Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label group behavior

Are You Part Neanderthal? Check Your Hair and Teeth

Are you part Neanderthal? Of course we would never consider ourselves to be part brute but that is what our DNA is telling us. A majority of us have a few percentage points of Neanderthal DNA within our bodies. Ironically those things that make us look attractive like hair and teeth are more closely tied to our ancient ancestors.  Studies in the journal Nature and Science help us think about human development from the beginning of time until now. It is believed the Neanderthal was a northern creature while humans came from Africa. Somewhere along the path they interbred and the Neanderthal died off. Apparently, the males were not so great at breeding when mixed.  Human development appears to be on a continuum from the past to some marked point in the future. Each child creates a new genetic destiny based upon a historical past and develops something unique. As the environment changes, humans change with it to ensure they able to survive and pass on their genetic code. 

Book Review: Winning with People by John Maxwell

Winning with others is about understanding both ourselves and other people we live and work with. Before one can truly grasp the needs and desires of another person we must first understand our own needs and desires. It is through this self-reflection that we gain the ability to see other people for who they truly are. We cannot accurately see others until we understand what biases we hold about ourselves that impact our perceptions The book Winning with People by John Maxwell sheds light on human relationships and how we come to understand and live with each other. On any particular day we associate, negotiate with, and deal with many other people who have their own interests in mind. Some of them are well developed and others are suffering from their own self-perception.  Before we can understand our place in these social networks we must first understand that the entire population of the world, with the exception of ourselves, is composed of other people. It means tha

Improving on Teamwork by Understanding Your Weaknesses

Understanding the weaknesses employees have in their ability to engage effectively in team-work is beneficial in creating higher levels of organizational performance. As companies seek to develop new products and service the use of teams become important in putting to effective use the diversified skills. Certain weaknesses work in association with other weaknesses and can be used as a starting point to improvement. The use of work groups has become more common in modern times as a concept borrowed from Japanese manufacturers.   The ideal employee is often seen as that person who is capable of working effectively in groups (Guffey, 2000). It is through this group effort that individuals are capable of hedging their skills to create stronger results through mutual synergy.  The skills needed to be a strong group player can be elusive. Business leaders and employees alike can have difficulty understanding these concepts and defining them precisely enough to be of significa

The Illusion of a PayCheck!

From left to right the order is the same in both pictures. Illusion is often based upon our perception and how we use and make meaning from the environment to understand a particular concept. Illusions can be visual or mental. In many cases we prefer a particular vantage point and expand it to the general while we may more accurately assess our environment by taking the general and narrowing it into the particular. " Subject's unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular " Nisbett and Borgida-Base Rate Fallacy Think for a moment how people perceive the world. They look at themselves and then project that onto the world, others intentions, and their environment. This is taking our minute understandings of ourselves, which most of us have trouble with anyway, and then making an illusion of the rest of the world. For example, a person who has a particular vantage point may a

Social Capital Theory and Four Factors of Organizational Improvement

Interesting research entitled Social Capital in Human Service/Child Welfare Organizations: Implications for Work Motivation, Job Satisfaction, Innovation, and Quality by Salvador Montana helps shed light on how Social Capital Theory explains organizational performance through the factors of innovation, satisfaction, motivation and quality. Such research is limited in its causality and accurate terms of measurement but does create higher levels of understanding that focuses on how group values can generate higher levels of performance. Four thousand and six participant surveys were retrieved from human service industry workers in Texas. The age of participants varied and the education level of the workers ranged from high school to graduate degrees. The work environment was considered bureaucratic with clear lines of authority and top-to-bottom type management. The environment didn't appear to offer clear opportunities for employee based environmental improvement. " The pu