Socialization, Counselling, Mentoring and Feedback

NAME - SAURABH DEWAN

ROLL NO. – 57
INDEX
 INTRODUCTION

Organizational socialization “is the process by which an

individual comes to appreciate the values, abilities, expected

behaviors, and social knowledge essential for assuming an

organizational role and for participating as an organizational

member”.

During the socialization process, newcomers acquire

information and knowledge about their jobs, roles, work

groups, and the organization that is necessary for them to

participate and function as successful members of their

organization.

Socialization is important because it enables newcomers to

discover what the organization is about, why it is important,

and their place within in it; it facilitates work adjustment; and it

can infl uence the long-term success and the career of

newcomers. Organizational socialization is also one of the

primary ways that an organization’s culture is transmitted and

maintained and it can have a lasting effect on employees’

attitudes and behaviours.

Characteristics of the Organizational Socialization:

According to Schein, the socialization process in an organization

is mostly confined to learning the prevailing values, norms and

behavioral patterns. Some of the characteristics of the

organizational socialization of employees are:

  It brings about a change in the attitude, values and

behavior of an individual so that they do not contradict

organizational values.

 The process continues for an extended period of time.

 It helps the new employee adjust to new jobs, work

groups and organizational practices.

 The new employee as well as the managers influence each

other.

 The initial period of the socialization process is crucial

because it determines how well an employee fits into the

organization.

These characteristics of organizational socialization influence

the behavior of employees in an organization. For example,

employees learn that they should be formally dressed when

they come to office, should not speak defamatory things about

the organization in public, and so on. Through the socialization

process they find out whom they should approach in case of

any problem and learn about the informal communication

networks in the organization that can be relied upon. The

socialization process is particularly crucial when a foreign

national joins the organization. He needs to be socialized to

help him adapt to the local culture.

Organizations only survive if they can successfully integrate

new members, over time. History is full of lost organizations,

unable to recruit and retain new members. The first political

parties of the United States no longer exist, replaced by the

Democratic and Republican parties. Numerous religions and

ideologies have come and gone. The successful recruitment and

integration of new members brings essential rejuvenation to

organizations, just as the shedding of old cells and creation of

new cells is necessary for the life of an organism. For

organizations to be successful at their task of integrating new

members, deliberate effort must be exerted. Religious

organizations actively evangelize for new members, and create

rituals and steps for entry into the religious society. Political

organizations are similarly evangelical in spreading their

messages, registering voters and recruiting volunteers. The

purpose of this paper is to discover how organizations of higher

education can ensure their longevity by developing new

professional entrants into full-fledged and active members of

the community.
Socialization, quite simply, is the process by which someone is

transformed from being an outsider to an insider. In religion,

socialization takes place partly though rituals, such as baptism,

and education, such as catechism. In the military, socialization

partially occurs during boot camp, where the traditions,

disciplines and values of military life are indoctrinated into

recruits.

Counselling

 It is the decision of a problem that prevents a worker from

doing his job efficiently.

 It also provides some kind of direction to help workers

improve their mental health so that they will feel comfortable

and able to meet the daily demands of life.

 It also implies exchange of ideas and opinions about feelings

between two people – a counsellor and the counselee.

 It helps workers cope with problems and can improve

organizational performance.

Functions of Counselling

1. Advice

Is telling the counselee what he thinks should be done. Giving

advice requires a counsellor to make judgments about the

counselee’s problems and provide direction as a course of

action.

2. Reassurance

Is giving the worker courage and self-confidence to face the

problems at hand.
One danger of reassurance is that, in some cases, the

counselees do not always accept the remarks coming from the

counsellor.

3. Communication

o Applies to all phases of management.

o It provides information and understanding of direction of

workers to express their feelings to management.

4. Emotional Catharsis

o It is the release of emotional tension and frustrations, by way

of telling something about it.

5. Clarified Thinking

o It is the removal of emotional blocks which hinder a person

from thinking rationally.

6. Reorientation

o It is a change in worker’s psychic self through a change in

fundamental goals and values.

The various characteristics of people with good mental health:

A. They feel comfortable about themselves.

1. Are not very much affected by their emotions; e.g., fear,

anger, jealousy, guilt or worries.

2. Can take life’s disappointments in stride.

3. Have a wide range of tolerance, easy going attitude toward

themselves as well as others; can afford to laugh at themselves

or the misfortunes they experience.

4. Never overestimate or underestimate their abilities.

5. Can accept their shortcomings graciously.

6. Have self – respect.

7. Feel able to handle any situations that come their way

however difficult it may seem.

B. They feel right about other people.

1. Are able to give love and to consider the interests of others.

2. Have personal relationships that are satisfying and lasting.

3. Expect to like and trust others and take it for granted that

others will like and trust them.

4. Respect the many differences they find in people.

5. Do not push people around; and do not allow themselves to

be pushed by others either.

6. Feel that they are part of the group.

7. Feel a sense of responsibility to their neighbors and others.

C. They are able to meet the demands of life.

1. Do something about their problems as they arise.

2. Accept their responsibilities.

3. Shape their environment whenever possible; adjust to it

when necessary.

4. Plan ahead but do not fear the future.

5. Welcome new experiences and new ideas.

6. Make use of their natural capacities.

7. Set realistic goals for themselves.

8. Be able to think for themselves and make their own

decisions.

9. Put their best effort into what they do and get satisfaction

out of it.
Three Types of Counselling

1. Direct counselling

It is the process of listening to a worker’s problem, deciding

with the worker what should be done and then telling and

motivating the worker to do it.

2. Non–directive counselling

o It is the process of skilfully listening and encouraging a

counselee to explain troublesome problems, understand the

problems and determine appropriate solutions. This is also

referred to as client–centered counselling.

o It was also developed by Elton May and Fritz Roethlisberger

which underscores the need for greater understanding of the

social and behavior aspects of management.

3. Participative counselling

o The mutual counsellor – counselee relationship that

establishes a cooperative exchange of ideas and opinions to

solve a counselee’s problems. This type of counselling is also

referred to as cooperative counselling.

o It was also integrates the ideas of the counsellor and the

counselee in a mutual and congenial counselling relationship.

Note:

 Counselling as a tool is necessary for workers because of job

and personal problems that subject them to excessive stress.

 Stress affects both physical and mental health, and

consequently, results in burnout, especially when it occurs

chronically.

 The excessive stress manifested by workers evidently affects

job performance.
Mentoring

Enterprises and organizations have already understood the

importance of the human resources development through a

well selected training method like mentoring in order to gain a

competitive advantage in the long run or even survive.

Mentoring ethical aspects is their defensive mechanism to

rapid changes of any kind and to sustainability of moral values

and attitudes both to personal or organizational issue. Its

ethical aspect plays a crucial role in the relationship not only

between mentor and mentee but also to any relationship

between a leader and employees. Both leader and mentor have

to transfer and keep unchangeable their ethic values which

have to align to those of their enterprise or organization they

belong to.Also, mentoring in order to be successful can not be

gender differentiated and has to be connected from

employee’s side with job satisfaction and career development,

whereas from business or organizational side with performance

and productivity. But both sides have to be based on quality

standards and continuous improvement.

Ethical aspects of Mentoring within organizations

1. Introduction

A highly competitive world requires of each business and

organization to have a well shaped framework of values,

attitudes, behaviours, actions, culture, vision and ethics aspects

both personal and organizational, too. Business or organization

of recent years more than ever before put an emphasis on

human beings and their support and intervention to its success.

Therefore, training of employees and managers at any level is

concerned as an investment of great value. Mentoring is the

most preferable way of training, it is gender differentiated

hence it is worth analyzing its ethical aspects as it plays a crucial

role to individual development and business or organizational

performance and sustainability.

2. Ethics and business

Ethics is difficult to be defined due to its complexity and extent.

According to Chambers English Dictionary it is a system of

morals and rules of behaviour. Ethics has to do with fairness,

right or wrong, values, laws and behaviours. Different types of

ethics are helpful to understanding the dimensions of it. In the

existing literature three types of ethics are suggested. The first

one is social approach which came from Greek society, is based

on the Greek’s idea of basic rules for civilized living and is

different from one group or society to another. The second one

is transcendental approach which relies on the absolute

concept of right and wrong and a sense of justice, which is

applied equally without any social, geographical or cultural

restriction. The third approach is tactical ethics based on

obeying rules or laws in order to avoid any penalties arising

from their infringement. Also, it is true that unethical

behaviours are better understood than the ethical ones asthey

result in fairness to others whether they are legal or illegal and

people are in difficulty of distinguishing the line between

ethical and unethical actions without analyzing their

consequences to other people. The interest of ethics is

increasing 4 mainly in business and organization as a result of

an effort of preventing the unethical behaviours which are

common in our competitive society.In the world of business

and organizations, ethical behaviour is characterized and

defined by the values an enterprise or an organization holds.

Since every person holds his own values that may be different

from anyone’s else, an enterprise or an organization is

responsible of releasing her/his values to all her members

through an effective organizational communication.

Organizational communication must be ethical if high morale

and productivity among employees are to be achieved.

Communication with other organizations must be ethical if

good business relationships are to develop for the benefit of all.

Communication with customers and clients must be ethical if

businesses are to develop bodies of satisfied customers and

clients that will make long-term profits possible.

Communication with the community must be ethical if the

organization is to receive the community support and goodwill

essential for its survival and to avoid expensive and reputation-

damaging legal entanglements. Ethics broadens its sense with

the global ethics which emerges recently in professional areas,

connects values, cooperation, responsibility and transfers

satisfaction from the one’s benefit to this of all people. This is

specified in public or professional ethics where actions can be

able to justify the public trust placed in one and fostered by

global ethics where values and norms should be universal or

applicable to all people accompanied by obligations or

responsibilities towards all people. These values developed

through the impact of the moral premise for Plato’s sense of

the ultimate Good, Kant’s categorical imperative, Rawls’s

principles of distributive justice, and the Judeo-Christian

principles and Guy (1991) categorized them in ten core values

which are: caring; honesty; accountability; promise keeping;

pursuit of excellence; loyalty; fairness; integrity; respect for

others; and responsible citizenship. All these values of ethics

are determined in the relationship between mentor and

mentee and assurance its success. Furthermore, as mentors in

certain cases act as leaders this brings out the necessity of

connecting ethical aspects of both mentoring and leadership.

FEEDBACK

In every aspect of our lives, we are constantly faced with the

need to tellothers—family, friends, associates, bosses,

subordinates—about the effects of their behavior. Often, the

goal of such feedback is to be helpful—that is either to

encourage them to reinforce positive behavior or to eliminate

behavior that is detrimental to them, to us or to our

relationship. Unfortunately, not all feedback is helpful. If it is

given at the wrong time or in an inappropriate way, it can be

destructive to the recipient, your relationship with them or

both.

In our view, giving feedback effectively is a skill that comes

naturally to a few but can be learned by anyone if they are

willing to focus on two things.

The most important of which is asking themselves, "Why do I

want to give this feedback?" If the intent is to let off steam or

establish who’s in charge, then the outcome is likely to be

negative and the feedback probably shouldn’t be given at all. If

the intent is to help the other person improve themselves or

strengthen your relationship with them then the second factor

comes into play.

This one has to do with the manner in which the feedback is

given. Even when the intent is positive, the outcome is likely

to be negative unless the process is handled skillfully. The

following characteristics of helpful feedback should assist in

this regard.
Helpful Feedback is Timely

In general, the more immediate the feedback; the more helpful

it will be. In part, this is because immediate feedback tends to

be much more specific since the details of the situation are

more apparent than they would be at any later point in time.

In addition, delayed feedback often causes resentment

because it may sound like a ‘Monday morning quarterback."

This is because the recipient may feel that he or she could

have minimized problems by making on-the-spot corrections

if you had spoken up earlier. Even though immediate feedback

is generally desirable, one caution is in order.There may be

situations in which the receiver’s needs may make it

necessary to postpone feedback until it can be given a different

setting. For example, bosses who need to be seen as

being "in charge" will invariably respond defensively when

anyone attempts to give them negative feedback in any kind

of a public setting even though they often respond

favorably to a "one-on-one" conversation at a later point in

time. Similarly, someone who is very upset or angry is not likely

to be open to feedback until they have had the opportunity to

calm down.

Helpful Feedback is:

(1) Descriptive, not evaluative, and is "owned" by the sender.

(2) Specific, not general.

(3) Honest and sincere.

(4) Expressed in terms relevant to the self-perceived needs of

the receiver.

(5) Timely and in context.

(6) Desired by the receiver, not imposed on him or her.

(7) Usable; concerned with behavior over which the receiver

has control.

Helpful Feedback is Usable

Feedback is useful only when it relates to something over

which the person has control. Feedback is useless when it is

about: (1) personal attributes such as race, sex, age, physical

size or even previous experience and, (2) opportunities that

have already been missed (i.e., something someone should

have done but didn’t). The problem with both is that the

person can’t do anything about them even if they want to. As a

result, giving feedback based on these kinds of issues is not only

useless but is likely to cause resentment (or worse).

Helpful Feedback is Specific

The more specific the feedback, the more information it

contains. In trying to help someone learn how to type, say

"you are using the correct finger on all but two of the letters of

the alphabet" would be descriptive and minimally evaluative

but not specific enough to be of much help. "You are striking

the Y and the N with the left instead of the right forefinger,"

would be even less likely to be seen as evaluative and would be

specific enough to be useful. Similarly, the statement "I saw

your interactions with me in this group as being quite brief so

that I didn’t really understand what you were trying to say,"

is descriptive, non-evaluative, and owned by the giver but is

also fare more general (and proportionately less helpful) than

the statement "…I had a hard time understanding your point

about Bill’s next assignment. I think my problem was that I

didn’t have enough information to tie things together."