11/23/2019 BET 600

Reflection Assignment
Professor Mark Weber

Nisha Sachdeva
20833802
Having worked for 14 years in large organizations, I was not sure about how the classes on

Applied Business Leadership Skills for Entrepreneurs would really add any value to my life.

And on the very first class, Professor Mark Weber dissipated all my notions. He provided a

brilliant introduction to decision making and introduced us to “A Primer on Decision

Making: How Decisions Happen”, the work of James March, a renowned American

polymath. Decision making is a central human activity fundamental to individual, group,

organizational, and societal life. The discussion emphasized how decisions are actually made,

as opposed to how they should be made. I was drawn into the discussion both as an observer

and as a participant. Little did I know, that this discussion, would turn out to be one of the

most important lessons that I will perhaps take with me way beyond the length of the MBET

program. I have been an avid reader of biographies and in one of the classes, Professor Mark

threw a new light on the way I look up at these leaders whose lives have been a source of

massive inspiration for me. The lucidity with which Mark presented the reasons why some

leaders are successful while some are not is very impressive. He compelled us to think how in

a contest between the individual and the situation, the situation generally wins. The

discussion revealed that the real power of leadership is that people who have leadership

opportunities are the architects, the designers, the custodians, and the maintainer of situations.

And recently an incident in the class made this revelation even more clearer. I recently

proposed an idea that we start a speaker series for our class where we would invite some of

the industry leaders and entrepreneurs from multiple domains to share some of their insights

and learnings with us. The idea was discussed with Professor Chris Holt after which I created

a shared document where people could propose names of people they would like to have for

the Speaker Series. Our class is diverse with people from across geographies and multiple

ethnicities. In what I would call as a “moment of truth” discussion, one of the classmates

asked me how my so-called “extra-curricular” activity was going on. I told him that I had
created a shared document which I had circulated on the class WhatsApp group. Surprisingly,

I was meted out a rude response. The said person told me that he was not obliged to checking

the group and how I need to do the job more effectively. I tried to reason with him and I was

rather shocked when he told me that women don’t look graceful when arguing. What added

to my surprise was that the person was absolutely inconsiderate and spoke these words in an

aggressive tone in front of two other classmates. We had scheduled a meeting for discussing

the next steps which was only a couple of minutes away. That was the moment when I

realized that I cannot afford to react with aggression. That the situation demanded that I take

it in my stride as I wanted to have a successful meeting and did not want an unpleasant scene

in the class. I told him that I would create an email group and would welcome his thoughts to

make this endeavor a success. Had I allowed my ‘old’ self to address the situation, I would

have probably shouted back and condemned him for not looking at the group’s conversation

thread. But here I was, in absolute awareness thinking the question, “What does a person like

me do in a situation like this?”

The discussions on logic of consequence and logic of appropriateness dawned upon me. I

thought to myself that my aim is to make my endeavor a success and an iota of rancor or

bitterness can be detrimental to it. Mark had mentioned that good leaders are the ones that

have the opportunity to shape the situation in which people are going to function. Following

my learnings from the class and the readings, I recalled the discussion on why people do what

they do. My classmate is someone who has been in senior roles in organizations. He probably

is used to getting data in a more structured manner. Maybe he comes from a highly

patriarchal society. There could be multiple factors. As Mark had suggested, I kept going

back to these questions as my explanatory variables and was able to think about and reflect

on deeply. I was highly situation sensitive. The other thing that struck me in that moment was
one of the quotes by Ambrose Bierce that Mark had used in one of his classes. “Speak when

you are angry and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.”

Looking back at my career, I now recognize what my failures have been. And most of them

revolve around me being insensitive to the situations and making horrible speeches. Situation

sensitivity plays a pivotal role for anyone to be an effective leader. This insight, I now

understand impacts teamwork, collaboration and more importantly, ingrains in me the

principles that will help me become an effective leader. I have attended multiple leadership

coaching sessions but this class is different. Every session is an eye-opener exposing me to

the deeper realms of how a human brain functions.

There have been two other critical learnings for me from this class.

First, that we are incapable of being completely objective when forming perceptions about

people. This became clearly evident after the exercises we did in the class on Carter Racing

and the hiring decision based on limited facts available. More often, what we would like to

believe is fine-tuned by a wide variety of transient and intangible factors, thus leading to

incorrect assumptions and correlations. While forming perceptions is human nature, choosing

to have an open mind to possibilities that do not necessarily align with our perceptions is

definitely within our control and failure to do so can sometimes mean closing our mind even

to the truth.

Second, the lesson on biases. “Task conflict is conceptualized as differences in opinion

relating to work or business decisions, while relationship conflict pertains to personality

differences and interpersonal tensions.” [Amy C. Edmondson Diana McLain Smith, Too Hot

To Handle? How to Manage Relationship Conflict]. I was able to see how my brain tricked

me on multiple occasions contributing to self-serving bias. The second bias is fundamental

attribution error, a concept famously documented by a Stanford social psychologist named

Lee Ross.
To be honest, it would be correct to say that I entered the program with some preconceived

perceptions about some of my teammates. One of our teammates was extremely quiet during

the team meeting for one of the other tasks, so I assumed that she must be very shy and an

introvert and hence will take a back seat and would not be able to contribute much to the

class assignments. I can now easily see the primacy effect of the perception principles in

action. My perception was built solely on that one meeting and I failed to comprehend that

there could be several other reasons for that behavior. My perception was further solidified

by the observation that I had always seen her with books or on the laptop and had hardly ever

seen her engaging with her peers outside the class environment. It was maybe because I was

subconsciously looking for cues that helped me keep my perception constant while constantly

ignoring the ones that went against it. However, to my surprise, it turned out that she played a

key role during a group assignment. I was shocked to witness how perception can leave a

person incapable of being objective. The biggest surprise came when throughout the

preparatory work, she took an added responsibility of managing roles and responsibilities of

all the members in the group. Also, she made substantial efforts to ensure that she expressed

her opinions from time to time during the assignment to ensure we stayed on track. The

situation made me realize that I may have been a victim of the fundamental attribution error

and I overemphasized the dispositional explanations while at the same time ignoring the

situational context. My assumption that she was too quiet, shy and an introvert and hence

won’t be able to contribute to the team was proved largely wrong by this incident. I was

impressed by the way she was able to keep track of various moving parts in the assignment

and suggested strategies to make the best of the given circumstances. With added feedback

from each of the team members and increased level of group cohesiveness, the team was

finally able to deliver an impressive report.

Retrospectively, as I am writing this paper, I feel that the classes that I was most reluctant to

attend have taught me a lot more than I thought. Infact, this class has made me look forward

to Mondays. I have made a lot of mistakes in life and the scope for improvement is

humongous. Reflecting on all the class discussions, I feel I am better equipped to handle

difficult conversations. Mark’s suggestion that we must paint with the narrowest possible

brush is a lesson I will keep for my lifetime. I see myself working in a leadership position

wherein my decisions and actions will have the potential to change the lives of the people

involved. My key take away is to strive to be an able leader who can create an atmosphere

wherein my colleagues feel valued and have a high sense of perceived organizational support.

Only then will the true potential of the team can be unearthed and the team can realize its

objectives. I am still amazed at how these classes have managed to teach to me several

crucial things. I feel fortunate to be a part of the class.

 REFERENCES

1. Course Reserves. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.reserves.uwaterloo.ca/ares/ares.dll?Action=10&Type=10&Value=13394

7 Article: Hammond, Keeney & Raiffa, “The Hidden Traps in Decision Making”

2. Course Reserves. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.reserves.uwaterloo.ca/ares/ares.dll?Action=10&Type=10&Value=13394

Article: Gratton & Erickson, “8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams”

3. LIBRARY. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://go-gale-

com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=uniwater&v=2.1&it=r&id=

GALE|A21114518&asid=d2d756c568e7d05ef9ff0e757cf631a6.

Article: Katzenbach and Smith, “The discipline of teams”

4. Edmondson, A. C., & Smith, D. M. L. (n.d.). Too Hot to Handle? How to Manage

Relationship Conflict - Amy C. Edmondson, Diana McLain Smith, 2006. Retrieved

from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2307/41166369?journalCode=cmra.