Three aspects of organisational behaviour might need change

By definition, organisational behaviour is "the study of human behaviour in organizational settings, the interface between human behaviour and the organization, and the organization itself."

I have spent 27 years in the corporate, and my article here is based on my experiences, and in my own interest, on some genuine discussions I had had with some of my colleagues. At the outset, I must say that good and heart-warming experiences galore, and I was fortunate to have colleagues who were such good friends that even today when they call me, I feel an instant connect with them. They were the ones who had pushed me to take up things I never thought I could, because I was from a different background. In my effort to being a meaningful trainer, these friends went out of their ways to coach me into highly specialised subjects like Systems Thinking, Conflict Management; A gatecrasher that I was, I fondly recall that during my first session, some of them were outside the class just to come in for help if required; luckily, thanks to their indefatigable efforts, I did not disappoint them, but I would always keep this as my mark of respect to what organisations can do by cascading down the right culture of camaraderie and professionalism.

The three important aspects

1. Colleagues are not friends

Sad but true, and why so I wonder. Most of us are groomed into thinking that colleagues cannot be friends, and it is because of our thoughts, this becomes true. I have often wondered that how is it that all mothers are good, but all mothers-in-law are you-know-what! Even before meeting them, we have an opinion of them... can this be based on logic? This mindset needs to change. How can we see peace in this world if we do not have peace at our workplace? Peace, for quite selfish reasons has a less priority over growth. This is sad. The world outside, the real world, is full of insecurities; especially now, because we are not sure if from work we'd go home safe and sound. However, inside the organisation, we fight, constantly with a win-lose approach. Look at our appraisal model and you will understand what I mean. In my brief interaction for 25 days in an organisation, I met one person who would warn me to be careful because he thought there were enemies all around. Think! Is this person alone needs to be blamed? No. If we need to change this mindset, organisations need to come forth and develop a solid and in-depth mechanism to ensure we can also see a friend in our colleagues instead of only those team-outings and events. Colleagues are made to fight because organisations think they cannot control the workforce otherwise, and per the top notch executives all of this animosity needs to be alive to ensure growth. This logic is not sound enough because if growth were so important, Peter Senge wouldn’t alert us on the limits to growth. And who says growth cannot be achieved with friendship? If this is the organisation’s mindset, then it needs to change; otherwise, every day we’d need to go to work, and every day, we’d hate to go.

2. Competition means growth

 There’s another important aspect that the organisations need to focus on, competition! Throughout history, as old as time, if we have seen anything horrendous, it is competition! Competition fosters growth without understanding what true competition is, is a wrong mindset. According to the Brahmakumaris (BKs), Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, human beings haven’t learnt to compete; the most fascinating competition – something that really fosters growth and spreads bonhomie, is competition with Self, with none else. Our entire model, from induction to promotion to attrition happens because of and despite competition. Please do not categorize me as oh he’s one of those followers of BKs or some such spiritual organisations and discard saying it is not applicable in the real world, it is very much applicable. If you have never tried anything, from the bottom of your heart, how can you say it is not...otherwise we wouldn’t have the digital world today! Organisations market competition as healthy, but according to many social behaviourists, healthy competition is an oxymoron. The expression cut-throat seems more appropriate.

 3. Peace, the poor cousin

 In our pursuit to achievement and growth, peace often takes a backseat. It wouldn’t be inappropriate to say that it is shelved as the poor cousin or even the black Peter. As part of OB, we need to factor in peace as an important aspect that can build relationship between people in an organisation as also between organisations. It is sad to see how organisations compete against each other and expect a peaceful world in which they inhabit. Our businesses would have a far more meaningful growth, if peace became our raison d’être! If profit and money were to be the only cornerstones for success, then there is little wonder to have surprises, sometimes from food products and sometimes from pharmaceutical products. It is this mindless and mechanically driven mindset of wanting more profit and more growth anyhow that put people’s lives at stake, killing people or back-stabbing them is fair because that's what we have learnt, and with 'enemies all around' peace indeed is that weak and the poor cousin!

 People’s person, caught in between the devil and the deep sea

On this, I have spoken at length to not less than 100 people across levels, and all of them, without exception, have told me how bitter their stress is and how insecure they feel because of competition. I guess they were voicing hundreds of them out there! Some of them have also used the word cul-de-sac to define this model which fosters animosity and mistrust among people. And yet we talk about being a people’s person! My sincere appeal to people who matter would be to understand, through meaningful huddles, as to how to bring about a model where individuals can be evaluated in a much more creative way, rather than the traditional win-lose approach. This is a creative, engaging and a daunting task indeed, which can only come about through conviction and meaningful discussions! Else we could just be happy with growth and unhappy with the lack of it, and in both, peace will escape for sure! In between competition and growth, with their respective price, good and bad, organisations and their workforce are perpetually in between the devil and the deep sea.

Notes and references:

1. Moorhead, G., & Griffin, R. W. (1995). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (5th edition). Boston. Houghton Mifflin, (p.4)

2. Peter Michael Senge is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning; author of The fifth discipline

 3. Brahmakumaris, a spiritual organisation

 4. Deepak Chopra is an Indian-born American author and public speaker. He is an alternative medicine advocate and a promoter of popular forms of spirituality

 5. Wayne Walter Dyer is an American self-help author and a motivational speaker; his first book Your Erroneous Zones is one of the best-selling books of all time

 Image credit: Google images

Loner the loser, a food for thought

The single-seat

Have you noticed that some restaurants have started making room for customers who come alone to eat? They come without any friends, or relatives! Strange as it may sound, but they too like to eat out, go to movies and have fun, albeit alone. Social behaviorists have noticed this sudden change as a growing phenomenon; they opine that very soon the number of lone visitors is growing to increase. I am not going into the reasons here, because the objective of this article is to show how loners are treated at work, even in organisations that claim to be inclusive.

The socially challenged with their common needs

Broadly speaking, they are defined as socially challenged people hereinafter referred to as ‘subject’. They have all other common emotions, like the need to have fun, have a good life, and obviously the need to work; however, they do not have inter-personal skills, also known as soft skills! Studies show that there could be many reasons behind this self-abandonment, one of which could be the so-called superiority complex, or simply the inability to continue with repetitive and meaningless small-talk. The boss maybe an engineer and an MBA from leading institutes, but it doesn’t matter to the subject because the boss doesn’t know anything about Kafka, or Baudelaire, hasn’t read Harry Potter or Marx; therefore, for these subjects, the boss and every member of their team would seem to be a misfit. The subject doesn’t socialize with the team because of a probable mismatch in common interest; doesn’t accept anybody’s friendship on FB; comes and does the work and leaves. The only exchange is a hello, and a warm one, or a bye, or a happy weekend, or even an all the best, as the case may be! The subjects may be even turning down their invitations for the fear of being misunderstood; but do any of these warrant a termination!

Organisations can perhaps do little

Inclusiveness, by definition, means “the fact or policy of not excluding members or participants on grounds of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability. In this definition, our society is yet to establish the inability to socialize as a disability. However, atrocities of various kinds loom large in society and organisations. They can range from work getting off your belt orchestrating your low performance to staging allegations of harassment to people not eating, not going out with the subject to people not talking, even to criminalizing the subject. Therefore, at a time when the subject needs help, the door is shown. Until the time there is some kind of remedial help received from within the organisation to recognise the inability to socialize as a disability, organisations can do very little. It is spreading in society at an alarming rate now, and families of the subjects suffer because organisations are unwilling to carry on with them.

The consequences for silence

As a consequence, these people lose their jobs on various grounds; rude behavior, lack of performance, insubordination, or even worse. Why should they lose their jobs is what I am trying to look at, don’t they have a family, don’t they have the same needs as other normal people. Then how are the organisations inclusive! Organisations have included the LGBT, the SC, ST, OBC, but are unwilling to include people who prefer to work in silo? What if I labelled them as SCP (socially challenged people), would you accept them then! Is this inclusiveness only at the physical level? Interestingly, it is also observed that the normal colleagues manage to find out horrible stories about subjects; some even insult them as harbingers of negative energy, or find them malicious, they are these black Peters or the Rudolphs!  However, they also have the potential to bring the team closer!! It doesn’t make their colleagues bad because they manage to find stories, they do so because they are untrained and hence apathetic towards people who don’t prefer to socialize and talk.

Choice between convenience and inclusiveness

Organisations find it convenient to go with the crowd; instead, if they gave the subjects their little space, a little corner to work, developed a mechanism to let them be as they are, it would enable the subjects to continue with their solo fun and entertainment, run their families as their normal counterparts. They may be incapable of small talks, but can achieve big things for the organisations, if only we made room for them? With insecurities growing by the day, the number of Rudolphs is on the high for sure! Whether to go with the crowd or to train the crowd accept the subjects as they are so they fit in the crowd is a choice between convenience and inclusiveness that learning organisations might consider. Otherwise, the single-seats will increase, not in restaurants alone! It's time organisations looked at this important aspect of human relations.

Servant leadership, imprisoned

In my bid to understand leadership and its necessity to change, if at all, I came across an interesting book which answered nearly all my questions; it is The Servant as Leader by Robert K. Greenleaf, a must-read for those who want to re-define leadership and bring about the change it truly needs! In view of the growing intricacies between a variety of variables, traditional leadership for sure needs to liberate its demeanor! With servant leadership applied, organisations, especially the learning organisations, can truly create faith, love and trust among its people than the so-called insecure fear-induced respect.

By definition

What is servant leadership? As the definition goes, “Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world”. Then how does it differ from traditional leadership? “While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.

Leadership, as we see it

Unfortunately, what we see is more of traditional leadership. In India and in the APAC region, syndicates are prohibited, aping the west doesn't seem to apply here; however, we can see an un-written union among leaders when it comes to controlling people. Those who work do not seem to have any voice and power why! Those who are led are always ruled, not served why! If I ever bring out a book on leadership as we see, I would quote case-studies to show how leaders have failed from their true leadership, how insecure they were to form unions and work in tandem with HR to throw their weights around, like the muscled 'goons' of the panchayats! Human resource? Interestingly, I recall from one of my mentors who'd asked me to write down the first verb that came to my mind when I thought of the word 'resource', and I wrote exploit. Where are those euphemisms now!

There are great leaders too! However, they are few and far between! Most of them are frustrated for sure, fighting day in and day out with mediocrity, and trying to write books on leadership, why not I wonder! The mediocre leaders, on the other hand, with their pathetically frozen understanding of people, shield growth as their showcase; all of which ironically have been delivered by people who are monitored than discussed, instructed than empowered! Most discussions in meetings turn into monologues thanks to the inflated egos of the traditional leaders! To top it all, they insist on a hundred percent participation on their so-called fun-filled events to score points as a great place to work, not attending which are threatened and meted with dire consequences; even fun is fearsome, a show of power, where are we heading I wonder! 

About leadership, from the voice of a client

Traditional leadership needs a thorough change. I wonder when servant leadership is going to be delivered from the confines of a book!

Note:
1. goons - a hired hoodlum
2. panchayat - a village council