Reflective Writing: Personal Experiences in Organizational Behavior

This reflective writing assignment delves into the complexities of organizational behaviour, drawing upon personal experiences and theoretical frameworks. The author examines the impact of individual behaviour on working with diverse personalities, analyzing how their own actions influence their approach and display of emotions within a professional setting. The assignment references real-world scenarios, including group projects and internship experiences in HR, to illustrate the practical application of concepts like the Situation-Strength theory, McClelland's theory of needs, and the Five Factor Model of personality. The author reflects on the importance of emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and the role of HR managers in fostering a positive and productive work environment. The paper concludes with recommendations for HR professionals on managing employees with varying personalities and emotional needs, highlighting the significance of understanding individual differences and promoting effective communication.

Running head: REFLECTIVE WRITING
Reflective Writing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1REFLECTIVE WRITING
Executive Summary
Organization is defined as a social group of individuals, which is formed and managed to
meet some particular collective goals. Shared goals and objectives are the only thing that are
common between the individuals. The individuals working in an organization varies from
each other regarding their personality and behaviour. Besides their unique personalities, they
have to maintain a harmony in their work for achieving the stated objectives. These
individual personalities and emotions should be given importance in the professional
workplace.
I will be describing my personal experience on how I worked in an organization comprised
with diverse personalities and their emotions and the learning I received from the unit of
‘Behaviour in Organisations’ on various theories and concepts. Finally, I will be sharing my
thoughts and understanding from the learning and provide recommendation on the
responsibilities of a successful HR Manager and how they should manage the employees with
different personalities and emotions.

2REFLECTIVE WRITING
Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion and Analysis............................................................................................................4
Question 1: How do my behaviour influence my approach to working with different
personalities?..........................................................................................................................4
Question 2: How do my behaviour influence my display of emotions and authenticity?......7
Recommendation......................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12
Appendix..................................................................................................................................15

3REFLECTIVE WRITING
Introduction
Organizational behaviour describes the process of interaction between employees
working in an organization. It is one of the important topics that falls under Human Resource.
There exists a wide range of scholarly work on the behaviour of employees in organization
under Human Resource management. It is under constant modification due to the scopes for
research and review. Various scholars have proposed various theories on organizational
behaviour that has the commonality regarding personalities, emotions and moods.
According to Mohammadi et al. (2015, p. 303) a person’s personality is a combination
of variables like habits, thoughts, desires, skills and beliefs. These variables controls the
reaction of an individual towards others. The scholars are still under active debate on the
origin of personality formation. The scholars argue if the heredity or the environment or both
have influence on the personality of an individual. Most of the researches points in the same
direction and concludes that it is a combination of both. Both heredity and external
environment have equal influence on personality formation of an individual and enduring
personality traits or features demonstrated in numerous circumstances (Wood et al. 2016, p.
51).
Personality controls individual’s moods and emotions that we will later discuss in this
report. Emotions are the feelings of a person of another human being or anything else that
matters. Various factors like time, stressful events, social activities, personal loss plays active
role in influencing a person’s emotion. As the way an individual behaves in an organization is
partially based on the how s/he sees the organization, it can be said that emotion controls the
individual’s organizational behaviour. Positive behaviour in the organization is the outcome
of positive conceptualization.

4REFLECTIVE WRITING
I will be describing my attitude in management while dealing with diversified
personalities. I will reflect on the emotions in an organization in the later part of the report.
This report is a reflection of what I have learnt from the unit course and my experience
working in a group. I will conclude the report with recommendations for the manager as per
my understanding of the topic.
Discussion and Analysis
Question 1: How do my behaviour influence my approach to working with different
personalities?
Case 1: The second assignment of the full time course I am in provided me my first
opportunity to experience different personalities in a workplace as it was a group assignment.
I consider the experience that I gathered from the teamwork in the university project is very
much similar to the experience of working as a team in an organization. Both the situations
offers the opportunity of accomplishing a shared goal. The teamwork brought me in contact
with diversified behaviours, personalities and attitudes that contributed in developing my
approach of working with different personality traits held by different individuals.
Case 2: Second similar opportunity that I received is during the internship in a HR
department of a company in my home country. I received the opportunity of working in a
pool of diversified personality traits. The HR head of that organization had a temperamental
personality that reflected lack of concern for the employees’ emotions. The other employees
whom I was working with reflected a different type of personality that can be termed as the
type B personality according to the organizational behavioural terminology. Individuals with
type B personality tends to reflect a relaxed and calm attitude their work. Their nature does
not reflect competitiveness and are happy to take the back seat (Baron, 1989).

5REFLECTIVE WRITING
I find the authenticity of Situation-Strength theory, as we had to consider individual
employee’s behaviour, attitudes, perceptions, thoughts and feelings from both the personality
and the situational point of view (Mayer et al. 2010). Besides these factors, other influences
mould the personality and behaviour of an individual in a workplace. They can be self-
monitoring, self-evaluation, self-esteem or locus of control (Smith et al. 2013, p. 59). Rotter
(1966) explained the locus of control as one of the measuring factor of people’s general
expectancies about their control over a situation affecting them and their tendencies to
attribute the causes of their success of failures to internal or external sources (Fretwell et al.
2013, p. 60).
Beside this, I experienced from my findings that the personalities can be motivated
through diverse desires and needs, and it varies from person to person (Bencsik et al. 2016, p.
184). I can relate the McClelland theory with one of the incident from my group assignment,
when one of the group members seek to lead the team. It reflects his/her need of power.
Everyone else reflected a high need of achieving as they were busy completing the project on
time for securing high grades. I could relate myself with the high need of achievement as I
prioritize hard work and quality outcome over power. I like to put all my effort in achieving
the best quality of the work I have been assigned. This resulted me to think that everyone is
unique and have unique values and needs, which can be motivated by various factors. For
example, some prioritise their basic needs like food and shelter, while some have the esteem
needs like respect and power. One should consider there needs while motivating the
individual.
The self-efficiency theory led me believe that personality is capable of increasing
individual’s self-efficiency. The theory states that an individual can deliver work that is more
efficient only if s/he believes their capability of performing the task. A person with optimistic
mind-set, some amount of self-confidence and perception of events as opportunity have high

6REFLECTIVE WRITING
level of self-efficiency. Judge and Ilies (2002, p. 800) in their work related self-efficiency
with the conscientiousness and emotional stability.
It is important for an organization to identify the personality traits of its employees, as
it is likely for them to affiliate their personalities with the organizational culture and value.
Garderner et al. (2007, p. 589) indicates the need of different measures of personality and
values in the process of determination the person-organization fit. It will require a common
approach for improving employee retention. There are various tools available in the market to
conduct personality test among which, Myers Briggs type indicator is popular in the business
organizations.
The personality of the leader can also be determined with the help of this tool. The
success of an organization demands for an effective leader that makes it necessary for any
given organization to run a typology test on the leaders before appointing them for the
position (Mohammadi et al. 2015, p. 303). Khoo and Burch (2008, p. 88) on the other hand
gave explanation of transformational leadership that inspires the employees to put their
maximum effort by transforming their mind-set and caring for them. Transformational
leaders tends to have agreeableness and high on extraversion. Bono and Judge (2004)
identifies extraversion as an important trait that can exclusively be found in transformational
leaders. The employees finds motivations and guidance from their transformational leaders
for achieving the goals. It makes it a necessary requirement of a transformational leader to be
extrovert for transparency in their communication with their followers for avoiding any
misconnection and ambiguity.
Our course suggested us to take a personality test for knowing our individual
personality for which, I chose the Five Factor Model personality assessment test. The test
indicated my personality as extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience,

7REFLECTIVE WRITING
agreeableness and high level of emotional stability. The results were appropriate for me as it
relates to my personality. I came to this conclusion after relating the results to the feedback I
received from my supervisor during the internship period. According to her description, I had
a stable emotion and openness to learn and explore. She further stated my personality as
interactive and innovative.
The experience I gathered from both my team assignment and internship led me
conclude that every organisation is an amalgamation of different personalities. As a
prospective HR Professional, I gathered knowledge from my course and developed insights
for dealing with individuals holding different personalities and values and directing them to
work for a same objective. The course provided me the opportunity to learn my own
personality as well as the people I am surrounded with. The comprehensive learning from the
unit enabled me to deal with diversified personalities efficiently in my professional and
personal life.
Question 2: How do my behaviour influence my display of emotions and authenticity?
Case 1: I encountered various incidents during my internship in the small HR firm that
required me to be emotionally stable. My boss became furious during the interviews for the
post of Chief Operating Officer. It was due to the technical glitch that occurred in between
the interview process as it was wasting the time of the stakeholders of the organization.
Moreover, it was her duty make all the logical arrangements, as she was the Human Resource
Head. She then immediately turned to me for solving the problem without wasting anymore
time. It was necessary for me to be calm and emotionally stable to find a proper and logical
solution as soon as possible to continue the interview process.
Emotion is the principle component of human reaction and behaviour, which is
controlled by the workplace environment and events while working in an organization.

8REFLECTIVE WRITING
According to the affective event theory, it can be through direct cues or indirect influences or
both. Job demands, surrounding, variety of tasks and requirements for expressing emotional
labour falls under the above-mentioned workplace events. Affective Event Theory states that
both positive or negative emotions and feelings can be triggered by the workplace events that
ultimately leads to outcome of the individual’s attitude and behaviours. An individual with
the possession of negative feelings for the organisation will reflect negative attitude towards
it and might indulge in workplace non-standard behaviour and likely to violate workplace
norms and values (Humphrey, 2002).
Robbins et al. (2016, p.114) identifies various other factors take part in translating the
emotions into work behaviours that are termed as emotional intelligence and emotional
labour. Goleman’s Refinement Model of Emotional Intelligence describes it differently than
Robbins et al. as shown in the appendix 1. The degree of emotional intelligence is measured
by an individual’s ability to identify and distinguish his or her emotions and implement in
managing their behaviour and working relationship within the organization (Bulik, 2005,
p.168).
Bulik (2005, p. 174) identified that individuals who have high level of emotional
intelligence reflects better coping skills with the stress and adverse health outcomes as they
have a higher degree of capacity to recognise and express their emotion simultaneously have
the ability to manage and control them according to their will. These individuals have an
additional skill of identifying the causes of stress and can formulate strategies to overcome it.
It is an additional advantage that makes them stronger form the rest of the population.
Individual with high emotional intelligence can make thoughtful decisions and work with
different yet difficult personality. It is due to their ability to come up with accurate
interpretation and perception of emotional cues. Chien Farh et al. (2012, p. 892) identified it
as an additional benefit of the individual. These individuals also reflects high self-esteem and

9REFLECTIVE WRITING
confidence. It helps them to be calm in challenging situations where other fails to deal with
the situation and can spread positivity among their team members at difficult times
(Shooshtaria et al. 2013, p. 37).
Emotional labour on the other hand is the management of emotions as opined by
Grama and Botone (2009, p. 316). He defined it as the individual’s ability to modify personal
emotions and feelings either consciously or subconsciously according to the emotional rules
for particular profession. Example can be drawn from the employees working in the
hospitality industry where they have to deal with the customers and conduct face-to-face
communication. These employees have to represent strong emotional intelligence, as it is a
part of their duty to be kind to their customers and communicate with them reflecting their
happiness in serving them, disregarding the fact that they are not having emotions of content.
This can have an adverse effect on emotional orientation that can cause harm to the employee
and effect their well-being (Pugh et al. 2011, p. 377). It often threatens the actual emotional
identity of the employee and results into distress, displeasure, job dissatisfaction, productivity
downfall and intention to quit (Grandey, Fisk & Steiner, 2005).
The leaders often use emotion as a tool for inspiring the employees in any
organisation. It is commonly seen in the transformational and charismatic leader who are
often feel free to share their emotions with the employees, stimulating emotion for pouring
positive emotions amongst the fellow employees for achieving a fruitful result. The leaders
have to be aware of the emotional needs of their fellow followers which will help them in
providing positive inspiration and conviction (Brown & Moshavi, 2005; Cherulnik et al.,
2001). The charismatic leaders have high level of control over his or her emotion as well as
on the emotions of their followers that help them achieving positive outcome and behaviours.

10REFLECTIVE WRITING
Autocratic leadership is another style of leadership that reflects high level of control
over their emotions. According to Freeman and Auster (2011, p. 21) individuals with this
leadership style are completely aware of his feelings and emotions, have sefl-confident,
reliable, dependable and have the ability to increase the strengths of his followers.
Johari Window is a popular and useful model used for representing feelings,
emotions, attitudes, thoughts, intentions and motivations of an individual in relation with the
group. The model is composed with four-pane self-awareness window. Each of the pane
reflects four different types of self-awareness that are unknown, blind, hidden and open. The
course demanded to conduct this test on myself. The result of the test indicated the open
category mentioned above, which means I have complete awareness of my behaviour,
motive, attitude and values. An employee’s efficient development in an organization depends
on the self-awareness of one’s attitude and emotions. Self-awareness of our emotions and
attitudes enables us to predict our behaviours under various situations that would help us in
controlling the outcomes (Hase et al. 1999).
The organizations should avoid taming the employees’ emotions according to their
requirements as these emotions and feelings have a vital role in shaping individual’s work
attitude and performance. In early days, organisations used to regulate and control the
emotions of their employees that should be limited into supporting the employees and
providing motivations for generating positive emotions and feelings of their jobs and the
workplace.
Recommendation
The learning I received from the unit of Behaviour of Organizations on different
concepts and theories will assist me in dealing diverse and challenging personalities. It will

11REFLECTIVE WRITING
also facilitate in demonstrating my understanding of employees’ emotions for creating an
unified workplace environment.
I would like to make some recommendations from the knowledge I received for the
unit. They are as follows:
I. A HR should participate in evaluating the employee’s job, work force, organisational
value and culture for finding best person fit for the position. This will enable them to
find and fill the positions in the organization with the persons best fitted for the job.
The employees will then be satisfied with their job as likely to stick with the
organization for longer period. It will stamp out the requirement for recruiting
employees under short period.
II. The role of the manager is to direct the team towards achieving the shared goal of the
organization. They should consider evaluating and understanding individual
employee’s personality differences in the process and handle them accordingly.
III. The organisations should use the personality test for understanding diverse
personalities held by the employees that can potentially aid the organization in
training employees accordingly. It can also help in developing a cordial relationship
amongst the team members and establish open communication between them (Barrick
& Mount, 2005).
IV. According to Nelton (1996, p. 25), it is impossible to separate emotions from the
workplace as one cannot separate emotions from the individuals.
V. Employees are also liable for regulating their intense emotional cues for avoiding
exacerbate situations. Self-awareness of emotions and feelings is the first criteria for
dealing with emotions. Only then, one can attempt to regulate these emotions and
behave in appropriate manner in the workplace.