Interpersonal Group Process

Personal Learning Paper 2

Session 5- Interpersonal Negotiation
In this session I had a solution for many of my quandary over interpersonal negotiation skills. The exercise was based on the case of “Nathan and Chitnis” trying to negotiate over the crisis faced by both of them for which the only solution is the black melons. We were given the task of negotiating with anyone of the characters allocated to us randomly. During this negotiating I found out the basic differences and the preparation needed for the negotiating. I had perceived the negotiation as an art that is to be brought out only to certain artists and not as a skill but after pondering over the negotiating case I found out that it is only a skill that managers attain on constant practise and avoiding certain mistakes.
During the activity I made a basic mistake of not preparing for the negotiation and thus which led to a solution that was not feasible for the current scenario. Thus a basic mistake of not preparing for the case was a grave mistake which I even recognised in team meeting that I attended during work where in some cases I had no clue of the agenda of the meeting. This graveness later had adverse effects of me getting help of my colleagues for the particular topic. Thus in future I have made it as a point not to attend any meeting without preparation. During the activity I found that the basic concepts of temper and browbeating absent, it was a decent negotiating activity but for the first initial minutes the discussion was upon the task of beating around the bush then we came to a conclusion of revealing the facts that could lead to further implications on the situation rather than the negotiation. Thus the facts were revealed and we thought of coming to a nearest possible solution. Thus with the sense of cooperation we started negotiating. This activity reminded me of the group discussion that I attended for IIM’s, wherein there was temper and browbeating but not enough facts to discuss the case that was led upon us. Even if someone took up the group and came to a possible solution discussion, some don’t follow the temporary dominant leader of the group which led to more chaos within the group. The only way to make our presence and our points valued is to listen to others and going by their way and thus negotiating is the best technique. This was the most valued point that I learned which is the skill required as a manager. Both the parties during the negotiating technique are on the goodwill and both should be equally benefited from the situation.
Then during the discussion I found the pros and cons of the tricky tactics of the negotiation. There are many assumptions of the facts which are to be checked before preparation. There were some who applied this method and tried to convenience others with false information. These types of situations were prevalent over the group discussions for IIM’s. These types of tricks could be avoided with proper preparation and interpretation of the facts. Attitude is also an important concept to be dealt with when put up with tricks during negotiation.
Session 6- Power and Influence In this session we learnt about the case of “Strike in space” and the different types of groups of skylab 1, 2 and 3 where each faced a different situation and how each contributed towards the organisation. Their situation about each depicted the different types of leadership and influencing strategies used by the three groups sent in space. Skylab1 was the first initiative to be made by NASA to send the astronauts to space. Skylab1 were the pioneers or the trendsetters wherein they surpassed all the initial challenges faced by them. They were productive despite their adversity. They showcased different types of influences in the situation posted to them. Though they faced many adversities they were very committed towards their work. This reiterated the fact in my office where in the initial stages as a trainee, I found it very hard to get into mode of my colleagues as I was from a different stream of engineering and my job was based on the IT sector. But I stayed committed to my work and my productivity was appreciated despite my different stream of recognition.
In skylab2 saw a different type of attitude of being cheerful, motivated and high spirited. They were very competitive and showed immense enthusiasm in the work they do. They were not influenced by their leader; the leader was very flexible towards the decision taken by them. There was no resistance or resentment by the leader towards the crew which led to many after effects done by skylab2. There was no interdependence between the leader and the crew, this part of activity is not good to the organisation as the leader is the only person who is aware of the objectives put forth by an organisation and it is his sole responsibility to carry forward the goals by the organisations. During my college days we were to conduct inter-department symposiums before the electing the president, wherein each one will come up with their own idea of conducting the symposium and thus leading to mismanagement of the symposiums. Dominant protagonists should influence the team towards the goals of an organisation.
In skylab3, we saw coercion, legitimate and intimidating influences between the subordinates and the leader. As there was no indoctrination between the skylab2 and the management there were many mismanagement issues in the spacecraft due to which skylab3 faced many issues, there was an expectation level stet by the skylab2 members in which skylab3 couldn’t cope up due to poor housekeeping by skylab2. They made a move of putting in a strike to show their melancholy over the management. This type of situation should be avoided in any organisation to make the subordinates mirthless and hence to bring high efficiency in an organisation.
Session 7 & 8- Interpersonal Awareness In this session I learnt the different types of transactional analysis to explore my personality. Exploring it further, the questionnaire gave me a deep insight about the types of personality available. To give a brief understanding about the types of personalities, there are three ego states of parent, adult and child. Each ego state is sub-divided further for representing their respective characters. I scored high on the ego state of child, in which Natural child and Adapted child are my predominant scoring areas. As the name suggests Natural child represents the band of characters like energetic, curious and inhibited while Adapted child is exactly opposite of natural child where the person is not free or spontaneous while he makes himself adapted to the environment. The first impression seeing the rating was bewilderment. On examination, I found that the rating was indeed a depiction of my ego state; I exhibit two types of ego states according to my situation. I behave like an Adapted child at home and Natural child when I was among friends. Though my originality lies on the fact of natural child, I behave as an adapted child when there is presence of my parents. The artificial depiction of my natural child is a result of critical parenting, one of the ego states of parent wherein limits are set and there is a negative evaluation for any activity that occurs due to natural child. These ego states depicted by the questionnaire thus revealed the facts of the ego states that are predominantly depicted by me in different situations. When with parents, I behave myself as an adaptive child to avoid confrontation with them but when with friends the barriers before me seem to way off and I behave as a natural child. In my college days I have got into many in-disciplinary for which I have paid fines of rupees 5000 which in one way depicts my natural child behaviour. I scored almost the same marks for all other ego states which indicate the fact that I exhibit all the ego states some way or the other. Scoring the same mark for nurturing parent, adult and little professor makes a fragmentation of every ego state in my character. Though I have an fantasy for the characteristics of the nurturing parent, I know that deep inside I exhibit the ego state of critical parenting also. When it comes to the case of parenting, I exhibit both according to the situations that I face. I exhibit almost similar marks in adult and little professor ego states which gives a clear impression that I make some logical reasoning when tested upon critical situations and come up with innovative and creative ideas, in which both the factors depict the states of adult and little professor.
Session 9- Developing people. In this session we had an activity of building blocks, in which three people of two groups are formed to perform this task. The role of narcissist leader was displayed during that activity. In the first group, the manager was in a very submissive mode in which each and every move he relied on the General Manager to give him the way for the end result. The manager who was blind-folded made a ride on the decisions taken by the General Manager rather than making his own decision. The first group couldn’t complete to the expectation as there was guidance in abundance which wasn’t necessary, this consumed their time which made an adverse effect in the completion of the task. There was an important learning from this activity displayed by the first group, in which there was too much interdependence between the manager and the general manager and the guidance took most of the productivity, this was an example of narcissist leader. Though they take initiative for every step of the process, but the productivity of the manager cannot be sought through. This case was exhibited by my class representative in my 2nd year of under-graduation. The CR of the class used to take decisions and come up with solutions without discussing with class mates though these decisions were made with a focus to benefit everyone, inputs could have been taken to produce even more effective outcome. The second group displayed the activity with grandeur and content. The general manager was not a narcissist leader in which a certain extent of freedom was given to the manager to construct the activity blind-folded. The manager actually out-performed of what is expected out of him as a manager. His productivity was at the highest point; the manager actually was guided by the leader but not always. There was a point of time in which there was a complete disorientation in the structure and the entire class thought that the block is going to collapse but it was general manager who rose to the occasion and made all the possible support to bring back the structure back to shape and added one more value to the end product. When all the team members gave up on the manager, it was the general manager who had immense faith in the activity done by the manager and provided him the right path, this was the best part of the activity and a great lesson that we learnt during the activity. When we were doing our robotics project in my under-graduation, our guide gave us full freedom to choose the topic of our interest and make a live demonstration, though we were on the process of completion we then realised that the camera we used for our project was of a cheaper model and to bring real time effect we have to use a camera of higher quality which would be dealing with great figures. Thus when approached to our guide regarding this problem, he made some alteration in the surroundings RGB colour in which our camera was able to recognise the signals in real time. This model immediately strokes our instance with our professor in under-graduation.
Session 10 and 11- Group Process
In the screening of the film “Ek Ruka Hua Faisla” there was a jury discussion in which each person exhibited a personality trait which gave an insight of their personal behaviours showcased. Deepak Kejriwal played the role of initiator in which he was active throughout the discussion conducting voting strategy and other methods to bring everyone in the discussion and brought a conclusion that everyone agreed upon. These types of roles are prevalent against people with posts in college or work such as class representative. Amitab Srivastava was a timid gentleman in the jury in which his contribution was not large enough but his analytical skills came into play when the witness of the old woman was brought upon. His skill was useful for the discussion. Pankaj Kapur was a condescending and criticizing juror in which he made destructive comments and abusive statements about his perceptions of a particular kind of group. These types of managers always bring negative reinforcements. Zaheer was very concentrated and object oriented people towards the case, his contributions were very critical for discussing and making a clear note about the facts. These personalities bring us closer with the logical analysis with their rigour. Hemant Mishra and Subhash Udghate didn’t make enough contribution except for reiterating the facts that were produced before them. M. K Raina was a self-centred person who did not make any valuable contribution and is worried about the movie he is about to attend. These types of behaviour should be avoided for the meeting to bring betterment for the discussion productivity. K. K Raina was the person who cracked half of the case with good interpretation and analytical skill; if not for him there wouldn’t have been a new dimension in the case. Annu kapoor provided a good interpretation of the facts and helped in solving the case. The other three jurors just reiterated the facts about the cases with some confrontation with others.
Session 12 & 13 – Group Decision Making
The activity of discussing the survival in the Thar Desert with some items left behind the wreck, brought new dimensions to the group discussion. As depicted in the previous session one of my group mate took the activity as the initiator while the rest of us blindly obliged with his strategy of separating the items into bands, though one of us opposed the method. This method then proved not healthy for this type of analysis. During our discussion many of the group members gave valuable points towards the preferences in the discussion but were ignored due to majority of others opposing them. Later we found the facts that were ignored were the most important as stated by the experts. But group members instead of bringing the points by browbeating they should have brought it in an assertive way by complementing their point and then bringing the advantages of their points like the character exhibited by K. K Raina. Some members of the group were very timid and didn’t make any contribution towards the group discussion. There were some in the group with the likes of Hemant Mishra and Subhash Udghate in the movie who just reiterated the facts which were already discussed. Some members with the likes of Zaheer made some valuable contribution discussing the facts in depth and thus this analysis took the discussion to a higher level. These are the different types of personality traits exhibited by us as a group during the discussion. These personality traits were in symmetry with those in the movie telecasted. Due to different personality traits and various views exhibited by each one of us, there were many confrontations and avoidance, but the discussion had some positive points like everyone analysing other person’s opinions and points. These led to a new dimension in the discussion every time while analysing it. These personality straits are exhibited by everyone but it is unto to maintain our composure and aggressiveness to bring an effective discussion.