Month: April 2017

My first head teacher in my primary school left really impression to me. Not only because she was my first head teacher but also because she helped me set up the concept of reward system. Every week our class would hold a contest on Friday afternoon. The questions that would appear on the contest were all assigned to all the pupils on Monday of the week. During the whole week, we struggled to find the correct answers to those questions. Those were not questions like elementary algebra or word spelling. We needed to search for “what is the highest mountain in the world”, “who invented the first telescope” and so on. The process was a lot of fun actually for a first year child. And on Friday, pupils would be assigned into 10 groups and answer the questions that teacher raised by turns. The final winner would get some candy and some stationary stuff, such as cute pencils and little notebooks. Though now seems to be quite simple and crude, it was a huge attraction to children. Everyone wanted to get the reward so we all spared no effort searching for the information and memorizing the answers. Friday afternoon became something so special to our class despite being the end of the week.

Though I cannot remember what exactly my teacher once asked, I do remember the excitement after winning the prize and the frustration when we failed. Now I realize that was a such an exemplified execution of reward power. Reward power is the power that achieves compliance based on the ability to distribute rewards that others view as valuable. Without the attraction of the prize, no children would be so glad to spend so much time doing things they had only little understanding in. Though curiosity might incite us to search for unknown knowledge, it would not last long enough for almost three school years. I have to say that was a really positive circulation. Children learned knowledge out of the textbooks and developed the sense of achievement. Therefore, reward power is really beneficial to both individuals and organization. Even young children are able to participate in it and make it to be a positive model.

This blog is inspired by Yuzuru Hanyu’s latest performance during the 2017 ISU World Championships. For those who don’t know him, here is a brief introduction. Born in December 1994, Yuzuru Hanyu is a Japanese figure skater who competes in the men’s singles discipline. He is the 2014 Olympic champion, a two-time World champion, a four-time Grand Prix Final champion. Also he has set the world records for 11 times and is the current record holder in all the three of Short Program, Free Skate and Total Scores for mens’ singles figure skating. He just won his second world champion on April 1st during the World Championships this year and has broken the world record, which was also built by him, in Free Skate with 223.20 points. So as you can see, this young man is an absolute dominator in his field.

(picture from Golden Skate)

However, the recent competitions did not go well on him due to his illness and injuries. His Short Program on the Championships was a huge failure since he did not complete it as expected. Ranked only No.5 made all his fans worried about the following Free Skate. However, Yuzuru alleviated all these concerns by his perfect performance. His performance reminds me of many concepts in OB we’ve learned, including values, attitudes and motivation. Due to the word limit, I will apply the personality concept only.

As a singles skater, Yuzuru can show his personalities during competition. According to The Big Five Personality Model, I find that he is a typical example of someone who has high scores in both conscientiousness and emotional stability.

(pic from Boundless.com)

A man with high conscientiousness tends to be responsible, organized and persistent. And with high emotional stability, he would tend to be calm and self-confident. These factors can all be found in Yuzuru. He was not frustrated by the failure in Short Program. Instead, he put all his efforts and energy into the coming Free Skate. His strong self-confidence made him believe in himself to complete the Free Skate perfectly even though mistakes happened before. When he was interviewed, he always replied with great determination and confidence. His persistent and achievement-oriented personality contribute so much to his performance on the formal competition. So many skaters are not able to deal with the pressure on stage. However, Yuzuru Hanyu made it. He completed all the jumps and actions flawlessly and broke his own and the world record again. Despite his perfect skills and ceaseless practice, which are indispensable for any successful skater, his conscientiousness and emotional stability is also the crucial point that leads him into such legendary success.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzuru_Hanyu

Word Count:434

Communication must be one of the words that I mention the most frequently when analyzing almost any cases, especially when doing the solutions stage. In the case project, our group was doing the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. One of the solutions we raised for our character, Chris Gardner, was using his skill as a salesman to convince his wife to stay with their family. How? By communication. Also, in one of my favourite movie, The Social Network, the main conflict between Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, is, to much extent, caused by the lack of communication. So how can communication influence on certain relationship and organization?

Communication, by definition, is the transfer and understanding of a message between two or more people. It is the foundation for many things that happen among groups and within organizations. Effective communication can have considerable positive effect on the organization. In contrast, ineffective communication can lead to problems, just like those appear in the movies. There are different barriers to effective communication from different aspects, so it is important for the leaders to avoid them. Therefore, I tried to find the corresponding barrier happen in both movie and figure out the way to solve the problem.

The barrier in The Pursuit of Happyness can obviously attributed to the communication under stress. Chris’ family are living under extreme pressure due to the financial instability. Chris and his wife cannot control their way to speak to each other which always turns their conversation into endless quarrels and conflicts. On the occasion, both of them should try to speak clearly, think carefully before stating and be aware of the nonverbal part of the communication. It is hard to stay composed under great pressure but only in this way can the problem be solved instead of getting worse.

And as for The Social Network, I think the main barrier to be the filtering. However, there is still little difference in this case because filtering means to occur when a sender manipulates the information so that the receiver is not able to receive the full information. The problem occurs in The Social Network, especially between Mark and Eduardo is more likely caused by the lack of communication and the distance between them. As a result, there is no enough platform for them to construct effective communication. To solve this, they need to stay in regular contact to try to make decisions together as the founder and co-founder of the company.

In conclusion, communication plays a significant role in both personal relationship and business organization. Effective communication can contribute much to the group and the organization.

Word Count:434