Reflection on these last 10 days

Thanks to everyone who read my BLOGs this short winter session.

I must say.... I'm really impressed with what I have learned in just these last 10 days. I honestly did not know what to expect with Organizational Communication, let alone cramming it into 10 days... But I have to admit, it works! Having just taken COMM101 - Introduction to Communication and BUS160 Fundamentals of Management and Organizational Behavior last semester, I personally feel this class was the icing on the cake. It was extremely helpful to have that foundation work in terms of understanding the ideas and concepts this text delves into. I'm also impressed with the fact that I was truly interested by what the authors of the text had to say, because they used ideas/theories of other to explain the key concepts. For example in my last two postings-- the 3 Habits of Mind and the Dalai Lama- those kinds of things are intriguing to me, because I'm all about self-help/self-realization/self-awareness! To be able to take these quasi-intuitive 'realms of consciousness' and be able to apply it in an educational manner is important, because I feel satisfied that I learned something I can take with me.

Enough of me rambling, but I just wanted to share! :) Kudos to all of us who learned something new in 10 days! :)

The Dalai Lama

I find it rather interesting that our text quotes wisdom of the Dalai Lama for Organizational Communication.... However, it goes to show that things do go around full circle and are applicable to everyday aspects of our life....

Mindfulness is something I just learned about this year... I am trying to learn how to be more mindful and aware of my surroundings, behaviors of others, and most importantly my own thoughts and behaviors. I have actually looked into this, if mindfulness is something that interests you, check out these sites:
www.mindfulness.com
http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree.html

Chapter 11 summarizes it well in the section of 'Mindfulness, Integrity, and the Experience of Work.' The example of the Dalai Lama's circulated internet message about achieving Good Karma in his "Instructions for Life in the New Millennium" is a great one. Because as Eisenberg states, "regardless of your spiritual orientation we feel his insights help put the experience of work into a broader experience of living well" (p. 349) and I couldn't agree more. These are great 'instructions' to apply in life as well as the workplace, because lets face it... we spend most of our lives at work... so by achieving mindfulness and integrity, it's possible to maintain a better workplace and a happier life...


Excerpted from page 349 so I can try to abide by them ;)

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the 3 R's: Respect for the self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all of your actions
4. Not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck
5. Learn the rules so you can know how to break them
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship
7. When you realize you made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone each day
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer
11. Live a good, honorable life. That way, when you get older and think back, you will be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life
13. Share your knowledge. It is a way of achieving immortality.
14. Be gentle with the earth.
15. Once a year go someplace you have never seen
16. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

3 Habits of Mind

Chapter 9 reviews what some effective leadership habits are.... however, I think these are good habits to have in life in general. The mind can be a very tricky and complex thing when it comes to analyzing and thinking... I know I personally am a creature of habit so it's tough to sometimes break free of conditioned ways of thinking. Habits of mind "are patterned ways of thinking that define how a person approaches issues and conceives of alternative ways of resolving or dealing with them" (p. 281). Peter Senge and colleagues conducted interviews and then developed a model, with three habits of mind that bring together both subjective and objective aspects of knowledge that I believe we could all go by.... or at least, as a reminder for myself to go by:

[Excerpted from page 282]

1. Sensing -The capacity to suspend, the courage to see freshly, seeing from the whole, seeing with the heart. Quieting the mind. Avoiding knee-jerk reactions to problems, or distancing yourself from the problem. Redirecting attention
2. Presencing - Into the silence, reaching a state of clarity about what is emerging, an inner knowing that is quite the opposite of decision making. "What to do just becomes obvious." Presencing is seeing from the deepest source and becoming a vehicle for that source.
3. Realizing - Refers to the creative process, bringing something new into reality. This comes from a source that is deeper than the rational mind. Examples: "If you have to think in the martial arts, you're dead" -Bryan Arthur. "It's almost as if I'm watching myself in action. I'm both engaged and simultaneously detached. When that happens, I know there will be magic."-(Gotseva-Yordanova, 2006)

These are 3 habits I believe I could work on for so many different levels of my life.... I don't think it would be easy by any means...

But I think it's a great piece of advice for many of us-- if we could "clearly focus on identifying future possibilities in the world and ridding oneself of the baggage associated with the past" (282). May make for a happier place, at least in the aspect of our personal worlds, don't you think?

Motivation

Motivation is something in particular that appeals to me for the reason that I find myself to be a pretty motivated individual, although by various things for various reasons. I have been surprised by how different everyone's levels of motivation really are. And I think a lot of us discover this by working in groups/teams, and find that you all have different expectations or desires for the outcome of the project, therefore having a different work ethic or putting in different levels of effort. Motivation is defined as "the degree to which an individual is personally committed to expending effort in the accomplishment of a specified activity or goal" (p. 289). Not everyone is motivated by the same things, or even motivated at all... and I find it's hard to gage what factor is the motivating factor for employees, co-workers, or even people you are involved with, because it will never be the same across the board. For some people, they are motivated by money or commodity-based incentives, others are motivated by recognition, and some just do it for their own personal satisfaction. Of course, I would say motivating factors would vary from case to case depending on the situation, but in the workplace I think it would be hard to select one way to motivate employees. I think successful leaders are the ones who use a combination of methods in an attempt to motivate their employees.

Learning to be on a Team

I think it's fair to say that most of us who have grown up in American culture was taught to play nice with others, share, learn there was no "I" in team and participate. A majority of us who have entered the workforce know, that most organizations have taken on some sort of team-based aspect. To function as a team, means a better functioning as a whole for an organization. Eisenberg defines teams as "groups of employees with representation from a variety of functional areas within the organization to maximize the cross-functional exchange of information" (p. 235). So I am happy to say, that those "golden rules" we were taught as children and in school, really did make sense as it plays out in our lives as adults. I've worked several jobs in my young adult life, some in smaller companies, and others part of a large organization. But functioning and working together as a team made a big difference in terms of everyone's happiness and productivity. Even as a manager, I felt it was important to work closely with my employees and still act as one of the employees (in terms of responsibilities) in order to emphasize the concept of equal work as a team. This helped promote feelings of being a team and people were more like to pitch in, speak up with their ideas, and work harder to keep things going. Being a team, reminds me that there is strength in numbers.

Gender Differences at Work

In Ch. 7 of our text, Eisenberg summarizes Karen Ashcraft's four frames of identity: Gender Differences at work, Gender Identity as Organizational Performance, Gendered Organizations, and Gender Narratives in Popular Culture. Gender differences have always interested me, especially when it comes to communication styles. As a female, I know my way of communicating is very different than a male. I know that there are some people are firm believers in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus but that concept is something that has also been debated by those such as Deborah Tannen.

One arena that I see gender differences take place in is at the workplace. For one, at my job, I see confidential information regarding job offers to CEOs of our portfolio companies. I must admit that I have seen a job offer for both a male and female CEO with similar qualifications... but there was a difference in salary for the two (female's lower than male's). I know that there are many people who strive for job equality, but there are some industries (especially in the white collar corporate world) where it is just the status quo: women will be paid less than men sadly to say. The example that is given in our text about the equally qualified man and woman receiving job offers, but the man negotiates for higher pay is really eye opening. When you put the numbers in perspective like that, it makes you think "I really need to speak up." I can see how some women are too... I'm not sure if timid is the word, but hesitant to negotiate for more money. I think it's just our mannerisms. I've been in positions where it's time to discuss my review and pay... and it's a difficult thing to ask for. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but if we [women] were more forward and direct in the workplace, we could hopefully someday close the gap.

Organizational Culture in the Workplace

Our text defines "organizational culture" as the workplace environment: actions, ways of thinking, practices, stories and artifacts that characterize a particular organization (p. 127). Culture can be observed in an organization by simply looking at or examining the physical environment and individuals' interactions. I remember when I used to work a makeup artist/retail manager for a particular cosmetics line, I actually wrote an ethnography paper on the culture there for an anthropology class. What I noticed, first as an outsider of that culture, then as an insider of that particular culture was that a lot of the girls did their makeup a particular way or style, wore a certain style of clothing, having a distinct look as makeup artists. The participated in some of the same events or rituals, had a particular way of thinking, had their own shared stories, language and jargon.... For those of you who have seen a MAC makeup artist, you may know what I mean. But I imagine it is like this in a lot of workplace organizations, because that's what it is- the culture of the organization: its members, purpose and goal are what make up the culture.

How to make sense of it all...

In chapter 4, the text talks about systems and its perspective on organizations and communication. Karl Weick developed theories and explored sense making. He developed a sense-making model and in that model, the assumption is that making decisions is retrospective sense making (p. 115), meaning that people act first and later think about their actions to try to explain meaning. This makes sense to me.... because I know sometimes I personally act/react rather impulsively... and then analyze it later to explain its meaning, or justify my actions. I found the "properties of sense making" he identified to be interesting:
[Excerpted from pp 115-116]

• Identity construction "Who I am is indicated by how and what I think"
• Retrospection "To learn what I think, I look back over what I said earlier"
• Enactment "I create an object to be seen and inspected when I say or do something"
• Socialization "What I say, single out, and conclude are determined by who socialized me and how I was socialized, as well as by the audience that will audit the conclusions I reach"
• Continuation "My talking is spread across time, competes for attention with other ongoing projects, and is reflected on after it's finished (which means my interests could have already changed)"
• Extracted cues "The 'what' that I single out and embellish as the content of the thought is only a small part of the utterance that becomes salient because of the context and personal dispositions"
• Plausibility "I need to know enough about what I think to get on with my projects, but no more, which means sufficiency and plausibility take precedence over accuracy"

Weick calls this a "recipe". I think that I sometimes follow this... but maybe not with the exact same measurements every time. When I take an action, I think about who I am, why I think that, looking back at what I did, create something that is in accordance with what I said or did, make it appeal to the receivers... and by the time I try to make my case, sometimes we've already moved on from it. These properties are applicable to organizations if you change the "I" to "we", allowing for people who aren't planners to still make sense of what work they do. But not everyone in an organization would follow this because there are some of us who like making plans, and sticking to it, rather than learning in retrospect.... or in other words, hindsight.

The Three Little P's

Reading this short snippet about Organizational Communication theories as historical narratives (p. 62-64) brought the biggest smile to my face. Not because of what was written in the text, but moreso because of the timing that I had read it. Eisenberg talks about the three P's of historical writing, alluding that historical "writing is partial, partisan, and problematic--providing an important perspective on communication and revealing the limitations of any account" (pp. 62-63).

• Theories are Partial - partiality: accounts that are only part of the story
• Theories are Partisan - partisanship: the story we choose to tell tends to be the one we favor
• Theories are Problematic - an account asks more questions it can answer, and answers provided are ones that are known rather on all that could be known

In the text, these P's are used in the context of historical accounts or storytelling, i.e. story of Native Americans and white settlers, however, I think these P's can relate to any account, not just historical ones. By accounts, I mean personal accounts involving interaction among two or more people--leading to the reason why I laughed upon reading this: I had just gotten into an argument with a 'significant other' and the whole thing is about whether we truly understand where the other person is coming from. He is constantly trying to share (in my opinion, his sharing is more like shoving) his theories with me... while I'm trying to explain my thoughts and feelings. So I can't help but think his theories are partial, partisan, and problematic! But not only that... I realize when I share the accounts of our disagreements with my friends (leading them to believe what a jerk he could be [such a girl thing, I know]), I know that my theories are partial, partisan and problematic! So..... really-- all personal interactions contain the three P's. And the best way to sum it up is what Eisenberg says about partisanship: it's "not so much about identifying facts as it is about interpreting their meanings" (p. 63). So I'm learning... that rather than picking a part what I believe to be facts (which usually ends up more of an assumption or generalization than actual facts), I should try to interpret their meaning... from the other side of the story.

Self in Context

When you define yourself-- it's always defined in the context of others... or moreso compared to others; either you define yourself by conformity or differences, or how you are sharing, interacting and engaging with others. In Chapter 2, one of the foundations of dialogue is the relationship of self ("I" or "me") and others. Personally, when I think of my "self-identity" it never occurred to me that I was defining myself according to others and the relationship I share with them. But upon reading:

"Our identity only makes sense in relation to others" (Eisenberg p. 43)

It really stuck out to me because it really is our interactions with the people surrounding us that begin to affect how we perceive ourselves and image of self. Especially in the context of telling stories, or describing yourself to someone. You retell what you've been told by others- here's a simple example: a handsome athlete who spends his time doing community service has probably been told he's good-looking, talented in sports, generous in charity work... and therefore would possibly describe himself as: attractive, athletic, and nice. And this concept is easily transferrable to organizations because the self can easily be influenced by other members.