Q1. Understanding Human Behavior is critical to organizations - discuss the benefits of self evaluation/self assessment as it relates to leaders today.
Effective leadership is one critical aspect for organizations today. Pursuing high levels of effective leadership, leaders need to measure their skills and capabilities against different leadership dimensions. This will help leaders to spot dimensions that need enhancement and others that need development. This paper will discuss the benefits of leader’s self-assessment of different dimensions with focus on those related to understanding human behavior.

Self Assessment Techniques:
Different techniques of self-assessment have been developed. As (Clawson, et al., 2000:4) stated ‘There are many theories about the elements that make up leadership’ hence self assessment technique differ in terms of leadership dimensions measured. Another factor is the methodology used for each technique. Among the different techniques one can identify the Leadership Steps Assessment (LSA) developed by (Clawson, et al., 2000)Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), 360 assessment and many more. LSA will be considered as a sample in this paper. Leadership Steps Assessment (LSA) LSA models the leadership using six dimensions, which defines the components of leadership which, as (Clawson, et al., 2000:4) proposed were: 1. Clarifying one’s center. 2. Clarifying what is possible.

3. Clarifying what others have to contribute. 4. Supporting others so they can contribute. 5. Relentless assertion. 6. Celebrating progress. Clarifying one’s center measures how one is aware of his values and how strong they are. This involves ethical and moral aspects affecting one’s decisions; it determines to which extent one is confident about them. On the other hand, leaders who are clear about their strong values can stand crucibles with high levels of integrity and confidence.

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Clarifying what is possible measures how leaders are considering long... [continues]

Understanding human behavior is critical to organizations. An organization can be defined as a collection of people who work together to achieve a goal or a variety of goals. These people do not work on isolation within the organization. They interact with each other and with third parties (suppliers, customers, competitors, government officials, etc.) in a variety of ways. Therefore, a leader who understands how and why people behave the way they do, he can identify problems, determine the best ways to correct them and establish whether the changes would make a difference towards improvement. Prior to understanding other peoples’ behavior or attempting to influence others’ behavior, a leader must be able to perform a self-assessment in order to understand and subsequently manage his emotions. Unless leaders understand the criticality of human behavior to the organization and the need for self-evaluation/self-assessment, their efforts to influence others will never be achieved.

As introduced by Goleman (Daniel Goleman, 2000), the ability to recognize, then to understand and finally to manage your emotions is called “Emotional Quotient” (EQ). Coleman asserted that a high EQ had a positive impact on one’s relationship. The better you are at understanding your own emotions, the more likely you are to be adept at picking up on the feelings of others. Knowing how others feel can be a valuable skill within organizational interactions (meetings, presentations, day-day cooperation, etc.) and beneficial to the organization.

For example, during a meeting a CEO is furious about an issue and he shows it by shouting, the rest of the participants may hesitate to express their ideas or thoughts. On the other hand if the CEO identifies and controls his emotional situation and understands that his anger if expressed will cause the rest of the participants to become reluctant on expressing themselves, a fruitful conversation may go on and ideas on how to overcome the issue...
Benefits of self-evaluation/self-assessment as it relates to leadership today.
Fulcrum for all endeavors is the human being. Every action required for processes, development, and creativity is initiated and sustained by humans. Relative decisions and responses necessary for daily operation in organisations are controlled by the behaviors of people saddled with various tasks either as leaders or as subordinates. In other words, nothing is achieved without the direct influence of human behavior. Understanding human behavior therefore is indeed very critical to organizations. In light of the aforementioned, benefits and importance of self-evaluation/self-assessment cannot be over emphasized as it relates to leadership today.
Human behavior is the response of an individual to both external (physical world) and internal (psychological world) forces which he/she is constantly interacting with.
In order to understand human behavior leaders have to first understand the elements or factors involved. However various studies have shown that Human behavior in individual is uniquely different. Each individual shows a considerable amount of difference in behavior from another no matter how similar they may be.
Leaders should primarily be committed to influencing people. Unless leaders understand the criticality of human behavior to the organization and the need for self-evaluation/self-assessment, their efforts to influence others will never be achieved.
“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give….In any case, the giving of love is an education in itself”.
Leadership is indeed a very serious business. Under Our genetic endowment, we clearly see that we did not only inherit physical characteristics but also bio-chemical balances and emotional tendencies as well as more fundamental specie-specific instincts like socializing amongst others. Nigel Nicholson makes another strong case that many aspects of our human behavior and traits are..

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Benefits of self-evaluation/self-assessment as it relates to leadership today.

Fulcrum for all endeavors is the human being. Every action required for processes, development, and creativity is initiated and sustained by humans. Relative decisions and responses necessary for daily operation in organisations are controlled by the behaviors of people saddled with various tasks either as leaders or as subordinates. In other words, nothing is achieved without the direct influence of human behavior. Understanding human behavior therefore is indeed very critical to organizations. In light of the aforementioned, benefits and importance of self-evaluation/self-assessment cannot be over emphasized as it relates to leadership today.
Human behavior is the response of an individual to both external (physical world) and internal (psychological world) forces which he/she is constantly interacting with.
In order to understand human behavior leaders have to first understand the elements or factors involved. However various studies have shown that Human behavior in individual is uniquely different. Each individual shows a considerable amount of difference in behavior from another no matter how similar they may be.
Leaders should primarily be committed to influencing people. Unless leaders understand the criticality of human behavior to the organization and the need for self-evaluation/self-assessment, their efforts to influence others will never be achieved.
“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give….In any case, the giving of love is an education in itself”.
Leadership is indeed a very serious business. Under Our genetic endowment, we clearly see that we did not only inherit physical characteristics but also bio-chemical balances and emotional tendencies as well as more fundamental specie-specific instincts like socializing amongst others. Nigel Nicholson makes another strong case that many aspects of our human behavior and traits are inherited and “hard wired” into our DNA strings. I am therefore not surprised that leaders are constantly faced with the question; “To what degree can people change? Will they follow my leadership?” If people cannot change because their behavior is stringed to DNA, then leadership will be an impossible task. It behooves every leader therefore who wants to understand leadership and its ability to impact humans to unravel the relationship between our genetic tendencies and our nurtured views deeply rooted in our DNA.
Another critical aspect of the human behavior that should be understood is called MEME. Memes are ideas and beliefs that people develop and pass on to others over time. Memes are mental analog to biological genes.
Studies have shown that all humans respond to the principle of meme. There is this story of an elephant tied to a post from when it was a baby elephant till it became fully grown. One day its captors decided to cut it loosed to roam freely. The chains were removed but contrary to all expectation, the elephant did not go beyond the length of the chain. When attempts were made to force it beyond that point, it resisted so violently. “Memes are the mental building blocks (complimenting the genetic physical building blocks) upon which we erect our behavior”. This scenario is common in organisations. You find leaders and the led alike holding tenaciously to memes and resisting organizational policies and developmental changes. Memes, conscious and sub-conscious, guide our behavior and shape our motivations, but unless we see and examine them, we are not architects of our own lives, much less the lives of others; we are rather mere executors of the blue prints of previous generations.
Motivation is yet another catalyst in human behavior. Motivation simply refers to the impetus behind any action. Vanilla’s view of motivation generally includes two ideas – reward and punishment - Carrot and Stick Model.
One deficiency of reward/punishment model is that people have different dispositions and will respond differently. What is reward that motivates one person to effectiveness in an organization could be punishment to another. Leaders who depend on the Carrot – Stick model soon run into confusion when the desired response fails to come from their direct reports across board. As Harry Levinson pointed out, when we use the Carrot- and- Stick model of motivating others, what we really mean, given the image of what stands in between the carrot and the whip, is “I just do not know how to get this jackass moving.” But we deceive ourselves if we conclude that people are like jackasses necessarily unmotivated, lazy, stupid, or stubborn just because they would not do what seems so eminently rational to us. It is pertinent to note that all human behaviors are chosen and wise leaders are under obligation to recognize that and create more choices for their direct reports.
Why do people laugh or cry? While some people are very committed to a course, others are not. The list of these behavioral traits could be endless. The answer is simply, EXPECTATION.
Studies have shown that offences come when people are not treated the way they expect to be treated .So, the real root of offence and anger is expectation. Same is responsible for the commitment, selflessness, diligence and satisfaction you find in direct reports of a good and authentic leader. They have been influenced by the leader’s behavior that their personal expectations are incorporated in the organizations’ vision so they are committed to the common goal of increased productivity.
Owing to the complexity of human behavior, organisations constantly need to understand their employees relative to performance in the organization. This is achieved by having employees self-evaluate/self-assess, either as part of formal performance management system or informally.
Self-Assessment is a systematic process of providing feedback on work, skills, knowledge, attitude, for the sole purpose of increasing future operations. On the other hand, Self-Evaluation is a process of determining the quality of performances in relation to set standards for the purpose of decision making. Below are some benefits. * Self-assessment/self-evaluation produces self-realization in the employees. * Self-Assessment and Self Evaluation enables an organization discover its lacks and weaknesses and takes appropriate measures in solving them. * Actual performance review sessions are shorter when employees self-assess/evaluate. * Employees develop a sense of belonging thereby greasing the process wheels and making it more effective. * Self-assessment/self-evaluation creates autonomous employees. When that happens, managers spend far less time fire fighting and micromanaging.
Organizations must constantly invest on understanding the behavior of employees and encourage self-evaluation/self-assessment to sustain growth and productivity.