” That’s what feedback does: it enables you to look at situations and yourself differently, it unlocks self-reflection and growth, and opens the gate to change.”

Our textbook defines feedback as a degree that carrying out work activities generates direct and clear information about the employee’s performance 2. It is also a factor that positively correlated with job satisfaction. In other words, lack of feedback on performance can cause a job dissatisfaction.

I never actually think about the effect of feedback, however, recently I realized the importance of it. I was working on a Fantasy project with my group for this course and I could not stop thinking that I am dragging down the group’s productivity and performance due to lack of my fluency in English. So I spoke up honestly about it to my group members during the in-class feedback exercise time and was able to get feedbacks from them. They told me that I was in charge of something that no one really wants to do in the group and my role as a designer is essential to the team.

I found out that the feelings I felt from the feedback exercise agree with the reasons stated in the article that I read explaining why feedback is important. After getting feedbacks from my group members, I felt more belonging and was able to get a sense of purpose as a group member 2. Positive feedbacks from them also prevented me from being stuck and just discouraged and negative feedbacks helped me to reflect myself as a group member.

Generally, it is really hard to notice and evaluate our own performance without feedback from others. Feedback is helpful because we do not need to waste extra time to evaluate our own performance. Therefore, I would say feedback itself is very important not only because it is beneficial to the employment relationship, but also helps us in many different real-life situations like group work situation. I believe everyone should actively looking for or never hesitate to exchange feedback in order to enhance their performances.

References

1. Naumann, Karen. “5 Reasons Why Feedback Is Important”. The Huffington Post. Aug.12, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-naumann/5-reasons-why-feedback-is_b_8728332.html.
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 95, 179.

“Because, frankly, every project has its own marshmallow, doesn’t it?” 

About two weeks ago, I read Aaron’s blog post about the Marshmallow Challenge, which was quite similar with our in-class Paper Tower exercise.  A team would be assigned a task to build the tallest free-standing structure with limited resources. He identified the five stages of group development from the challenge and evaluated the interesting fact that kindergarteners performed way better than business students because they never hesitate to make mistakes.

By watching the referenced TED talk video, I had a chance to think about a team experiencing and trying to manage inevitable failures in the prototyping process in order to achieve a goal. Prototyping is a constant process of trying out new ideas, experiencing, and learning from failures. However, we all know that experiencing failure is very emotionally tired and hard thing to manage especially you are in a team.

It is hard for any team to admit and face failure directly. I would say that it is not a good idea to attribute the cause of failure to a specific person or situation. Therefore, we have to be aware of self-serving bias as well as fundamental attribution error because team members have to work closely together toward a common objective and are accountable to one another.2  Instead of promoting future conflicts and disharmony in a team, what they need to do as a team is examine and reflect upon the failures so they can prevent them from happening again later.

To sum up, I strongly believe creating a comfortable team atmosphere should be more encouraged in order to let team members discuss freely with the failures that they have made so far. Eventually, by accepting failures as valuable learning opportunities and working together to make future improvements, the team members will be able to come up with more creative and innovative outcomes like the kindergarteners who aced the Marshmallow Challenge.

References

1. Business School vs. Kindergarten Students
2. Wujec, Tom. “Build a Tower, Build a Team.” TED. Feb. 2010. Lecture.
3. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 39, 67, 205.

” The good news is that the scientists who’ve been studying motivation have given us this new approach.It’s built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter,because we like it, they’re interesting, or part of something important.” 

As a student, I always had a hard time to motivate myself to start studying in some specific subjects that I do not interested in. When I was in high school, I tried my best to avoid history related courses because studying history was too boring to me. I just memorized and crammed course related materials in order to get a good grade in that course.

In the TED talk video that I am referring, Dan Pink proves the traditional reward system of using rewards and punishments that business people mainly use to motivate employees will not work effectively anymore in our 21 century society. He claims that we need to focus on intrinsic motivators in order to achieve high performance and work efficiency 1.

Figure 1. Relationship of Various Needs Theories

Dan emphasizes the importance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as three main factors of intrinsic motivation and I figure out that they are interrelated the various needs theories that we discussed in our class. According to the textbook, autonomy promotes active engagement and self-direction and it affects higher order needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy (self-esteem and self-actualization), motivators of and needs for power and achievement 2.

Personally, I never felt happy or satisfied while studying history. However, I loved spending time in art classes. Finishing a piece of artwork made me really satisfied and helped me to relieve my stress. I never thought that time was boring and spent a lot of personal time in visual art classroom because I was intrinsically motivated.

To sum up, I believe it is really important to take some time in order to think about some activities that you like to do in order to motivate yourself intrinsically. By trying to work on our own puzzle of motivation, we could all benefit ourselves and explore more about inner potentials.

References

1. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 128-133.
2. Pink, Dan. “The Puzzle of Motivation.” TED. Jul. 2009. Lecture.

” It does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe.”

I decided to start my first blog post with Susan Cain’s TED talk about the power of the introvert because it helped me figure out our society’s misconceptions against introverts and understand how our generation stereotypes these people as having more negative and socially undesirable personalities.

According to our textbook, 1 MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality framework states that “Extroverted individuals are outgoing, sociable, and assertive. And introverts are quiet and shy”. I define myself as an introvert because I lose my energy from meeting people and need time to recharging myself. However, a person can be both extroverted and introverted to some degree. Susan introduces us to a new term called “Ambiverts” for people who have both tendencies.

In the video, she claims that 2 “our most important institutions are designed for extroverts”. Since extroverts are more capable of speaking in public and spreading ideas, many of them have a leadership role in our Western society. This makes people believe that introverts are not as capable as leaders and it is essential to have extroverted traits in order to be successful in their life. Because of this social norm that favours extroverts, we often force many introverts to act like extroverts instead of helping them develop their unique talent of deep thinking.

Susan identifies that great leadership and ideas can come from either personality type. She addresses how introverts favour quality of relationships over quantity and how they like to think thoroughly before making a decision, giving them a great advantage as leaders.

I believe the unique talents and traits that introverts have are great assets in our society.  It is very important to understanding misconceptions of different personalities and try to make a balance that can help different individuals get along with others and to get the best out of everyone in a group as well as our society.

References

1. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 49.

2. Cain, Susan. “The Power of Introverts.” TED. Feb. 2012. Lecture.