Organisational Behaviour

Personal Learning Paper: Organisational Behaviour

Firstly, I begin with talking about perception and its importance in our professional lives. ‘Perception’ is defined as the process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment. People see things differently and depending on their background, education, the current situation, and mood they make different interpretations of the exact same situation.

Why is it important? It is important because people behave according to what they perceive about something or someone. Perception influences behaviour and behaviour influences decision making. Let me give a personal example. In my last workplace, I had a female accounts manager(say X) as my immediate boss. Right from the start of my training, she became very friendly with me and I was liking it. As I was a trainee, she used to ask me to do very simple tasks which I wasn’t really supposed to do but I did not mind. Soon, she started talking bad about another female manager(say Y) in the same department. Now, X used to tell me that Y is a very rude and arrogant person. And since Y was an introvert and hardly spoke to anyone, I also perceived her as someone who has a lot of attitude and is genuinely not nice. Later, when I was shifted to Y’s team and had to work under her, I started noticing that Y was indeed a very nice and humane person as I got to interact with her more and more. Infact, she was much better than X and the amount of learning I experienced while working with her, only a person of her intellect and kind nature could make it possible for me. That day I realised that someone being an introvert doesn’t imply that the person is rude. And perceptions can differ from what the actual reality is!

Second important aspect of organisational behaviour is personality traits. Leaders do not command excellence, they build excellence. To reach excellence we must first be a leader of good character....