Planning for Positive Influence

Planning for positive influence

Many business organizations today require employees to work within a team environment with people from diverse backgrounds. Even within other organizations like colleges and universities, learning teams of students come together to learn and perform several assignments and projects necessary for completing a particular course. Regardless of how similar genetically two individuals may be, character traits may be very far from similar; individuals could respond to stressful situations in a different way or have different emotions when dealing with similar situation. Individuals could also perform differently when assigned a particular task, and may relate in a different way to other people from different backgrounds and beliefs. These are just a few of the differences that exist and distinguish one individual from another. A leader or manager has to be aware of the different characteristics of each individual he or she is mentoring or managing. This would be very important to know because the actions of leaders or managers could have an effect on an employee. In other words, leaders and managers motivate employees to be successful in the workplace, leading to the job satisfaction.

Influencing behavior in the workplace

Proper job matching could be the first tedious assignment for a human resource department when hiring a particular individual. I think this is the first factor that could influence an individual's behavior. In addition to looking only at the professional qualifications of an individual, another prerequisite for hiring should be for applicants to complete several assessments. These assessments should measure the applicants' behavioral attributes, characteristics, personalities, and values. This process provides an organization the chance to analyze the individual and how he or she may fit within the organization. For example, if a person states in an assessment that he or she prefers to work alone, or perform better when working alone, management could realize that this individual may not be motivated and performed well when working within a team environment. Another individual stating that he or she prefers jobs requiring repetitive tasks would clearly give management the knowledge that it may not the best thing to place this individual within job requiring adapting to constant changes.

Establishing goals and job requirements is another way for management to improve behavior at work. In addition to corporate goals management has to set individual goals for the employees, which results are tied into the immediate team goals and that could have an impact on the corporate goals. Employees need to know that they have goals to meet within a certain period. They also must be told of any disciplinary reactions by management for failure to achieve those goals. In addition to setting goals for the individual, the employee needs to be provided with the necessary tools needed to perform the assigned job functions. The necessary tools could be tangible items like computer equipments with ergonomic accessories, comfortable furniture to reduce any stress on the body and several others. Other necessary items could refer to intangibles like adequate training for increasing the skills set of employees, reasonable breaks during work, which could reduce the possibility of an individual burning out, or growing fatigued. Another major and necessary factor could be providing employees with a safe working environment from sexual harassments, discrimination, accidents, etc. All of these could influence an individual's behavior positively or negatively.

After management has informed the employees of all job requirements and the individual's goals, management must provide feedback on how well the individual is performing. Depending on the organization and the type of job the individual performs, feedback could be given daily, weekly, or on a monthly basis. This helps individuals know exactly where they stand, and provides them time to take corrective actions