Blogging Topic 5: Negotiation and Conflict

Last week, I asked about manipulation vs. influence. It's a hard question, knowing when you cross the line to doing "bad" manipulation vs "good" influence. Like most ethical dilemmas, the line is fuzzy and moves a lot. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a ethical dilemma. We'll continue to revisit ethical dilemmas as we go through the semester, with the idea that keeping an eye on your core values will help you resolve them.

In class this week, you engaged in a negotiation. Did you think you did well in the negotiation? Were you surprised at your actual score on the negotiation compared to the scores of your partner and other members of the class? What kinds of information and influence did you try to bring to bear in the negotiation? Did your preconceived notions of your negotiation partner influence approach? Do you think your performance in the negotiation reflects your general approach to conflicts in the rest of your life? Were you satisfied with your performance? What can you learn from this negotiation (or from the role play you are working on) that informs you interactions with people around you?

Manipulation and Influence

By definition, manipulation means exerting shrewd or devious influence especially for one's own advantage while influence is the power of affecting people or events without direct or apparent effort. Apparently, the former sounds more negative, the latter, more positive. Manipulation has a control on people, forcing them into doing things that they may reluctant or unwilling to do. On the contrary, influence inducing people into action with the power of one’s own characterization, prestige, and the power of its culture. Both can make things done as leader’s wish, but manipulation causes a result that is merely accepted passively, behaviorally, and definitely. Influence makes people volunteer to do things, and the result is usually actively accepted and recognized.
As for a leader, influence in a positive way helps win others’ hearts. But when it is being employed in a manipulative way in the interest of certain small groups, it becomes playing politics. If the objective is deviated from the correct path or against the general ethics, the leader is providing wrong direction. However, the other side might argue that playing politics as positive when it is used the right way, which can be helpful to one’s career. I’m definitely not asking you to do unethical things but by referring it as a learning process to adapt oneself to the company’s power structure. For example, you should know the company’s management structure, understand your supervisor and the company’s culture, and ability to see whether it favors employees with influence skills or just basically the rule followers. And then adapt yourself to your supervisor’s leading style to make yourself suitable within the culture.

Predictably Irrational: Blogging Topic 4: Ethics and influence

Predictably Irrational: Blogging Topic 4: Ethics and influence: "This week we had a great guest speaker and we talked about social influence. He mentioned that at Google they are looking at people who hav..."

Influence/Manipulation

No matter I you look at it, the word manipulation comes with a negative connotation. The definition of the word manipulate comes with this at the end..."especially in an unfair manner." If you want to change how the public views your company, influence would be the way I would aim for. The word influence can come off as both good and bad but mostly, to me, seems neutral. Playing politics and misdirection is the first step over the line into the "bad." It is easy to influence others to think your company is good if it actually IS good. If there is anything shady about your company, then you must rely on manipulating others to view your company in a good manner.

It is a thin line between good and bad, but the core values are what will always determine which one you are. No matter how many "weapons" you have, if you are influencing people to believe you are good when you actually are, then there is nothing wrong with that. Manipulating people only comes when you have something to hide. Google is an interesting company. I missed the speaker because it was my birthday, but I can definitely assume some things that were talked about. People use Google for everything on a daily (if not hourly) basis. They make a ton of money on advertising, and even though we may not click on the sponsored links that comes up, we are clearly influenced/manipulated to see it whether we want to or not. It is hard to tell if this is taking advantage of users or not. Google is a business, and businesses need to make money. If that many people use it, then advertising is clearly the best way to make it. You can't blame Google for trying to make a buck on people's searches. In my opinion, Google will cross the line into the "bad" section the second advertisements become a hassle more than a minor inconvenience.

Influence and Manipulation

When I say these two words in my head, they each evoke a different reaction. Manipulation I view, not necessarily as a bad thing, but as a concious effort to encourage someone to do what you want them to. Manipulating a situation can happen in many different ways... waiting to disclose information until the opportune moment, dressing a certain way, acting a certain way, and many other things that a person does to intentionally encourage their desired outcome. Influence, at least the way I view it, is not an intentional act all of the time. I am influenced by many people and situations that happen every day... and I am pretty sure none of the people involved know who I am or are trying to encourage me to do something they want.

The Influence Tactics article mentioned the difference between hard and soft tactics. The one that I relate most to Influence is the Symbol Management. This is the "lead by example" technique, and while it could be a form of manipulation, I view it more as influence, since you can never be sure who is noticing your actions and being influenced by them.

I suppose, in my view, when an action has an agenda, it is a form of manipulation.. and when an action has an unplanned affect on someone, it is influence. I know that this view is not completely accurate, since people "influence" other people all the time. However in my mind, influence is something that is exuded from a person or situation that has an un planned affect on another person. If the affect or action is planned, then it is a form of manipulation. In my mind that is...

Blog 4 - Is there really a difference?

I actually believe there is a very fine line between manipulation and influence. In practice, it looks the same. The difference is the intention of the influencer or manipulator. Manipulation usually has a negative connotation, and the intention is generally thought to be not for the good of others or the person being manipulated. Influence is similar in that an influencer is trying to get people to do certain things, but their intention is not necessarily negative. It becomes playing politics when the individual is not taken into consideration. The influence is for something bigger, and the person is just being used as a pawn for someone else’s agenda. I don’t know that you can actually find a line between good and bad, especially in business. I think it is sort of a gray area. What is good for the company is not always good for competitors, or for people, or for the environment. So it depends on your perspective. I think it is hard to be an influential leader and always stay true to your core values. You may not think it is good to lay people off, it goes against your values to let go employees especially if you know their personal situations and they need their jobs. However, if a company is doing poorly and has to cut down and only retain top performers, keeping those employees is not good for the organization. So you believe in the organization, but you don’t want to lay people off. Both perspectives are correct, and both can be seen as good or bad. But you want to keep your job so you lay people off, despite your core values. As a leader you have to make those choices. I think it ok to influence people if it is to their benefit, because in the end people have to make their own choices and sometimes just need direction on how to get there. That’s why people have faith in their leaders. People want and need mentors and role models. People like to have a good examples set forth in front of them so they can decide where they want to go.

Blogging Topic 4: Ethics and influence

This week we had a great guest speaker and we talked about social influence. He mentioned that at Google they are looking at people who have an array of influence skills and strategies. He also mentioned that, as a corporate entity, Google is fighting to maintain a positive public image. Related to that, here’s today’s blog topic: What is the difference between manipulation and influence? When does it become playing politics and misdirection? Where is the line between bad and good – and how do you find that line? As this class arms you with more “weapons” to influence others, we must also take into consideration our ethics. Can you use these "weapons" of mass influence and still stay true to your core values? And, if the easy answer is that it is okay to use these weapons if you are using them in the service of your values, do you need to take into account the people you are using these weapons on? For example, if Google were doing things with their search that influenced people, but for the people's own benefit, would that be okay?

Emotions Game

I had a lot of fun playing the emotion game and it turns out that I was better at encoding than I thought I was going to be. I don't feel like I'm a very good actor, but I know that I am very good at expressing my emotions. A lot can be said about my life from that fact. Whether or not I feel a certain way, I've always known that I can make it appear I feel any way I like. I suppose this is a good thing and a bad thing. A lot of times when I don't like someone I can easily make them think that I do like them or that I am in indifferent. It comes in handy in sometimes, but occasionally I find myself faking my emotions in instances when I don't need to. This is actually something I have been trying to change about myself on a daily basis. My emotions are apart of who I am, and it is important that I act the way I feel rather than hide things or deceive people. I guess sometimes I would rather please others than shake things up by making it known I don't like something.

What I learned form the Game ...

Before the activity, we were discussing among the team members how this game would be helpful or informative other than discovering the person with better acting skills. It’s difficult for many to act annoyed, fascinated or deferential when they are not. Obviously, when someone feels irritated, he/she can express emotions of irritation, anger or frustration. But during the exercise as I was witnessing my own and others' struggle, I realized the main purpose of this game is to show the importance of self awareness and the ability to know how people perceive you. I didn’t have difficulty decoding emotions, but apparently I wasn’t very successful at encoding emotions as my group members would presume a wrong emotion from my body language, voice tone and facial expressions. At the end of each round, it was interesting for me to know what particular body language led my group members to decide on the specific emotion. One of the group members noted that I had a half way smile when I was trying to express annoyance. I wasn’t aware of my smile, thanks to my sales job in which you become an expert to hide all your emotions behind a not-always-genuine smile.

In this exercise we learned that even the smallest unconscious gesture of a hand or facial expression may convey an emotion that we don’t want to express. According to the “How to be Appropriately Assertive” article, even our posture will affect the perception that others have of us. This exercise was very helpful to know how people read your emotions and how you should manage your feelings in professional and personal relationships.

The Game

Through the emotion coding game, I made a big progress on getting to know myself more. This game provides me multiple opportunities to perform a different me in front of other people. I usually like to take a mild and positive attitude towards other people in every situation against negative and aggressive because I am always afraid that my negative motion would affects others’ and leave them a bad impression about me. This positive attitude is developed since my childhood and it is what my mom always told and instructed me. But, after this game, I feel it is sometimes necessarily to take different emotions towards other people and let them know your true feeling so that they can expect and understand your situation. If you always take positive emotion towards others, people might take advantages from you and give you some hard time. So, it was a good practice for all of us to try to let people know our true feelings.

Displaying emotions...

I really liked the activity in class last week! I had fun "acting" excited and trying to act disgusted. I like these kind of activities where you get to be creative. It was more difficult to say the ridiculous lines in a disgusted or revered way.. but body language certainly helped try to get the point across. My scores were pretty good for the encoding as well as the decoding, which makes sense to me. Usually, I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I have to try very hard to not show if I am angry, upset, happy, or disappointed. Likewise, I can usually tell when someone is sad, irritated, happy, excited, hiding something, and tired. I try to be observant with my peers and like being able to sense how people are feeling. It gives me the ability to mirror their mood and (in my mind) put them more at ease.

My mother told me as well that "it is not what you say, it is how you say it" and it is completely true!! I have never thought about the fact that what I say can tell people about my core values. After reading the articles in our reader... I discovered that I have a complete mish mash of emotional expression habits, and I am not fond of all of them. I often discount what I am saying, which was described as an extremely passive trait.. but at the same time, I often get "emotionally hijacked" by situations, which is described as aggressive. I don't want to be passive OR aggressive! When I talk to someone, I want to be assertive, agreeable, knowledgeable, and compromising without being a push over. I suppose that translates to one of my core values of strength. After reading the articles, I have paid more attention to my 'knee-jerk" reactions to situations and have started evaluating whether or not I like them.. and if not, what I can do to change it.

Struggling to express negative emotions

The Emotion Coding game really brought forth my strengths and weaknesses in terms of my emotional intelligence. As far as my strengths go, I was able to recognize and guess the correct emotions being conveyed by my team members for almost all emotions except a few, which is pretty consistent with how I am in life. I am sensitive to the emotions of others and can pick up on emotions and tones right away. However I was horrible when it was my turn to act out the emotions, especially when it came to having to act the negative emotions. No one in the group could figure out what I was doing because I could not seriously read the sentences with the negative emotions. I had to read and re-read the sentences a few times. The rhymes made me laugh and distracted me. I think that in my life I do have a hard time conveying negative emotion effectively. No one really believes me when I say I am mad or upset because I think I just sort of act normal. This is something I really need to work on because in order to be an effective manager one day I will need to be able to express disappointment and frustration at the appropriate time and not act cheerful and act like I don’t really care. So I was able to identify that I am pretty good at recognizing and understand emotions in others but I need to work on expressing my own emotions especially negative ones.

Blogging Topic 3: Displays of emotion

We'll leave behind the Blind Square this week (finally) and talk a little about Emotional Intelligence and the related concepts.

This week in class, you played the Emotion Coding game. Like most of the games in this class, it was designed to challenge you and make easy success unlikely. For some people, it might have been hard to "be onstage" and for others, it might have been difficult to express emotions. In this blog topic, I'd like you to reflect on the Emotion Coding game and how your performance in this game is associated with the rest of your life.

For example, I remember my mom saying (over and over and over) while I was growing up that it "wasn't what you say, it's how you say it" and I cultivated a fairly sarcastic tone of voice during my high school and college years. I didn't realize it until people started saying I was cynical or unsupportive. To me, a core value is being dependable and supportive. If you need, I'll be there. And, another core value is being positive and believing that everything will work out. So, it was hard to hear people think that I wasn't authentic or that I view the world (and the people in it) in a negative way. I had to check myself and what I was saying, especially when making first impressions, to make sure that my values were coming across. I grew up in an environment in which positive emotions were not frequently or easily expressed (or any emotions, really), because that was not my family's way. Realizing that I have this particular cultural background has helped me bemore aware of my emotional expression habits.

Is it coming from the Heart?

Does it come from the heart or does it come from your keister?
Here is one of those nifty stylish area fifty-one (51), black helicopter questions; why do some people always push themselves to excel and challenge the darn near impossible, while others simply settle for ordinariness or mediocrity? What drives people, what creates the ‘driven’? If the critical key to individual (and organizational) excellence is a greater fortitude and determination to get somewhere (and that seems to be the emerging scientific conclusion) then why aren’t more people committed to that behavior? Is it bred, is it learned or just acquired by eating tons of big and tasty burgers. By the way I am not trying to offend any red blooded Americans who enjoy their burgers; I eat a few too many myself.
"I have so many great ideas, if only I could get motivated."

“I am really smart but why can’t I lose the weight?"
"I can't seem to lose weight unless I have someone relentlessly checking on me and I can't afford a personal trainer."
“I wish I had a supervisor who would notice more of my accomplishments.”
“I wish my partner would tell me that they love me more often.”
“I would be so much better off if someone would force me to save more money”?
These statements must sound familiar, because I have heard them more times than I would like to count. What these statements have in common is the individual who cries and begs for motivation and for an ounce of follow through, it is that inability to do it unless someone provides a carrot that is pre-digested. So let’s toss out the carrots and beat the people with tall African sugar canes. Nah that is silly!
The problem here is what happens when you wake up and find that your shoes are too tight, I call this an unhealthy connection with value and incentive. Someone might say, just buy a larger shoe, but I say that is the problem in the first place.
Here is a silly comment that I hear all the time and it floors me; “It’s probably cheap because it is no good.” Stay with this logic you will see where I am headed. Without the development of some miniscule sense of intrinsic motivation all fails. Those who are unable to be intrinsically motivated have great difficulty finding success in any area. If you were to examine successful people one of their main ingredients to unlocking the doors of success is their ability to motivate themselves. Season that with the ability to motivate one or two others and baby they got it made in the shade. Think of it as making love in the dark. What you can’t see probably is better than what you can see. No longer do they behave like the child who says: “look at what I can do.” Typically you never know that they have done it but somehow it just gets done. Go figure! A friendly cousin of extrinsic motivation is black market Sam, just kidding. A close cousin of extrinsic motivation is external validation, the need for someone outside of you to approve of everything you do. The need for external validation is a serious issue because it has an intense ability to affect self-esteem. Take the example of teaching a dog how to efficiently and effectively fetch a stick, every single time we throw the stick and we want him to retrieve it we should give him a treat to connect as a reward for getting the stick. In this example the dog learns that when he performs the desired behavior he will be reinforced with a treat. Typically this is true for human behavior as well, regrettably it can enforce and develop extrinsic behavior that is only valued through rewards. Could this have been the issue with the game of Blind Square?

Just an Observation

Being one of the non-new persons in the Blind Square exercise, it was interesting for me to find out how we can achieve the goal this time with twice as many people as last time. In the beginning, many non-new persons were silent, maybe because they wanted others to have the opportunity to challenge different ideas. During the exercise, as I was following the instructions, I was trying to compare the strength and weaknesses of this new group with the last one. Then I realized what worked last time may not be applicable this time, since the setting and the participants are different. I believe people were not motivated enough to offer constructive ideas and participate in the exercise. Competition could be a good motivator. If we were divided into two groups and both were given the same task with the same time limitations, both new and non-new members would have been more motivated to accomplish the task successfully in less time.

My vision of a leader is someone who others choose to follow. Leaders should provide inspiration and establish an environment of continuous improvement. According to my vision of a leader, I probably did not contribute enough to the exercise, but I believe as MBA students we are also attending classes to learn, gain experience and apply the learned skills to our jobs. Being flexible by continuous learning and education is one of my core values. I learn a lot by observing others’ behaviors in different situations. During the exercise, as I was listening to all the people around me, I was trying to predict which advices are constructive and which ones are going to deviate us from our goal. As I was trying to differentiate strong and weak leadership skills, I could hear potential good ideas that no one followed, and I wondered if the originator of the idea could draw more attention if he/she had expressed it differently.

Pride and Laziness

I really wonder if having people that have done it before is a positive or a negative thing. I would say that after listening to what everyone said in class and what my group has said, it may be worse. Instead of everyone being excited about "imparting" their wisdom, we were just frustrated that it was hot and that we had to do it again. A lot can be said about this. This square was obviously a learning tool to better understand leadership and how people interact in a group. Say we were a business instead of a business class and we were releasing the second version of our new marketing campaign, would all of us be frustrated that we had to do the same thing over again?

I think in that situation it would be different, but why does it have to be? I'm not sure if all of us are motivated by money, but I'm sure if you threw some dollars at us we would have made an octagon if you asked. It appears that in a classroom setting, it is difficult to find motivation in a job well-done or pride. I won't lie though, after we made the square successfully after appearing to not try, I was pretty proud.

After all this discussion about it, I'm 100% sure that how I acted in the blind square directly conflicts with my core values. I'm not sure if lazy, unmotivated, or passive are words I would like to associate with my leadership abilities. I'm going to have to work on that in the future.

The True Leadership

The Blind Square exercise helps me shape and understand some principles, models and values regarding to leadership. Through the exercise, we all worked together to solve the puzzle. By doing so, we learned a little bit about others’ talents and personalities so that we can manage each others’ ability to achieve our final goal and vision. Some of us, not all of us, were full of passion to work closely with followers, colleagues, and leaders. This kind of attitude is essential for exemplary leaders to demonstrate and set up good models for all of us to follow. Also, from the exercise, we can taste different experiences when playing different roles. Of course, there were some frustrations involved during the game. Some people decided to fail the mission miserably while some decided to keep motivating and providing others with the vision. But, is not it the most fun part of the game? Leaders, in their daily lives, should always be prepared to face all different kinds of challenges and acquire an open mind to learn through every tasks and missions no matter how bad they failed it. Everyone has his own core values, if you take this exercise serious enough or view it at different angles and apply all the principles you learned from classes, textbooks, and daily life, you might receive some priceless experiences which would help you toward true leadership.

The benefit of experience?

I agree with Jacqueline's comments that doing the square again in the future will be different every time based on the people you are with and the situation. I also agree that there is no right or wrong way to do it. There are some strategies that work better than others... but besides that, I believe that the game can be different every time.

I don't subscribe to the whole "there was no incentive for doing the square" bit. Even there was no grade attached to it, I still like to accomplish things for the reason of achieving a goal. Unfortunately this time I was frustrated and checked out. I suppose my "achieving a goal" incentive should have been stronger, but, as I stated earlier, I gave up.

I believe that if everyone only did things for economic compensation and personal benefit, there would be more disease, death, poverty, and homelessness in the world. Working for a non-profit organization, I can tell you that the people here and in this industry do not do things for economic compensation. I have met some of the most compassionate and dedicated people while working for this organization, and I truly believe that their selflessness makes the world a better place (Cliche, yes. But I do believe it.) These people work hard to raise money and conduct programs that benefit others, and for a fraction of the wages they deserve.

Last week's discussion about core values really got me thinking. I wrote down stability, relationships, and health, but listening to other people's values got me thinking... should those be mine too? ... they sound good, but do they apply to me? The discussion made me wonder what my core values truly are, and honesty I am not sure that I really know yet. I know what I would like to be, and deep down what I truly want in life..but I don't know how to translate that into core values. I am excited to figure them out, and to see if they jive with my vision of what a leader should be.

Leadership values

As far as being a new or non-new person goes, I actually don’t think it makes that much of a difference. The reasons are basically because if you are faced with the blind square task again in the future, it will be with different people in a different setting and different circumstances. There really is no “right” or “wrong” way to tackle the problem, and you will be faced with different group of people you will have to learn to work with, which is always a challenge. Everyone has to learn to work together in the blind square otherwise you are stuck. You have to learn to put faith in others and let others lead, or be able to recognize when a leader is needed. These are important life-lessons that can be transferred to solving problems faced at work: sometimes you have to listen to others even if you don’t agree with how they are solving things, sometimes there is a problem no one has been able to solve and the leader must emerge.


My behavior during the blind square fit my core values because I think it is very important to listen to what other people have to say and give people a chance to share ideas. I really did this for most of the time and didn’t offer any suggestions until the end. This way I was able to observe what had been solved and what still needed to be solved. My vision of a leader is someone who can recognize a problem, have a vision for how to solve it, and explain things in such a way as to get the groups attention and encourage people to have faith that they will be led in the right direction. I think I tried to do this in the blind square as I gave everyone confidence that we could solve the problem, as we were in a location that everyone was familiar with. Once we found that commonality solving the problem was easy.

Blog Topic 2: Values and Vision

Here's the thing about the Blind Square Exercise - you'll probably see it again. It is a classic team-building and ice-breaking exercise. So what you can learn from doing it repeatedly? Many of the veterans understood that the frustration of being a new-person at the task is important, but what about the frustration of being a non-new person? Can anything be learned from that? Moreover, thinking about Onder's comment in class - you all apparently failed miserably at the task last time, so what wisdom did you have to impart? Some say there was no incentive for doing the task again - how about to do it successfully? So, you believe that the only incentive for doing anything well is payment? What about the intrinsic
value of a job well-done, of pride? We'll talk about it later in class, but consider what makes you do the things you do and consider whether
if everyone only did things based upon an economic calculation of personal benefit would result in a functioning society?

How did your behavior in the Blind Square task fit with your core values? How do you reconcile your actions there with the visions you have of yourself as a leader?

Great Learning from Great Excercise.

Through this wonderful exercise, many of us learned a lot. I know, it was kind turbulent and uncomfortable at first, but it actually turned out pretty well at the end of the game. There are many principles deeply ingrained in this exercise that could help us develop our leadership skills. First, being a follower is actually a good process in becoming a leader. From my point of view, sometimes try to be a follower can provide you more aspects and different views that you usually ignore or forget while playing as a leadership kind role. Second, many people pushed beyond their comfort zone by identifying their authentic and trustful identities. Generally speaking, I can see many other great things involved in this activity such as leaders are able to seeing things positively, successfully managing people, listening to people carefully and making arrangements…etc. So, I cannot wait to do another exercise like this.

Blind (and deaf and mute?) Square

I'm going to start out by saying that yes, I do believe our group was successful. We were all blind(most of us were mute) and somehow we made a perfect square. I believe that myself and the rest of the class who had done it before might as well have been deaf on top of that. It could have been motivating to know that we had done it before, therefore we should contribute entirely to the completion of the square while the others stay quiet. But after I found out I couldn't talk (which happened to me the last time I did it since I have done it 3 times), I definitely checked out.

I'm sure that those students who haven't done it before were frustrated that there was such a lack of cooperation. It took a long time of just standing around for someone to step up and organize us into a square (someone in my group by the way!). I did throw out a few suggestions while the exercise was going on, like saying what number you were directly into the person's ear to the left and hitting their hand so they knew.

Looking back, I wish I would have tried harder to help make the square. I'm not too proud of how I participated and I definitely think that in the next exercise I will contribute much much more. I just hope I haven't done the next exercise twice before :)

Not so proud

Professor Johnson asked what we are proud of ourselves for doing. Reflecting upon my experience and the notes we took after the completion of the activity, I would have to say nothing. I do not feel any pride in my actions, because I gave up, threw in the towel, even sat down. I did not share the sentiment that I was superior than my classmates because I had done this before, I was pessimistic from the start because I remembered what a mess it was.

What this taught me about myself was when the going gets tough, I give up. That is not the type of person or manager that I want to be. Looking back on difficult situations in work and in my personal life, I can not recall throwing in the towel like I did during the activity, and I am not sure I was so happy to give up during the task. Maybe it is because I thought "it's ok, someone else will do it or else we will just fail and have a good laugh about how ridiculous the activity was".

In any case, I don't want to give up again...

I am wondering how long does it take for leadership to

Emerge...........

What could have been done

I feel compelled to use this semester to be critically honest with my classroom observations or interpretations and although they may appear exactingly harsh or severe I apologize now for anything from this point forward but it is only representative of my most passionate feelings, and history will reveal that I will firmly provide support for each and every one of my opinions from this day forward.

With that being said our most recent activity revealed what I have always believed about human nature. Society requests and expects that managers explain and be held accountable to the others that they are supposedly assisting??? This is most likely an expectation because managers are often in high status positions which often accompanies a higher than national average salary. With professional power comes a pocketbook of responsibility and accountability. Yet what this activity revealed was a hint of pure self-interested maintenance of power and jurisdiction control. The control thermostat originated from a place that says: “I am going to be the only fat chief in this joint who knows anything and if those folks don’t come talk to this chief then they can fry in living hell!” I guess I am pulling on the chain of ethical responsibility, and as a manager in training have we lost the connection with fiduciary responsibility.

I guess I might argue that students pour into MBA programs, in droves I might add, with the attention of blinding focusing on getting ahead at the expense of others but most definitely at the expense of ethical responsibility. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked to hear a fellow student state that he
Is here to get ahead and get more money. I would guess the activity was a test of team membership and how leadership emerges from teams. In this case the team membership relied and depended on position and not contribution. Research has recognized that leadership positions that rely on position typically fail because leadership teams feel obligated to focus on the organizational chart of the firm and fixate on the inflexible position of structure. From this geminates a destructive and maladaptive vile strategy of entitlement where people sit and wait until things fall apart so that they can feel comfortable in stating: “but nobody asked for my help.” If you are a manager nobody should ask you for help because you are too busy rolling up your sleeves getting waist deep and doing your job! One of the mistakes team leaders make is failing to make it clear that team members have the responsibility and are expected to add value and contribute to all outcomes otherwise stay in bed for the day, it’s safer for us all. It should be downright immoral to allow a team mate to struggle.

What could have been done?
What I would have done differently is to articulate what I believed were barriers that were holding the team back from monumental success. I will articulate expectations and hold individual team members accountable for contributing directly to the outcomes that the team is responsible for.
What I learned and what will I apply
I have learned from this simple task that even the very best of teams should be made clear on expectation of what they are supposed to do for and with the team, I also will clarify the values, norms and guiding principles by which the behavior is set to represent. Not a problem if we are all open and clear that we are here to make our pockets fat at the expense of others but let’s be clear about it so that we are all on the same page.

Introductory Blog Topic

Last Wednesday, we did our first activity as a large group: the Blind Square. We had a mix of experienced and inexperienced people in the group, and various obstacles were placed and then removed. Do you think the group was successful? Do you think that you were successful? Imagine the event from a different perspective (e.g. if you had done it before, imagine it from the perspective of a new person, and vice versa). What could you have done to make the experience better for them? What do wish had gone differently in the activity, and what could you have done to make the activity go differently? What are you proud of yourself for doing?