MBA - Unit 1 - MB20107 - Managerial Skills and Communication
MBA - Unit 1 - MB20107 - Managerial Skills and Communication
MBA - Unit 1 - MB20107 - Managerial Skills and Communication
COMMUNICATION
UNIT I
Introduction to skills & personal skills Importance of competent managers, skills of
effective managers, developing self-awareness on the issues of emotional intelligence,
self-learning styles, values, attitude towards change, learning of skills and applications of
skills– Negotiation and assertiveness skills.
LEVELS OF MANAGEMENT
In an organization, there are levels among managers according to a chain of command. This scalar
chain is made up of superior-subordinate relationships. The levels of management denote a series
of managerial positions as hierarchy of command. These levels determine the authority, role and
status of managers. The number of managerial levels depends upon the size of the concern and
complexity of operations. Management levels have been classified into four categories:
Top Management
Top management of a company comprises of Chairman, President, Chief Executive, Board of
Directors etc. This is the policy-making group responsible for the overall direction and control. Top
management is held responsible for the overall management of the concern. It is the ultimate source
of authority. It establishes overall goals, plans, strategies, and broad operating policies and
guidelines of the company.
Middle Management
This level of management consists of deputy heads of departments, sectional officers, plant
managers, office managers, branch managers, area sales managers, chief accountant, purchase
officer etc. these managers have to keep a constant watch on the day-to-day performance. They deal
with operations. They interpret and explain the policies decided by top managers. They issue
detailed and specific instructions regarding operations. They also take problems, difficulties, and
suggestions upward. They develop and train operative personnel.
Supervisory or First-Line Management
First line management consists of plant superintendent, senior foreman, clerical supervisor, lab
supervisor, accounts officers, etc. They deal with technical routine and day-to-day problems. They
are a link between lower level and higher levels of management. Their job is concerned with the
management of workers, resources, and actual operations. They possess technical skills. They
explain work procedures, send reports, supervise and control workers and maintain discipline. They
also harmonize interdepartmental relationships.
MANAGERIAL SKILLS
A manager’s job is complex and multidimensional. It requires a range of skill to perform the duties
and activities associated with it. Regardless of the level of management, managers must possess and
seek to further develop many critical skills. A skill is an ability or proficiency in performing a
particular task. Management skills are learned and developed.
An effective manager must possess the following skills to perform his job well:
1. Technical Skill: Technical skill is the ability to use the procedures, techniques, and
knowledge of a specialized field. Engineers, accountants, doctors, and musicians all have technical
skills in their respective fields. Technical skill also includes analytical ability and the competent use
of tools and work equipments to solve problems in that specific discipline. Technical skills are
especially important for first-line managers. These skills become less important than human and
conceptual skills as managers move up the hierarchy.
Human or Psychological Skill: Human skill is the ability to work with people by getting along with
them. It is the ability to motivate, lead and to communicate effectively with others. It is also known as
‘people’, ‘interpersonal’ or ‘behavioural’ skill. This skill is important as the managers spend
considerable time interacting with people both inside and outside the firm. Managers require such
skill for the following specific reasons:
● To get the best out of their people.
● To communicate, motivate, lead and inspire enthusiasm and trust.
● To get the job done.
● To coordinate and resolve conflicts.
● To allow subordinates to express themselves.
● To take care of the human side of the organization.
● To facet eh challenges of globalization, workforce diversity and competition.
● To keep people busy.
● To retain good workers in the firm.
● To improve overall organizational performance.
Human skills are equally important at all levels of management. A related aspect of human skill is
political skill which is a distinct type of social skill that is important for managerial success.
2. Conceptual Skill: Conceptual skills are most important at the top management levels.
More specifically, conceptual skills refer to the ability:
● To organize information and to judge relationships within a complex whole.
● To think and to conceptualize about complex situations.
● To see organization as a whole.
● To understand the relationships among various sub-units.
● To visualize how organization fits into its broader environment.
● To recognize significant elements in a situation and to understand the relationships
among the elements.
● To understand how a change in one unit will impact the other units.
● To coordinate and integrated the entire organization’s interests and activities.
● To think in the abstract.
Conceptual skill is often called the ability to see the ‘big picture’. It means the ability to ‘think
strategically’- to take the broad, long-term view. The importance of conceptual skills increases as the
manager is promoted higher in the organization.
3. Diagnostic Skill: This is the skill that enables a manager to visualize the most appropriate
response to a situation. A manager can diagnose and analyze a problem in the organization by
studying its symptoms and then developing a solution. It is the ability to define the problem,
recognize its possible causes, focus on the most direct problem, and then solve it.
It is the ability to determine, by analysis and examination, the nature and circumstances of a
particular condition. It is not only ability to specify why something occurred, but also the ability to
develop certain speculations in ‘what if’ situation.
It can be noted that managers generally use different combinations of skills at different levels of an
organization. For example, top managers rely heavily on conceptual and diagnostic skills and first-
line managers put more emphasis on technical and interpersonal skills. Many experts have
suggested few more additional skills for managers to perform their roles successfully. They are as
follows:
4. Design Skill: According to Koontz and Weihrich, managers at upper organizational levels
must have the skill of a good design engineer in working out a practical solution to problems. Design
skill is the ability to solve problems in ways that benefit the enterprise. Managers must be able
to do more than see a problem. If they become ‘problem watchers’, they will fail. They must be able
to design a ‘workable solution; to the problem in the light of the realities they face.
5. Analytical Skill: These skills involve using scientific approaches or techniques to solve
management problems. In essence, analytical skills are the abilities to identify key factors and
understand how they interrelate. These skills include the ability to diagnose and evaluate. These are
needed to understand problems and to develop plans of action for their solution. It is ability to think
about how multiple complex variables interact.
6. Decision Making Skill: All managers must make decisions, and the quality of these
decisions determines their degree of effectiveness. Duening and Ivancevich state that a manager’s
decisions making skill in selecting a course of action is greatly influenced by his analytical skill. All
managers must have decision making skills. Research indicates that half of managers’ decisions fail
because managers employ ‘failure-prone tactics’.
7. Digital Skill: Managers must how to use digital technology to perform many aspects of
their jobs. This skill increases a manager’s productivity. This skill involves a conceptual
understanding of computers and telecommunications. Through computers, managers can perform
in minute’s tasks in financial analysis, human resources planning and other areas that otherwise task
hour to complete.
8. Interpersonal Skill: Effective communication is vital for effective managerial
performance. This skill is crucial to managers who must achieve results through the efforts of others.
It is the ability to exchange ideas and information’s in ways that other people understand the
message. It also involves feedback from employees to ensure that one is understood. If managers are
to succeed in the workplace, they must strengthen their communication skills.
9. Planning and Administration Skill: This skill involves deciding what tasks need to be
done, determining how they can be done. Allocation resources to enable then to be done, and them
monitoring process to ensure that they are done. Included in this competency are:
● Information gathering, analysis, and problem solving;
● Planning and organizing projects;
● Time management; and
● Budgeting and financial management
10. Teamwork Skill: It is the skill to: (i) design teams properly, (ii) create a supportive team
environment; and (iii) manage team dynamics appropriately. Because more and more organizations
are relying on team to improve quality and productivity, it becomes important for managers to
develop their teamwork skill.
11. Strategic Action Skill: Strategic action skill involves understanding the overall mission
and values of the organization and taking strategic actions. Today, managers at all levels and in all
functional areas are being challenged to think strategically in order to perform their jobs better;
12. Global Awareness Skill: Today, most of the companies are serving global markets. Many
organizations need to set up operations in other countries. Hence, it has become necessary for
managers to develop global awareness competency. This skill is reflected in (i) cultural knowledge
and understanding, and (ii) cultural openness and sensitivity.
13. Self-Management Skill: The dynamic work environment calls for self-awareness and
development. Effective managers have to develop self-employment skill which includes:
● Integrity and ethical conduct,
● Personal drive and resilience,
● Balancing work and life demands,
● Self-awareness and development, and
● Learning about self.
PERSONAL SKILLS
1. DEDICATION: Dedication is the hardware and effort put by an individual or a group
towards any work, task or project considering it to be important.
● It is a feeling of commitment and loyalty towards a thing playing a important role for
individual as well as organization/
● Dedication basically speaks for itself. Managers heed to towards their self-
management so that they can be able to work with dedication towards the individual assignments
given to them.
● Dedication is often related with commitment towards an organization in order to
retain or stay with corporation for a long time. This is the past era.
● Presently in this Era of right sizing, down sizing and mergers expecting such long-
term dedication is unrealistic. Individuals also focus on their career development and switch over
for various job opportunities helpful for their growth and development.
● So in present time managers are expected to maintain self-discipline to accomplish
their basic job functions and show more dedication towards individual assignment or work allotted
to them.
2. PERSISTANCE: Persistence is a firm determination of accomplishing an objective or goal
despite of many difficulties, hurdles and uncertainties. This personal skill involves a manager in
developing an approach to complete or accomplish a defined task in allotted times regardless of
technical. Logistical, organizational or (supply and distribution) personal hurdles. Manager should
have the skills to face all the difficulties coming in the way of task achievement. Time, resources and
risk has to be managed efficiently by a manager. A manager should set up the goals and must do
proper planning to achieve those goals. Persistence is normally an inherited skill. It cannot be built
through training or reminders.
3. ASSERTIVENESS: Assertiveness is a way of expressing views, ideas opinion or desire with
full confidence so that people can notice them. Managers must have the quality to put their views,
ideas or opinions confidently in front of others in the organization working at all the levels of
management top level, middle level and high level. Managers must have the skills to accept the
challenges with positive attitude and confidence. They should be self confident in their thoughts and
actions. Managers should recognize their importance as well as of others.
For example –
● Visual – The occipital lobes at the back of the brain manage the visual sense. Both the
occipital and parletial lobes manage spatial orientation.
● Aural – The temporal lobes handle aural content. The right temporal lobe is especially
important for music.
● Verbal – The temporal and frontal lobes, especially two specialized areas called Broca’s
and Wernicke’s areas (in the left hemisphere of these two lobes)
Physical – the cerebellum and the motor cortex (at the back of the frontal lobey) handle much of our
physical movement.
● Logical – The parietal lobes, especially the left side, drive our logical thinking.
● Social – The frontal and temporal lobes handle much of our social activities. The limbic
system (not shown apart from the hippocampus) also in influence both the social and solitary styles.
The limbic system has a lot to do with emotions, moods and aggression.
● Solitary – The frontal and parietal lobes and the limbic system, are also active with this
styles.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
‘Emotional intelligence is aggregate of individuals’ cognition of own and other’s emotions, feeling,
interpretation and action as per environmental demand to manipulate the consequence which in
turn result in superior performance and better human relationship’ (Bhattacharya, 2003).
Emotional intelligence is a measure of the degree to which a person makes use of his/her reasoning
in the process of emotional responses (both positive and negative) in a given situation. So having
high emotional intelligence doesn’t mean that the person never panics or loses his/her temper. It
does mean that he/she brings own feelings under control and channels them into productive
behaviors. The ability to bring out-of-control emotions back into line results in what earlier
generations called emotional maturity.
Emotional intelligence :- “Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your emotions and
those of other people and to behave appropriately in different situations.
PERSONAL COMPETENCIES
How we understand and management are emotions and manager ourselves.
1. Self Awareness: - Self awareness is an ability of an individual to observe – understand their
feelings of emotions when they arise
“Recognize the feelings as the occur”
This includes self-confidence, self-assessment a openness to positive criticism.
2. Self-regulation:- Self regulation is the ability to control emotions and to redirect those
emotions that can have negative impact and change them into positive behavior and attitude. It
includes trust worthiness integrity and attitude towards change acceptance.
Self Motivation:- Motivation is the ability to channelize and stimulate your emotions of action
through self gathering or control towards achievement of certain goals of objectives in spite of inertia
(i.e. difficulty lack of desire of energy of ability to move to change or to action.) People who have this
ability are optimistic and committed towards organization as well as individual goals.
SOCIAL COMPETENCIES
How we understand the emotions of others and handle and management are interpersonal
relationships.
3. Empathy: - Ability to feel as get concerned for others. Ability to understand others their
feelings, perceptions, perspectives and to treat them according to their emotional reactions. People
having this competency or ability are experts in motivating others.
4. Social Interpersonal Skills: - Ability to built a good rapport of relationship with people in
the organization.
Handling interpersonal relationship conflict resolution an negotiations.
1. Preparation for Change: Preparation for change is the first phase for developing emotional
intelligence. This phase occurs even before an individual begins training for developing emotional
intelligence. Preparation for change occurs at both organizational and individual levels. This phase
is basically related to assessing organizational and individual needs for developing emotional
developing emotional intelligence. Usually, this phase consists of the following steps:
(i) Assessing the Organisation’s Needs: The organisation must assess whether its
personnel need training for developing emotional intelligence and, if yes, what type of training is
required. In assessing the organizational needs, two points are important which must be taken into
account. First, many employees in the Organisation and work performance. Second, there is a need
for identifying various emotional competencies required for success in the organization.
(ii) Assessing Personal Strengths and Weaknesses: There is a need for assessing personal
strengths and weaknesses. While assessing such strengths and weaknesses, care should be taken to
assess the employees approach towards the need for emotional intelligence and their learn ability
so that emotional competencies can be infused in them. Often, there are two challenges that lie in
assessing personal strengths and weaknesses. First, people are less aware of skill weaknesses in the
social-emotional domains. Second, emotional competencies are primarily manifested in social
interactions. Therefore, the best approach is one which involves ratings by experts who interact with
employees.
(iii) Providing Feedback. People are eager to get feedback about any assessment of them.
Therefore, immediate feedback must be made available to them. However, there are many pitfalls in
providing feedback on emotional competencies as these are closely linked to employee’s identity and
self-esteem. Therefore, in the feedback is not provided carefully and with sensitivity and skill,
employees often become defensive. Generally, employees respond.
(iv) Encouraging Participation. Emotional intelligence is perceived to be soft and, thus,
somewhat suspect. Therefore, employees may decide not to participate in its development unless
they are convinced that management of the oraganisation strongly endorses it. Since development
of emotional intelligence requires active participation of employees, it is necessary to encourage this
participation.
(v) Linking learning Goals to Personal Values. There is a direct linkage between the
benefits of learning and the learner’s motivation to learn. Thus, if employees feel that developing
emotional intelligence is directly beneficial to them, they will be motivated to develop emotional
intelligence. Therefore, it is necessary that management links learning with the personal goals of the
employees that they value.
(vi) Recognising Readiness to Change. After completing the above steps of preparation for
change, it is desirable to measure readiness of employees to change, that is, to determine whether
employees are ready to participate meaningfully in training programme for developing emotional
intelligence. Research on behaviour change programmes reveals that employees pass through
several stages of readiness for change before they are actually ready to make commitment for
change.
Begin by asking each person individually for ideas about how to solve the problem.
c. Start out with a brainstorming session encouraging each person to say whatever
comes to mind, no matter how wild.
5. You have recently been assigned a young manager in your team and have noticed that he
appears to be unable to make the simplest of decisions without seeking advice from you. What do
you do?
a. Accept that he “does not have what it takes to succeed here” and find others in your
team to take on tasks.
b. Get an HR manager to talk to him about where he sees his future in the organization.
c. Purposely give him lots of complex decisions to make so that he will become more
confident in the role.
d. Engineer an ongoing series of challenging but manageable experiences for him, and
make yourself available to act as his mentor.
LEARNING
Meaning of learning:
Learning is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge & experience to be applied in future
reaction to situation. Learning from particulars phenomenon depends upon one’s personality,
perception, motivation & situation. The learning process involves motivation, eyes, responses &
reinforcement.
Definitions by Authors
Learning could be defined as a relatively permanent change in Behaviour that occurs as a result of
prior experience
E.R. Higard
Learning has taken place if an individual behaves, reacts, responds as a result of experience in a
manner different from the way he formally Behaved.
W. Mchehee
Process of Learning
1. Learning invariably involves a change though not necessary improvement in Behaviour.
The learning may be good or bad from an organizations point of view for ex., bad habits, prejudice,
work restrictions may be learned by an individual.
2. Change in behaviour must be relatively permanent temporary changes may be only
reflexive and fail to represent any learning. Changes called by fatigue or temporary adaptations are
not covered in learning.
3. Change in behaviour should occur as a result of Experience, practice or training. The
change may not be evident until a situation arises in which new behaviour can occur.
Theories of Learning
There are four theories which explain how individuals learn new patterns of behaviour
1. Classical Conditioning
Learning through classical conditioning (C.C) was first studied by Ivan Pavlov, a famous Nobel Price
winning physiologist, at the turns of 20th century. The C.C. theories deals with the association of one
event with another desired event resulting in a desired behaviour of learning
Pavlov conducted an experiment on a dog to study the relation between the dog’s salivation and
ringing of a bell. A simple surgical procedure helped him to measure accurately the amount of salvia
secretes by dog. When Pavlov presented a piece of meat to the dog, he noticed a great deal of
salivation. He termed the food unconditional stimulus (food automatically caused salivation)
And salivation – an unconditioned Response when the dog sew the meat it salivated during the
second stage
Pavlov merely rang a bell (neutral stimulus) the dog did not salivate. Pavlov subsequently introduced
the sound of bell each time the meat was given to dog. Thus meat & ringing of bell were linked
together. The dog eventually leant to salivate in response to ringing bell even when there was no
meat.
2. Operant Conditioning (OC)
O.C is defined as “Behaviour the that produces effect.” OC is based on work of B.F. Skinner who
advocated that individual’s exhibit responses that are rewarded and will not exhibit response that
are either not rewarded or are punished.
O.C also called instrument conditioning refers to the process that our behaviour produces certain
consequences & how we behave in future will depend on what those consequences. If our action
have pleasant effect then we will be more likely to repeat them in future. If however our actions have
unpleasant effect we are less likely to repeat them in future.
3. Social Learning
Also called observational learning, social learning theory, emphasizes the ability of individual to
learn by observing others. The important may include parents, teachers, Peers, Motion Pictures TV
artists, bosses & others.
Social Learning
By Observation By Experiment
understanding Feedback
A person receives a variety of stimulus inputs. When specific stimuli become associated with specific
responses in a sufficiently permanent manner that the occurrence of the stimuli elicits or tends to
elicit a particular response, it is important to understand the role of various components of learning.
These components are: drive, cue stimuli, responses, reinforcement, and retention.
1. Drive: learning frequently occurs in the presence of drive any strong stimulus that impels
action. without drive, learning does not take place or, at least, is not discernible because drive
arouses an individual and keeps him ready to respond’ thus, it is the basis of motivation. A motive
differs from drive mainly in that it is purposeful, or directed towards the specific goal, whereas drive
refers to an increased probability of activity without specifying the nature of the activity. Drives are
basically of two types-primary or physiological drives and secondary or psychological drives. These
two categories of drives often interact. Individuals operate under many derives at the same time. To
predict behaviour, it is necessary to establish which drives are stimulating the most.
2. Cue Stimuli: Cue Stimuli are any objects existing in the environment as perceived by the
individual. It is common to speak of cue stimuli simply as stimuli or to use the term cues and stimuli
interchangeably. The idea here is to discover the conditions under which a stimulus will increase the
probability of eliciting a specific response. There may be two types of stimuli so far as their results
in terms of response are concerned: generalisation and discrimination.
(i) Generalisation: generalisation occurs when a response is elicited by a similar but
new stimulus. If two stimuli are exactly alike, they will have the same probability of evoking a
specified response, but the more dissimilar the stimuli become, the lower will be the probability of
evoking the same response. The principle of generalisation has important implications for human
learning. It makes possible stability in man actions across the time. Because of generalisation, a
person does not have to completely relearn each of the new tasks or objects which constantly
confront him. It allows the organizational members to adapt to overall changing conditions and
specific new or modified job assignment. The individual can borrow from past learning experiences
to adjust more smoothly to new learning situations. However, there are certain negative implications
of generations for learning. a person may make false conclusion because of generalisation. For
example, stereotyping or halo effect in perception occurs because of generalisation.
(ii) Discrimination: discrimination is opposite of generalisation: this is a process
whereby an organism learns to emit a response to a stimulus but avoids making the same response
to a similar but somewhat different stimulus. For example, a rat may learn to respond to the white
colour but not to the black.
Discrimination has wide application in organizational behaviour. For example, a supervisor can
discriminate between two equally high producing workers, one with low quality and other with high
quality. The supervisor discriminates between the two workers and positively responds only to ht e
quality conscious worker. As there in no positive response (reinforcement), the low quality
producing worker may extinct his learning.
3. Responses: the stimulus results into responses. Responses may be in the physical form or may
be in terms of attitudes, familiarity, perception, or other complex phenomena. usually, however,
learning psychologists attempt measurement of learning in behavioral terms, that is, responses must
be operationally defined and preferable physically observable.
4. Reinforcement: reinforcement is a fundamental condition of learning. Without reinforcement,
no measurable modification of behaviour takes place. The term reinforcement is very closely related
to the psychological process of motivation. However, motivation is a basic psychological process and
therefore is broader and more complex than is implied by the learning principle of reinforcement.
Reinforcement may be defined as environment events affecting the probability of occurrence of
responses with which they are associated. The role of reinforcement in learning is very important.
of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed
by satisfaction (reinforcement) will be more likely to recur; those which are accompanied or closely
followed by discomfort (negative reinforcement or punishment) will be less likely to occur.
(a) Positive reinforcement: Positive reinforcement strengthens and enhances
behaviour by the presentation of positive reinforces. There are primary reinforces and secondary
reinforces. Primary reinforcement satisfies basic biological needs and includes food, water, and
sexual pleasure. However, primary reinforces do not always reinforce. For example, food may both
be a reinforce to someone who has just completed a five course meal. Most behaviour in organisation
are influenced by secondary reinforce. This includes such benefits as money, status, grades,
trophy’s& praise form other. These become positive reinforces because of their association with
primary reinforce & hence there are called as conditioned reinforces
(b) Negative reinforcement: In Negative reinforcement an unpleasant event that
precedes behaviour is remove then the desired behaviour a course. This procedure increased the
likely hood that the desire behaviour will occur.
(c) Punishment: punishment is the attempt to eliminate or weaken undesirable
behaviour it is used in two based. One way to punish a person is to apply negative consequences
called punisher following and undesired behaviour. The other way to punish a person is to
be withhold a positive consequences following and undesirable behaviour
(d) Extinction: extinction may be defined as losses of memory. Extinction of a well
learned response is usually difficult to achieve because once something is leaned, it
is never truly unlearned. Extinction merely means
that the response in question has been repressed or it may be replaced by leaning of incompatible
response. Thus, under repeated conditions of non-reinforcement, there is a tendency for the
conditioned response to decreases or disappear.
5. Retention: The stability of learned behaviour over time is defined as retention and the
converse is forgetting. Some of the learning is retained over a period of time, while other may be
forgotten. Extinction is a specific form of forgetting.
SOURCES OF ATTITUDES
The central idea running through the process of attitude formation is that thoughts, feelings and
tendencies to behave are acquired or learned gradually. The attitudes are acquired from the
following sources:
1. Direct Personal Experience: The quality of a person's direct experience with the attitude
object determines his attitude towards it. For example, if a worker finds his work repetitive,
inadequately paid, supervisor too tough, and co-operative, he would develop a negative attitude
towards his job because the quality of his direct experience with the job is negative.
2. Association: A new attitude object may be associated with an old attitude object and the
attitude towards the latter may be transferred towards the former. For example, if a newly recruited
worker remains most of the time in the company of a worker towards whom the supervisor has a
favourable attitude, the supervisor is likely to develop a positive attitude towards the new worker
also. Hence, the favourable attitude for the old worker has been transferred towards the new worker.
3. Social Learning: Attitudes are also learnt from others as example, from parent, teachers,
superiors, models etc. An individual may learn by having contact with others or even watching
models over the
T.V. In fact, social learning makes it possible for a person to develop attitude towards something even
when he has no direct experience of the attitude object. For example, an unemployed person entering
the job market for the first time may be favourably disposed towards a government jobs. Thus, the
social Learning is a convenient way of developing attitude.
4. Institutional Factors: Religious institutions, social organizations educational institutions, etc.
also help in shaping the attitudes of people.
5. Mass media: Attitudes are generally less stable as compared to values. Advertising message,
for example, attempts to alter the attitude of the people towards a certain product or service.
Similarly social message on TV and in newspapers can have mass appeal among the people. That is
why, publicity campaign against use of drugs and tobacco products and for use of iodized salt is
carried out in the electronic, media repeatedly.
6. Economic Status and Occupations: Our economic and occupational positions also contribute
to attitude formation. They determine, in part, our attitudes towards unions and management and
our belief that certain laws are “good" or "bad". Socio-economic background influence both present
and future attitudes of people,
FUNCTIONS OF ATTITUDE
1. Adjustment Function: Attitude helps the people to adjust their attitude towards
anything. Positive attitude towards organization helps the employees to adjust themselves well
in that.
2. Ego-defense functions: Ego defensive attitude is farmed an used to cop with a
feeling of guilt or threat. People farm and maintain such attitude to protect their own self-image
to satisfy their ego.
3. Expressive functions: This function helps in-
a. Expressing individual central value and self-identity
b. Expressing the culture, concept, status in behaviour of person
c. Expressing the manner in which individuals thinks an relate themselves to the
group.
4. Knowledge function: This function helps in providing a stable, organized and
meaningful structure and also provides the standards or frames of reference by which
individual judges and object, person or situation. Applicable in consumer behaviour.
CONCEPT OF VALUES
Values are ever encompassing concepts values are tinged with moral favour, involving an
individual's judgment of what is right, good or desirable. They are at the core of personality of
an individual and, therefore, are a powerful, through silent, force affecting behaviour. Values are
so embedded that they can be inferred from person's behaviour and their expressed attitudes.
What may 'appear' to be a strange behaviour in an employee can make sense if managers
understand the value underlying that behaviour. Values have an important influence on the
attitudes, perceptions, needs and motives of people at work. That is why, it is extremely
important to study values from an organizational behaviour perspective.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VALUES
1. Values provide standards of morality.
2. Values are relatively permanent and resistant to change.
3. Values are most central to the core of a person.
4. Values have two attributes-content and intensity. The content attribute stresses that a
particular code of conduct is important. The intensity attribute specifies how important that
particular code of conduct.
5. Values transcend specific objects, situations or persons.
6. Values are fewer in number than attitudes.
Values contain a judgment element, i.e., they carry an individual's ideas as to what is right
desirable. Values have both content and intensity attributes. The content attributes emphasizes
that a mode of conduct or end-state of existence is important. The intensity attribute specifies
how id is. When we rank an individual's values in terms of their intensity we obtain the values
system of that person.
TYPES OF VALUES
All port and his associates have categorized values into six major types as follows:
Theoretical : Interest in the discovery of truth through reasoning and
systematic thinking.
Economic : Interest in usefulness and practicality, including the
accumulation of wealth.
Aesthetic : Interest in beauty form and artistic harmony,
Social : Invest in people and human relationships.
Political : Interest in gaining power and influencing other people.
Religious : Interest in utility and understanding the cosmos as a whole.
What is Assertive Communication?
Assertive communication is the ability to express positive and negative ideas and feelings in an
open, honest and direct way.
It allows us to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions without judging or blaming other
people.
And it allows us to constructively confront and find a mutually satisfying solution where conflict
exists.
There are many advantages of assertiveness skills in communication, most notably these:
“I feel frustrated when you are late for meetings. I don't like having to repeat information."
“Could you explain the reasoning behind your decision, so I can try to understand what you’re
doing”
"I understand that you have a need to talk and I need to finish what I'm doing. So what about
meeting in half an hour?"
“Can you suggest a time we can talk about the missed deadline. I’m concerned”
Confidence: you are composed and believe in yourself and what you’re saying
Control: You are in control of the situation and are monitoring what’s happening