Personal Learning Paper 2

Organisational Behaviour

Personal Learning Paper 2

Submitted by: HariKamalDhall

FT153109

1
Personal Learning Paper 2

My Personal Learning’s
From being a Student to being a professional again
Working with Infosys was a great experience but the quest to learn more and scale new heights in
my career made me choose the path of doing an MBA. With 380 different personalities around,
every moment is a new learning experience. As most of the students around me are from well to do
families and were already employed with good companies so their psychological, safety and social
needs were already met but it’s theseEsteem and Self Actualization needs(ones which are on the
top of MASLOW HIERARCHY OF NEEDS )of ours which have really motivated us to go a step further
and invest our time and money to gain as much as possible from this one year at GREAT LAKES
INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT.

Learning’s after coming to GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

It’s been close to around 2 months in Great Lakes and every day here is really
demanding.With lots of assignments and presentations every day there is hardly any time to
relax and think about anything else. Under this constantly challenging environment there
have been times when I had felt really demotivated and hadlost hope but few of the
learning’s in the OB class has really helped me to cope with these kinds of situations. For
example after learning the Herzberg’s Two Factor Motivation theory in Class I realized that
few of the motivating factors classified as hygiene factors (the one’s whose presence does
not cause any kind of satisfaction but whose absence causes lots of dissatisfaction ) are
really very important to keep us Motivated. With PGDM batch joined few days back there
was an acute shortage of food and water, the air conditioners were not working and
everything was so very chaotic. At that time I was feeling very demotivated and didn’t feel
like studying but could not think of as to why I wasn’t studying and was so demotivated
.Later on I realized that in our normal routine we tend to overlook these basic hygiene
factors and take them for granted but how important actually these factors are to keep us
up and running.

Another theory on Motivation by Porter and Lawlertaught to us in class gave me deeper

insight into one of the common behaviour I had observed. As Porter-Lawler expectancy
theory of work motivation explains that It is not just the performance that leads to
satisfaction but it’s the reward and perception of the reward that leads to satisfaction. I
could very well relate to this theory when I saw students giving nominal presentations in
class when these presentations carried no weightage in overall course evaluation but putting
the best of their efforts when these presentations carried marks

I had always been a consistent academic performer since my school and college days and
have always been amongst the Top few in our school as well as college. I always thought

2
Personal Learning Paper 2

that rather than me speaking for myself my marks or rather my work should speak for me.
Even though I had the abilities within me I always lacked that confidence and was very low
on self-esteem but after coming to Great Lakes when I saw people showing extreme
confidence in every act of theirs and keeping their own opinions always at the top I realized
that It’s not just about who you are but Its more about Who you think you are (SELF
EFFICACY or SELF ESTEEM) that matters and get reflected in your actions. With few of the
concepts on Self Efficacy and Self Esteem in class I realized that being low on self-esteem is
under estimating one’s own self and If I will not have confidence in myself, who else will
show confidence in me.

Being part of big team of around 25 members at my project in Infosys I was made to work on
several modules. At that point of time I always wondered that why I was made to work on so
many different modules and not allowed to gain expertise on only a single module.I always
used to crib regarding this but when we were taught the concept of job rotation and Job
enlargement in OB class my question was very well answered. It also made me realise that
had my manager not been following this concept of job rotation and job enlargement he
would not have been able to manage such a big team and moreover the team members
would not have been that motivated to perform the task.

The concept of Pygmalion effect, the power of positive expectations taught in the class was
one of the important concepts picked up in OB class. Recently when our group was
supposed to present a Business plan in one of our courses we didn’t have any idea. All my
group members turned up to me and they really had high hopes from me.This was the time I
felt really motivated and charged up. I sat the whole night and prepared for our B plan and
finally it was a great success and all my team members were thankful to me.

Another Important learning came in the form of Group presentation for OB class. As part of
this presentation we were supposed to interview a person who was doing a mundane job
and understand what it isthat motivates that person to do that work day in and day out.
When we interviewed one such person (a sodexo worker in college mess) we realized that
even though his job is menial and mundane but how important these jobs and job workers
are to the success of the organizations. In our regular day to day life we feel that these
persons are not doing anything great and we tend to overlook their work but we do not
realize that these are the people who play an instrumental job in providing us the hygiene
factors,absence of which can really demotivate us.

One of the case problem on people problems at HEI done in OB class really helped me
understand the concept of positive psychological capital .it changed my way of looking at the
things. Rather than looking at what is wrong with the people I have started looking at what

3
Personal Learning Paper 2

are others strength and what is right with others .This change in me has made me appreciate
others strength and develop more friendly and long lasting relationships with my classmates.

Recently we had a guest lecture from one of the eminent personalities in consulting domain
and he guided us on how to build a successful career in consulting. He told us the major
reasons for his success in consulting domain. He stressed on various factors such as
conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to new experiences and agreeableness. At that
time I realised that these personality traits are very important and common amongst
successful people in this world and If I want to be successful in life I will have to build upon
these personality traits and master them in due course.

To conclude, I Hope the learning’s from one year stay at Great Lakes will go a long way to help me
builda successful career and more importantly to become a better human.