behavioural results?

C. The third block is your self-emotions, but how do I regulate my self-emotion? And this is where many people
fail it. Now, you're having all other skills, and if you cannot regulate your own emotion is often seen.
Sometimes, you know, somebody has sent you a mail which is unpleasant to you. Your emotional experience,
immediate emotional experience, and you react to it immediately. Later on, you regret.

Therefore, we always tell people, don't react if you have an unpleasant emotional experience. Time is your
best teacher. Wait. You know? Like, if you throw mud on the glass door and you try to clean it, it will become
murkier. Give time, it will fall by its own. So therefore, how to regulate my own emotion? Because you can
continuously get some any stimuli which can trigger negative emotions in you.

So, controlling your negative emotion and positively use your, and effectively is your positive emotion. Both
has to go together, you know? So, self-control or emotion, which is that's what we tell people to be more
adaptive, more flexible. And in the organization, you have to survive. You’ve got to be adaptive. You have to
be flexible. You’ve got to have your own initiative.

You have to maintain a spirit of optimism. That's very important asset and you don’t want to fail it, and this is
the block. I always say everyone, this is the block, control it. Because this is a block that is likely to harm.
Despite having all other qualities, you have this can ruin you. So, if you cannot control your self-emotion, you
will be in danger.

D. The last block or the fourth block is: how do I regulate others’ emotion? They are not under my control. So
here your leadership style comes in. Your influencing powers. Your thought of influencing others, your knack
of developing others, your knack of empowering others, right? So those, and work as a change agent, work as
a change catalyst, influence others, have the spirit of making a difference in others’ life, and that makes a
difference.

So, these four blocks together create your emotional intelligence. So, in these four blocks the most powerful one which
can do harm to you, your self-management. If you cannot control your own emotion, it can harm you, and many of
you might have experienced on this.

So, this is one of the most important blocks out of these four blocks to me. I have seen many people failing because
they are not able to control their emotion, because emotion is spontaneous, emotion is involuntary, and people also
react with that fight or flight. Their reaction also comes involuntary. I always tell give it time.

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Like most things, developing emotional intelligence starts with intent. While it is an individual journey, organizations
can and must play a role in making this journey not only easier but also desirable. Let us consider some ways that
organizations do this.

Number one is training. Organizations with well-developed behavioural training curricula, focus around creating
awareness about oneself and how one interacts with others. At junior levels, this usually involves understanding one's
personality type, style of communication, motivations, and working in teams.

As one grows in the career, the focus widens to include understanding the interplay of emotions, attitudes,
personalities and perceptions in larger groups. For example, at a junior management level, the training may be on
effective communication between individuals, while at senior levels it is around persuasive or motivational
communication with large groups.

These programs also teach regulation of emotions once awareness of the self is increased. This is very similar to the
current curriculum that you are studying. Conflict management, developing others, and collaboration are common
themes.

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Number two are Johari window-based interventions. The Johari window model is a technique that helps people better
understand their relationship with themselves and others. The idea is to reduce our blind spots by knowing how others
see us and feel about us.

At the individual level, these interventions typically are facilitator-led feedback sessions like New Manager Assimilation
or 360-degree feedback surveys. At an organization level, employee engagement surveys and customer feedback
surveys play a similar role. Organizations also behave like a person and are susceptible to the same blind spots and
lack of transparency that an individual exhibits.

Number three are performance and talent management systems. Performance ratings are increasingly dependent on
not only what was achieved, but also how it was achieved. The how part here is focused on one's behaviour and
attitude. This becomes especially true for multi-rater based performance appraisal processes.

Similarly, potential assessment that forms a part of talent management, succession planning, and identifying early
leaders also are heavily weighted on emotional intelligence. One has to display an ability to work with large groups of
employees, vendors, suppliers, partners, and customers to get larger roles.

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Job rotations are also designed to help individuals not only understand different aspects of business, but also develop
empathy and an understanding of the human factors in play.

The outcome of these behaviours, which make up the four quadrants of emotional intelligence, is better ratings and
consequently faster career growth. A, this creates a more emotionally intelligent leadership, cadre, and B, the type of
person the organization promotes sends a powerful message to its people on the behaviours that are rewarded.

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This leads to emulation of these behaviours, and over a period of time, can create very enlightened leadership.
Conversely, those without these capabilities tend to have slower growth and may eventually be rendered irrelevant
unless they are in a highly technical field, where individual brilliance is the most important factor.

Finally, there are organizational mechanisms like policies and codes of conduct to prevent poor regulation of emotions.
This is especially true of inadequate emotional self-control whereby threatening or hostile behaviour is exhibited.

How often you feel stressed at your workplace? It could be related to your personal life or it can be related to work.
The stress is a way of life in organizations.

So, what is this stress? Stress is the adaptive response to a situation that is being perceived threatening or challenging
of one's well-being. That is what we call it as stress. Imagine a situation when you have something urgent to do at your
home, but your boss calls you, because there is an urgent job which needs to be completed immediately. So, you will
have a conflicting situation.

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So, stress is created by the stressors. So, stressors are the cause of creating stress to individuals. These are
environmental, external, or internal issues that create the stress. What are the types of? So, let's just talk about some
of the stress you and me might have undergone.

One of the stresses could be, this list is not exhaustive, but to suggest you some of the stressors, one of these, the
harassment at the organization. You feel harassed. Your interpersonal relationship with your peers, or with your
subordinates, or with your seniors. Or it could be your work-related. It could be work overload, it could be your work
conflict, or it could be your work-life balance.

So, there are various forms of stressors that creates and threats your well-being, and this is not something that one
can avoid too. So, this could be in your personal life, this could be in your organizational setup, or in a social, any other
setup.

So, now there are two types of stress. Well, you are saying stress is bad, but there are some positive sides also, eustress
and distress. Eustress is like your positive cholesterol in your body. All cholesterol is not bad. Similarly, some stressors
are not bad.

In fact, you as a professional, if there is no stress you cannot excel, so some stress is good to some extent. These are
eustress, stays for some time, it creates challenge, it creates excitement, it creates a positive drive, energy. Because
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otherwise, you know, as a professional, you will not feel excited unless some stress you encounter and that stress
actually gives you, throws you a challenge and you enjoy it.

The distress is opposite. Distress brings anxiety, it creates depression, because things become not within your control.
Whereas Eustress has something you think you can, and you can do it and you take the challenges. The kind of stress
that calls for.

So, these two parts, if you look at the graph in your chart, initially is the distress. Why it is initial graph distress? Because
lower stress itself is a becoming a stress for you. If you are working and you have no work pressure, you are rather,
you will find out somewhere where you have some more demand, and if you are underemployed, but you are paid
fully, you yourself feel stressful.

So, your behavioural efficacy and the workload or your stress level moves in an inverted U curve. So, up to certain
level, you enjoy the stress, and thereafter your stress is falling down. So, you move to a distress, and distress is the
issue which has serious consequences on human life.

Distress manifest in three ways, and it has consequences. It has a psychological consequence. It has physiological
consequence. It has behavioural consequence.

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 1. Your psychological consequence is that your depression, you feel unhappy, your job dissatisfaction. These are
your psychological manifestations or the consequence of it.

2. You have a physiological, you may have a heart problem. Cardiovascular issues often happen because of stress.
There are a lot of examples of that. People have died because of heart attack, because of the work pressure,
or the bullying situations in the organization, or unpleasant environment in the organizations.

3. Another is your behaviour, your attendance, your performance, that is reflected. So, these are the
consequences that you will have if you are under distress.

Stress, anyway, is going to be a way of life. You just cannot avoid stress, whether it is work-related stress or your
personal life related stress. It is better to understand the techniques to minimize the stress.

A. One of the best ways of minimizing the stress is, exercise. Manage your lifestyle. Because exercise is a unique
way that you can concentrate on your health and divert your mind from the stress.

B. Another appropriate coping technique you can develop, I myself have seen that building a hobby, is a unique
stress buster. If you build your own hobby and that's the way you can avoid or minimize the stress.

C. Then, lower neuroticism. Lower neuroticism means that your emotional stability you can control. That's what
we continuously tell, even you tell the B-schools to please teach the students the intelligent quotient or how
to improve their intelligence or emotional quotient or emotional intelligence.

D. Then another is a socialization. Do extraversions, mix with people, be outgoing. That will be an excellent way
one can minimize the stress.

E. Another way to change is that believe in yourself, improve your own self-concept. Believing in yourself is a
powerful means that you can deny that stress.

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 F. Of course, what many of you may be doing it, that don't be a workaholic. And that you know you have a family,
you have a life, please don't ignore them, and concentrate and balance it out. So this is the few ways you can
manage your stress.

And managing the workload related stress, managing workload related stress, there are various means. In work, you
are cannot avoid all the time that you will not have a stress, because there will be conflicting demands, conflicting
priorities often, and you will have a cognitive dissonance, as we discussed, you will have to have emotional labour.

1. So, first is remove the stressor. How to remove the stressor? The best is to concentrate in balancing your work
life.

2. Second, remove your stress, improve your work-life balance, and second withdraw from the stressors. The
best mechanism of withdrawing from the stressors is that withdraw, take break, going for holiday. Don’t work
continuously in a stressful situation.

3. And the next is you can get a social support. Talk to people, share your feelings, and that is also a good
mechanism of minimizing the stress or getting ahead of the work-related stress.

4. And these control consequences also to remove that, because stress has consequences as we have discussed
earlier, it has a physiological, it has a psychological, it has behavioural consequences. So, for that, the best
medicine is exercise, concentrate on your exercise, maintain your work-life balance, and that's the way to go
about minimizing your stress, because you cannot completely avoid your stress.

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Naseer has recently joined as the head of HR for the B2B customer service division of a BPO. The customer service
division supports several overseas clients and operates under stringent quality parameters.

Naseer realizes soon, that there is a major issue with recruitment. Due to various factors like performance standards,
night shifts, and poaching from other competition, attrition is very high among the associate level staff, who make up
the bulk of the workforce.

This puts a huge amount of pressure on the hiring team, who struggle to meet numbers. The hiring team often
conducts the hiring campaigns over the weekends, which means that they are working through the week without a
break. The current policy also does not allow for compensatory off for the support functions, if they work on weekends.
This leads to burnout.

Added to that, the line managers’ availability for interviews is low, because they are very busy and stressed due to
client requirements. This stress is intensified by the vacancies in their teams, which means more work for the rest of
the team members. Often interviews have to be rescheduled, which also leads to candidate losses, who take up other
jobs in the meantime.

There are frequent hiring update meetings with the operations leaders, where they come down heavily on the hiring
team. After one such review, the lead recruiter comes to Naseer, and tends in her resignation.
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Naseer's boss, the customer service division head, calls him and lets him know that the hiring process has to be fixed.
He asks Naseer to personally get involved in hiring. The first thing Naseer does is, to push back to his boss on his order
to get involved in hiring personally.

Naseer lets him know that acting as a recruiter himself will be inefficient, since his job is to step back and solve the
issue and not get embroiled in it himself.

The second thing he does is to re-organize the team. He appoints one person to track all vacancies, status of all
positions, including the time taken at every stage of hiring. This gives him a real-time information on where the
problems lie and delays are, so he can fix them.

This also allows recruiters to focus on hiring, instead of making PowerPoint presentations for reviews. Employees who
need to work on the weekend are given compensatory time off or allowed to work from home on other days of the
week, without impacting their earned leave. He also introduces a reward and recognition scheme, specifically for those
involved in hiring.

Thirdly, he aligns expectations with the operations leadership. He does not defend the situation but instead
acknowledges it and ask for their support in 4 areas:
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 o Number 1: He asks that there is one cross-functional and cross-team panel made available for interviews at
certain pre-decided times of the week. This eliminates the need for multiple rounds and rescheduling, and this
makes the process more efficient.

o Number 2: He also asks for prioritization of all open positions. So, the most crucial ones can be handled first.
The other positions are put on hold temporarily or filled through internal job realignments.

o Number 3: He establishes a seniority and skill-based hiring turnaround time. He reasons that the time and
effort taken to hire a fresh graduate versus an experienced associate are not and cannot be the same.

o Number 4: Instead of frequent, unplanned meetings, he asks for one weekly review. For other updates, he
assures them that real time status dashboards will be available for them, to review on their own.

In a few weeks, the situation starts improving and within 4 months 95% of the vacancies are filled and operations
stabilize. Thus, we see that the appropriate response to the stress is not always a bias for further action, but to step
back, analyse and solve.

It is important to map stakeholders and set expectations. It is equally important to say no when needed, or ask for
help, even if it is from a customer. Most importantly, take care of yourself and other people. Policies and processes
exist to support people and business, not the other way round.

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