Some Basic Tenets:

1
Some Basic Tenets

• Management includes direct and indirect
  interpersonal interaction.
• Good management requires empathetic (but often
  not sympathetic) knowledge of people.
• Greater knowledge of human characteristics will
  make us better managers.

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ENG M 655 Personality and Management Lecture 1

• Course overview should you take this?
• More vs. less applied.
• Psychology as science.
• The evolution of the human brain
• Concepts of personality.
• Fit with other branches of social sciences.
• The seven perspectives.

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ENG M 655 Personality and Management Lecture 1
(cont)

• Dispositional perspectives an introduction.
• MBTI a type inventory widely used in business
• The four axes.
• Case study Peter Flynn

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Course Outline

• Theories of Personality.
• Why more than one?
• Should they vary by culture?
• Not tied to business.
• Management Applications intuitive vs. measured
  approach (contrast ORG A).
• Articles for discussion on personal themes in
  business.

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Concerns

• You dont walk out with a toolbox! There is no
  application guideline.
• Some work settings discourage this kind of
  reflection.
• Intuitive approaches can conflict with prove it
  corporate cultures.

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Benefits

• There is permanence to the theoretical
  approaches flavor of the month is avoided.
• We have the potential to gain deeper insight that
  can trigger non-obvious connections.
• Hopefully, we store more in the right side of the
  brain and help intuition.

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Psychology is a Social Science

• Testable hypotheses.
• A need to control confounds.
• A need to control common sense.
• A different standard of proof
• 95 confidence.
• Repeat experiments in many different locations to
  gain confidence.

8
Some Thoughts on Evolution

• Evolution proceeds by mutation and relies on
  merciless success.
• Hence, evolution tinkers, there is no design
  nature never steps back.
• Numerous examples of poorly designed tinkering,
  including the nervous system.
• Nervous system evolution has shaped human society.

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Some Thoughts on Evolution (2)

• All basic information is contained in genes, but
  many require activation signals from the
  environment.
• Hence, identical twins arent identical the book
  is the same, but not all pages were read.
• The development of the nervous system is affected
  by experience human brain development is mostly
  ex utero.

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The Nervous System

• Three functions
• Accept input.
• Process data (judgment).
• Output directs behavior.
• Electrical basis within one cell, chemical
  communication between cells.
• Tiered processing in higher animals.

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A Nerve
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Chemical Interface
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Chemical Interface (2)
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Chemical Interface (3)
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The Human Nervous System

• Peripheral vs. central all higher processing is
  in central.
• Lower brain structures retained, higher levels
  added on for complex processing.
• Brain chemistry highly influences mood and
  behavior.
• Many processes outside of consciousness.

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Brain Evolution
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The Human Brain
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Tiers in Processing Information
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Evidence of Non-Conscious Processing

• Blindsight we know where objects are that we
  cannot see.
• Face recognition out of consciousness.
• Selective attention the cocktail-party
  phenomenon, pre-conscious, sub-conscious, and
  change blindness.
• Lateralization hemispheric differences.

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Secondary Visual Cortex Paths
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Non-Conscious Processes

• Pre-conscious available for viewing, but not on
  the screen.
• Sub-conscious forgotten, not available for
  viewing, but known.
• Primed never made it to conscious view, but
  known.

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Change Blindness
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The Brain and Human Society

• Brain size relative to parent size is a birth
  constraint for mammals.
• The human solution is radical brain size
  quadruples after birth and responds to the
  environment.
• Requires an exceptionally long period of child
  dependency.
• Humans and their society reflect this.

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Brain Symmetry

• In lower animals, the two hemispheres
  communicate. When communication is cut, the
  animal has two brains that learn independently
  and appear to function identically.
• Split brain research in humans the two
  hemispheres function independently and are not
  identical.

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Human Brain Asymmetry

• Left
• Sees words letter
• Hears language sounds
• Not involved in touch
• Controls complex moves
• Stores verbal memories and searches for meaning
• Speech, reading, writing and arithmetic
  (engineering!)

• Right
• Sees faces, patterns, emotional expressions
• Hears music, non-language
• Senses tactile patterns
• Movement within spatial patterns
• Non verbal memory and perceptual aspects
• Emotion
• Geometry, direction, distance

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Brain Hemispheres
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Theories of Asymmetry

• Analytic-synthetic left analyzes (logic and
  verbally based processing), hence language is
  there, right brain focuses on overall and
  wholes.
• Motor left is specialized for speech and fine
  motor movement.
• Linguistic primary specialization of left brain
  is language.

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Why the Emphasis on Non-Conscious Processing?

• Management is a right brained function.
• Much of human interaction is a right brained
  function.
• In business, the right brain is tyrannized by the
  left
• Prove it culture.
• Proof is by steps, not by intuition.
• Managers need to learn to use both brains.

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Personality vs. Social Psychology

• At one extreme, sociologists monitor aggregated
  human behavior without a focus on causation.
• At the other extreme, personality theory ascribes
  behavior to individual characteristics.
• Social psychology sits between and emphasizes
  social factors affecting individual behavior.

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What is Personality

• A dynamic organization, inside the person, of
  psychophysical systems that create the persons
  characteristic patterns of behavior, thought and
  feelings.
• Key elements consistent, continuous, originating
  from within.

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Why More Than One Personality?

• It must have conveyed an evolutionary advantage!
• Does a social group have added strength in
  diversity?
• Can we imagine a role for unpleasant
  personalities?

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The Seven Perspectives

• Dispositional
• Biological
• Psychoanalytic
• Neoanalytic
• Learning
• Phenomenological
• Cognitive Self Regulation

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Why More Than One Perspective?

• Some perspectives are focused and not meant to be
  comprehensive.
• Human behavior is too complex to fit a single
  model.
• End uses are different (e.g. description vs.
  therapeutic outcomes).
• We learn more.

34
Integrating Perspectives

• Personality theory is like chemistry in
  1840-1880 useful pockets of knowledge lacking a
  unifying vision.
• Expect integration over time
• Early influence (through brain modification) runs
  parallel with theories of ongoing conditioning,
  learning and self regulation.

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The Dispositional Perspective

• Arises from the human tendency to want to label
  others.
• Labeling helps us predict behavior and assign
  people.
• Wide use in business.
• Type vs. trait.

There is some risk in labeling.
36
Myers Briggs Type Inventory

• Jungs work on the basis of human differences.
• Developed by a mother daughter team, it is highly
  popular and widely used in business. Many web
  sites and discussion groups, high impact.
• More recently adapted, sometimes with variations
  (e.g. Nortel, Kiersey)

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MBTI Axes

• Introversion Extroversion
• Sensing Intuiting
• Thinking Feeling
• Perceiving Judging
• Sixteen types, labeled and described.

Think of brain asymmetry as you do an MBTI.
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Case Study

• Background
• Oil patch moves from a long cycle of
  profitability to conditions of extreme
  competition.
• Strong culture of toughness and know how
  everybody knows we do it this way. (A defense
  mechanism?)
• Two companies merge old tech and new tech, owner
  is remote and non-traditional.

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Case Study (2)

• One year later, under an analytical president,
  the two companies have not truly merged, and
  hence have not benefited from synergies
• No common sales.
• Different phone answering and signage depending
  on old company.
• Company is in fiscal crisis.

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Case Study (3)

• Area managers are key employees.
• Some AMs strongly resist change
• Averse to cost control.
• Resist central input on sales, safety and
  operation.
• Poor financial data prove it is difficult.
• Actively resist synergies.
• Actively resist new management.

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Case Study (4)

• One key AM from Company A
• Older, brighter, experienced, influential,
  visible.
• Highly negative nothing new will work.
• Lowest cooperation with Company B.
• Poor sales record in an area that needs sales
  good rep for customer relations.
• One B area needs no selling but good customer
  interface (sole source).

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Case Study (5)

• Key AM turns down transfer.
• Reason given not willing to work for younger
  person.
• Uncertain but likely not willing to work in
  Company B operations.

As company president, what is your next step?
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Case Study (6)

• The key AM was fired after 28 years of experience
  with Company A.
• Impact
• High shock value if him, then I could too.
• A sudden emphasis on two new models cut costs to
  manage cash, and realize the synergies.
• Some relief, and an immediate change in behaviors.

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Case Study (7) Lessons

• Resistance to both change and reasonable
  authority must be broken down.
• Models change through persistence and shock. In
  this case, persistence was doubtful high risk of
  contamination.
• Reasonable fear is healthy.
• Tonic terminations must appear fair.

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Case Study (8) Lessons

• Resistance is a form of passive aggressive
  behavior.
• Good management both enables and sets boundaries
  on the expression of frustration and aggression.
• Too little repressed and blooms everywhere.
• Too much destructive conflict.