Personal Change

Manjunath VS
Assistant Professor
 Learning Objectives
 Understanding the meaning of personal
change.
 Understanding the need and importance
of personal change
 Understanding the terms self-esteem, self
efficacy and self analysis.
 Understanding organizational roles
 Understanding role efficacy and role
effectiveness.
 Change
 You cannot step into the same river twice.
 The art of progress is to preserve order
amid change and to preserve change amid
order.
 To exist is to change, to change is to
mature, to mature is to go on creating
oneself endlessly
 Change is moving away from status quo
 What is personal change
 Personal change is a very complex term and it
refers to changes in our behavioral patterns,
attitudes, skill and knowledge.
 Personal change can occur at intellectual and
emotional level.
 Personal change is needed for personal growth.
 We need to change to overcome personal crisis
which may result due to negative attitudes,
undesirable habit patterns, and lack of skill and
knowledge to perform tasks.
 Examples of personal change
 Examples are-Changes in marital status,
health, status, career, Personal habits,
relationships, relocation, skill and
knowledge etc.
 Importance of personal change
 Personal change is essence of self
development and growth of an individual.
 It helps us to identify where we are and
where we want to go?
 If we do not change we can survive in the
changing environment.
 Society and organizations transform
continuously and we need to accept these
changes and change ourselves accordingly
 Process of personal change
 Thinking and self reflection are the
prerequisites of personal change
 Personal change happens in stages
 We can not achieve all our personal
change goals at once
 Growth, behavioral change, skill
development follow a cyclical pattern
 Personal change is difficult because it
takes time and effort.
 Process of personal change
Changing
Change thinking and behavior
Change habits and tendencies

Relearning
Unlearning Continuous Reinforce changes
Create felt need for change feedback Evaluate changes
Manage resistance to change
Modify changes
Allow the time necessary

Institutionalize change
Encourage continuous
improvement
Step I-Unlearning-The motivation to
action
 Before we can change there has to be
motivation to do so.
 We experience personal inertia
 Motivation to change can overcome inertia
 Personal change calls for time and effort
and hence it needs great energy
 We have to feel the need to change to
generate momentum to change
Step I-Unlearning-The motivation to
action
 The process for personal change begins when
we are dissatisfied with what is going on in our
lives.
 It starts when we think that what we are doing,
thinking or feeling is not right.
 The felt need for change and motivation to
change can overcome the resistance to change
 Personal change starts with unlearning as what
we have learnt in the past is no longer working
for us
Step II-The process of transformation

Concrete experience

Testing implications
Observations and
Of concepts in new
reflections
situations

Formation of abstract
Concepts and
generalizations
Step II-The process of transformation
 Understand and learn new concepts,
behaviors or ideas
 This is possible through self reflection
 Practice new behaviors
 See the effects and consequences
 Reinforce
 Step III-Relearning
 Continue to practice the new habits and
skills and overcome resistance completely
 Continue till the change is internalized
 Maintain personal journals or personal
diaries which helps in understanding what
we thought, did and what we wanted to
do.
 Record critical incidents of success and
failures to evaluate our changes
 Step IV-Institutionalize change

 Make personal development a habit

 Strive for continuous improvement
 Personal change and development is TQM
for an individual as Organizational change
is TQM for an organization.
 Some needed changes
 FROM  TO
 Being closed  Being open
 Denying feelings  Expressing feelings
 Being defensive  Accepting feedback
 Being suspicious  Trusting others
 Avoiding conflict  Facing conflict
 Being rigid  Being flexible
 Distorted self  Accurate self
awareness awareness
 Key Points in Successful
personal Change
 The hardest thing to change is a
hardening of attitudes; nothing kills
change faster than attitudes that resist it.
 Failure stems from two sets of works: "I
can’t" and "Yes, but…"
 Those adept at change don’t reject good
advice just to prove they aren’t being
controlled by those who give it.
 Key Points in Successful
personal Change
 Complaining is good if it isn’t a substitute
for action – but often it is.
 High self-esteem results from making
small positive changes in spite of fear.
Confidence comes from conquering fear of
change.
 Unexpected pain can result from either
huge setbacks or successes.
 Self esteem
 Self-esteem is a “trait reflecting an
individual’s characteristic, effective
evaluation of self like feelings of self-worth
or self-liking.
 It is directly related to an individuals
desire for success.
 Higher the self esteem, higher the self
confidence.
 Self Efficacy
 Self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capacities
to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources
and courses of action to meet situational
demands.
 The term “efficacy” has been used in the sense
of potential effectiveness.
 Personal efficacy is the general sense of
adequacy which is likely to contribute to a
person’s effectiveness in working for a task-
related goal.
 Factors influencing self efficacy
 Motivation
 Self-awareness
 Proactivity
 Action-orientation.
 1.Motivation
 Motivation is an important aspect of
personal efficacy.
 An individual with high personal efficacy
is a highly motivated individual.
 Three motives or needs are fairly high on
such a person.
 Need for efficiency or excellence, need to
influence others and need to affiliation.
 1.Motivation
 Achievement motivation is reflected in the
concern a person shows for competition, either
with others or with his own standards of
performance, unique accomplishments or long-
term involvement.
 Power motivation is reflected in the urge to
influence others or to change things etc.
 Affiliation motivation is reflected in super
ordinate goal of an individual, and concern he
shows for others
 2.Self awareness
 A person with high personal efficacy has higher
awareness both of his strengths and his
weaknesses .
 Such awareness helps him to use his strengths
effectively and to manage his weaknesses by
taking steps to remove them.
 With such awareness his concern for self-
development produces better results for him.
 Self awareness is possible through self analysis
 Self analysis
 It involves asking our self following
questions.
 Do you like where you are and what you
have become?
 Have you ever wished that your life was
different?
 Can your relationship improve?
 Are you producing the results that you
want?
 Self analysis
 What makes you feel good?
 Why do you do what you do?
 What triggers you to produce your
behavior?
 How do you reach the top rung and
achieve success?
 Self analysis
 And when you begin to ask yourself these kind
of questions you will look for what works.
 And your journey to personal growth will begin.
 Personal growth requires personal change.
Personal change starts from within.
 You need to improve on your self-awareness.
You need to work on your attitude. You got to
start believing in yourself.
 Self analysis
 The better you understand yourself the
better you understand others. And the
more your relationship will flourish.
 You have to have a self improvement plan
for your personal development and
growth.
 And then take consistent and continuous
actions
 3.Proactivity
 Personal efficacy is related to an
individual’s ability to take initiative.
 Proactivity refers to ability to take
initiatives and not to wait or react for
situations.
 Factors reflecting Proactivity
 First, the proactive person feels that he can
change the things, or in general, determine the
course of action. Such a person is said to have
an internal locus of control.
 Second, Proactivity is reflected in the attitude
towards a problem. A proactive person solves a
problem instead of waiting for a solution from
outside or avoiding it altogether
 Third, a proactive person looks for available
resources and utilizes them. The more resources
a person sees around him, the more proactive
he is.
 4.Action orientation
 Self efficacy results in action.
 In fact, action-orientation is a part of efficacy.
 Action-orientation may be shown in three ways.
 First is, an action-oriented person shows some
amount of self-discipline. For example he works
hard, denies himself opportunities for immediate
gratification of some of his desires, sticks to
schedules, spends long hours on the job and so
on
 4.Action orientation
 Planning-orientation is the second aspect
of action-orientation.
 The person plans detailed activity
schedules to reach a goal.
 Not satisfied with only formulating a goal,
and his present state, he prepares
functional linkages between the goal and
his present state.
 4.Action orientation
 Finally, such a person is also future-
oriented.
 Instead of living in the past or only
confining himself to the present, he is
obsessed by the future-what he wants to
achieve, how he will act and so on.
 Role
 Role is the position one occupies in a
social system, and is defined by the
functions one performs in response to the
expectations of the significant members of
a social system, and one’s own
expectations from that position or office.
 The concept of role is vital for the
integration of the individual with the
organization.
 Importance of Role
 The performance of a person working in an
organization depends on his own potential
effectiveness, technical competence, experience,
etc as well as on the design of the role that he
performs in the organization.
 Unless a person has the requisite knowledge,
technical competence and skills required for the
role, he can not be effective.
 Importance of Role
 If the role does not allow the person to
use his competence, and if he constantly
feels frustrated in the role, his
effectiveness is likely to be low.
 The integration of a person and a role
comes about when the latter is able to
fulfill the needs of the individual, and
when the individual in turn is able to
contribute to evolution of the role.
 Role efficacy
 The effectiveness of a person’s role in an
organization will depend upon his own
potential effectiveness, the potential
effectiveness of the role, and the
organizational climate.
 The potential effectiveness can be termed
as efficacy.
 Role efficacy
 Personal efficacy is the potential
effectiveness of a person in personal and
interpersonal situations.
 Role efficacy is the potential effectiveness
of an individual occupying a particular role
in an organization.
 Role efficacy can be seen as the
psychological factor underlying role
effectiveness.
 Aspects of role efficacy
 Role efficacy has several aspects.
 These aspects can be classified in to three
dimensions.
 1.Role making
 2.Role centering
 3.Role linking
 Dimension 1: Role Making
 A]. Self-role integration: Every person has
strength, experience, technical training, special
skills, and some unique contribution to make.
 When his role provides him with greater
opportunity for using such special strength, his
role efficacy is likely to be higher. This is called
self-role integration.
 Thus the self, or the person, and the role get
integrated through the possibility of a person’s
use of his special strength in the role.
 Dimension 1: Role Making
 B]. Proactivity: A person who occupies role
responds to the various expectations that people
in the organization have from that role.
 Proactivity refers to taking the initiative rather
than only responding to other’s expectations. It
contributes to efficacy.
 However, If a person likes to take the initiative
but has no opportunity to do so in his present
role in the organization, his efficacy will be low.
 Dimension 1: Role Making
 C]. Creativity: It is not only the initiative that is
important for efficacy. An opportunity to be
creative and try new and unconventional ways
of solving problems is equally important.
 If a person feels that he has to perform only
routine tasks, it becomes detrimental fro high
role efficacy.
 If he feels that role does not allow any time or
opportunity to be creative, efficacy is bound to
be low.
 Dimension 1: Role Making
 D] Confrontation: In general, people in an
organization avoid problems or shift them
on to others, their role efficacy will be low.
 The tendency to confront problems and
find relevant solutions contributes to
efficacy.
 Dimension 2-Role Centering
 A]. Centrality: If a person feels that the
role he occupies is central to the
organization, his role efficacy is likely to
be high.
 If people feel that their roles are
peripheral ie. Not very important, their
potential effectiveness will be low.
 2. Dimension 2-Role Centering
 B]. Influence: The more influence a
person is able to exercise in his role, the
higher its efficacy its efficacy is likely to
be.
 C]. Personal growth: An important factor
which contributes to role efficacy is the
perception that the role provides the
individual with an opportunity to grow and
develop.
 Dimension 3: Role linking
 A]. Inter-role linkage: Linking one’s role
with other’s in the organization increases
efficacy.
 If there is a joint effort to understand
problems, find solutions, etc, efficacy of
the various roles involved is likely to be
high. But it depends on team working
skills.
 Dimension 3: Role linking
 B]. Helping relationship: If a person performing
a particular role feels that he can get help from
some source in the organization when ever he
need arises, he is likely higher role efficacy.
 C]. Superordination: A role may have linkages
with systems, groups and entities beyond the
organization. When a person performing a
particular role feels that what he does is likely to
be of value to a larger group, his efficacy is likely
to be high.