Paper Number 3: Values and Emotional Intelligence

1. (Values) Do terminal or instrumental values have a larger influence on your behavior at work? Explain

Instrumental values have a larger influence in my behavior at our work place. Since instrumental values are permanent in nature and are the core values, these would be the values that more or less would dictate my behavior at work as compared to terminal values which are the things that we think are the most important and/or most desirable. So if I were to make an analogy, instrumental values would be everything that makes a car work, while the terminal values are the destination. Instrumental values include values such as honesty, sincerity, competitiveness, and imaginativeness among others. These values affect how I make decisions and act within the work place the most. Terminal values include happiness, comfort, freedom, and recognition just to name a few. A person could achieve happiness or comfort or other terminal values via different means, and these means are mostly affected by the instrumental values a person has. For example, one of my terminal values is the achievement of professional excellence. Different people have different answers on what is acceptable to do in order to achieve said excellence, and as for me, what I would do to achieve professional excellence is strongly guided by my values such as honestly and sincerity.

Additionally, organizations also exhibit both instrumental and terminal values. For organizations, instrumental values are established from the organizational culture and are hard to change, while terminal values are mainly dependent upon the management and thus there would be an observable change in it with the change in top management personnel. And for me personally, the organization culture affects me more compared to who is in the management.

2. (Emotional) Do you think emotional intelligence is important to managers? How would you assess emotional intelligence in deciding who to promote to a managerial position?...