I have had the experience of working in different industries and different-sized companies, and have to say that I know myself well enough to be able to predict my behavior under different situations with a great deal of accuracy. However, after working on this assignment, I have discovered nuances about myself that I would not have been able to calculate on my own. These small details guide my reactions in stressful situations, and the way I interact with other employees and my boss. Through this assignment and class discussions I have discovered about myself that contrary to what I had presumed, I am actually a team player, and function best when there are other people around with whom I can share and exchange ideas. Though I do enjoy managing myself rather than being micromanaged by an employer, I realized that I have this opportunity in a group environment. When working one-on-one with an employer, I often follow direction to the dot. I believe in having a mentor and following them blindly, especially in the beginning of a career. After all, one must know how to follow before being a leader. I have also discovered interesting things about how I handle stress, and what creates stress for me. Such information is critical to know how to eliminate or alleviate stress and create a comfortable working environment for myself.
[...] If a leader is placed in a situation where his group member is using high- pressure negotiation tactics, rather than resort to the use of threats, the leader can refuse to compromise, and hold a firm stance in his beliefs. By constantly expanding his knowledge, the leader will be able to generate innovative ideas and develop new activities that will reduce the mundane, everyday tasks of the job. With this, his group members will also realize that the leader is taking greater initiative and striving to accomplish something more significant as a whole. [...]
[...] I knew how it was supposed to work and what kind of results to expect, but I had not learned a single thing about the functionality of the code or how to make it work. In my second presentation, I had shown him what I had learned and the obstacles that faced us. Mainly these obstacles were my inexperience and lack of education in the area of Java modeling. Experts in an area that do not know much about their project, have the ability to pick out a relevant book that would help them and are able to extrapolate meaningful information and perform. [...]
[...] This way the worker can do work that can provide more meaning and success to them, than a task that is not suited for that worker. If this still does not improve performance, the next step would be to completely reassign the employee to either a task that requires less skill, less responsibility, or a combination of the two. The last and final step is to fire the candidate. Many people would argue that those managers that have to fire a worker due to poor performance are not trying hard enough to motivate that person, but I believe that sometimes it may be cheaper and easier to higher a new, eager, and enthusiastic person and train them, than keeping around the old, stubborn workers. [...]
[...] Relevance of Ability in Performance Following this torturous session, the boss had suggested to ship me to a conference in Chicago where the topic of Agent Base Modeling was discussed, and was very pertinent to the project at hand. There would be experts from different industries who were familiar with what I was trying to accomplish, and this would give me an opportunity to collaborate, make connections, and try to compile this model. This made me a little bit nervous because the boss had still expected that I would finish the model; he still thought that it is a question of me pushing myself and getting the right resources, rather than ability. [...]
[...] It is imperative for them to gain personal satisfaction and to build attachments to what they do, in order for the product of their work to be free of errors and for it to meet and exceed expectations. The first step in motivating a group is to diagnose the work performance problems. Typically, managers are under the notion that if their group members work harder, then their results are better. This is an incorrect approach because there are many different factors that lead to a good product. [...]
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