My Initial Expectations:
More than expectations, I was just curious to know about the methodology that will be adopted by Ma'am to deal with various topics.
My Learning:
When thought about a metaphor that will describe me, all I could relate me with was a quote- “She who has a ‘Why’ to live can bear with anyhow”.
Classes in Personality exposed us to TA instrument and to MBTI. I held a strong view that personality is developed by 10 years and it is stable from then. This view of mine used to confuse me when I handle “TA and change”. It got shattered by attending this module. (It got reinforced when Sreedhar from Cognizant shared the demerit of using personality test in selection process). I did visit Kingdomality website to know more about where I belong.
If asked to describe one trait of personality, that made one successful over other (success not measured in terms of bank balance), I would go with “modesty” as mentioned in the link shared.
Making RBS portrait process itself was a good journey. RBS is Reflected Best Self. RBS portrait constitute 4 steps namely Identify respondents and ask for feedback, Recognize patterns, Compose your self-portrait and Redesign your job. I forced, reminded and did everything possible to make my friends send the inputs for my RBS portrait. When I discussed it with Ma'am, it opened a new window, which gave me clarity on my strengths and areas I need to improve upon.
The "Eye of Beholder" is one of the movies which gave me new insight every time I watched it. It truly depicts the quote- “When we are prepared to see something, we see it”. The discussion followed, on ‘errors of perception’ and debriefing with each character was thought provoking.
The Maya-Ezhumalai story evaluation made me appreciate the difference of individual opinion on the same incident and how each one of us are right in our way. As mentioned by one of the participant, "Past experience may influence your present decision".
Joshua Bell's video took me to my own doubts: If a famous violinist can be ignored by crowd, how far advertisement catches attention? But it also gave me a clarity that nothing should be given to anyone free of cost. People may not appreciate it. [By cost, I didn't mean only money]
Discussion on Attribution theory with class room examples was a good way to remember CCD- Consistency, Consensus and Distinctiveness.
As a group, we discussed the prejudice south Indians hold for north Indians and vice versa. This session emphasized the need for communication to remove the prejudices. Video clip on “Hanuman” while discussing ‘Pygmalion in management’ was fun and easily recallable.
Attitude session started with ABC (Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral components). Many books like “Out of box”, “Timeless steel”, “Winning way” and “Vision India” were recommended to read. The knowledge that OCB and OJ got added to types of attitude was beyond the knowledge we got from Stephen P Robbins book. Further explanation on OCB was beneficial for research work.
Creativity Class by Shiva sir was an added bonus to our group. Though I have tried to read Edward de bono's book many a time, I somehow couldn't do it. Shiv Sir gave a clear idea about 6 hats of thinking through his interesting class. The 6 thinking hats are WHITE (What I know, what I need to know), YELLOW (What are the benefits and values & alternatives), BLACK (Problems, difficulties and risk), GREEN (Ideas and Creativity), RED (Feelings and Intuition) and BLUE (Managing the thinking). [Important note: Before applying any tool of creativity, one should fall in love with creativity and problem solving].
The 15 minute presentation from participants-end on decision making and biases was a rich experience. It started with our group presentation on “Before you make that big decision”. For our group presentation, we brain stormed and identified a theme, made instances to fit in the context, and used caricature to bring in a novelty. “Hidden trap” presentation closely resembled ours conceptually.
“Five routes to better decision making” dealt about McKinsey’s 5 flexons (Network, Evolutionary, Decision-agent, System-dynamics and Information processing) for problem solving. Further presentations on “Delphi technique” and “Decision Tree” were known concepts, dealt differently. “Morphological analysis: A problem solving tool” and “Mind Map” seemed to be beneficial for research scholars (in present scenario) than others. “Decision without blinders” was a new concept. It explained the necessity of Devil’s Inquisitor and Bottle neck. “Brain storming” was taken in an interesting manner.
The HOT seat quiz resembled "Kaun Banega Crorepati" with its options. While conducting class room experiments with water gun for classical conditioning, I imagined the possibility to do a similar experiment with respondent blind folded and stimulus being 'beating with pillow'. Instrumental conditioning experiment and the discussion followed was satisfactory.
Emotion module was comparatively less engaging than other classes. A famous leader like Steve Jobs being “Not emotional” was surprising information for me. “Amygdala hijack” and three kinds of empathy discussed, namely Cognitive, Emotional and Empathic, enriched the topic theoretically.
The panel discussion provided audience the real appreciation of ID in organization. More than as a panel, they appeared to be three friends who are sharing their experience without a social desirability bias. Some note worthy learning for me from panel discussion includes, “Life gives lot of second choices”, “To take threshold to next level, fulfill smaller goals”, “eom=end of mail”
“Inner Work life” by Amabile and Kramer was a beautiful paper that has described about the necessity to exhibit positive emotions, by leaders, for employees to perform better. A worthy quote from the paper is its last few lines- “People deserve dignity and respect. When we act on that realization, it is not only good for business. It affirms our value as human beings”.
Youtube exercise was an experiential learning one. We started appreciating the 'making of video' better after this exercise. It was an exercise that revealed the talent of team members as well. Growing Managers case study analysis with my friend made me appreciate ID topics better. The leader interview was enriching experience. The interview left me with a message- "ID should be an experiential course that grooms an individual than a theoretical one".
Motivation module did give us an idea about our need. One of the quote that caught my attention was- “Because, It is there”.
Now that the course is over, hope we all will appreciate individual differences better and will strive for excellence.
My take away
1) Learned various teaching methodology- Case study, Class room experiment, Class room games, Quiz, Discussions, Psychometric tests to name a few.
2) Learned new possibilities of assessment- Caricature and Youtube
I will use these inputs in my future. Most of the book references and materials were classic.
Pointers to enrich course next time
1)
Less materials for MBA students
2)
More class room activities to be included.
3)
Video available in youtube can be viewed by
participants a priory or after class.
4)
One or two real time case study discussion to be
included
I like the variety with which each class was handled. It includes dancing
punishment for late comers as well. Note: We research scholars and Beate do have a pending treat!!!
