Logan McLennan

BUSINESS 350 (Fall 2023)

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

OB EXPERIENCE PAPER 2

Individual behaviors can either make or break an organizations goals. In a business, one
must be able to coordinate their behaviors and know how to navigate others in order to be
successful as a group. Taking a personal experience of mine, I would like to explain how the
behavior and motivation of one person caused the rest of our group to have to work harder,
and solve issues that would not have been raised if this member had proper motivation.

An experience of mine with individual motivation issues happened in my first year of

college here are NIC, with a group assignment for an introductory English course. Our final
assignment was a large paper and presentation that put us in teams of four. One unnamed
member, we will call him Roger, caused issues for the rest of the group in more than one way.

Our workload was split into four sections – one for each of us. We were to rationalize
the legalization of Marijuana in Canada, as this was a hot topic at the time. Roger was tasked
with researching the medicinal benefits and source credible references for his claims in his
section of our group paper, and all of us had different tasks but formatted similarly. Mine was
the potential effects it will have on our health and health care system.

My group’s issue laid in that we did not communicate effectively throughout the project.
We did not check on each other’s progress during the four-week project timeline and simply
assumed others were getting their work done, myself included. 2 days before the due date we
all got in contact to put all of our individual contributions together, where we found out Roger
did not at all do his section.
 Logan McLennan

When asking him why, he stated that he didn’t have time and that he couldn’t find
sources. Our group talked apart from Roger and decided it would be best if we called and
finished his part as a group instead of begging him to finish it with the very limited time we had.
We notified our instructor of the situation as well. When time came to make our presentation,
we completed and assembled it without the help of Roger by our choice and had him present it
with us, with us all reading from a script.

Roger did not want to carry responsibility of his portion of our group assignment and did
not have the motivation to complete it himself. I mentioned us working independently and not
checking on each other’s progress as I believe that if we had weekly or bi-weekly meetings,
discussion and communicating our progress, that Roger would have been more inclined to
participate and keep up with the progress of his groupmates.

This situation would fall under the Theory X assumptions and shows a clear lack of
motivation. It may be that Roger has had group projects in the past, possibly in high-school, and
found that he can receive a grade he is content with while doing little to no work because of the
other students in the group completing his portion. This would create a low motivation to do
the same in the future, as he can do less or no work and receive the same outcome or
evaluation as the individuals who do participate fully. ““If an energetic man who is naturally a
hard worker finds that he earns no more than the lazy man, who does as little as possible, he
will soon lose interest in producing as much as he can”.

My Experience as a Team
Referencing a group or team situation, I will switch the ambience to a positive one. This is
another example of a school project done in teams, and one I am actually currently partaking
in.
 Logan McLennan

In my BUS 380 – International Business course, we were assigned a proposal and

presentation assignment, to be done in groups of four or five. In my experience, (the previously
mentioned one included) writing papers or proposals in a team is not effective.

For other assignments, I have worked with my classmate who will call Steven. We have
found that we work well together and found each other to be focused and on task and enjoy
working with each other. We asked the instructor privately to allow us to work in a team of
two, but still partake in the work of a team of four or five. He obliged.

Our team structure is solid. We have a set day and time we work on our project - we
have this class together in Campbell River; however, I am living in Comox so this is quite
difficult. We meet Tuesdays at 4pm-6pm, and work on our project on campus. We clarify our
goals for the day before meeting, and ensure we accomplish them before calling the meeting.
Additionally, our skills complement each other in that Steven is great at proof reading and
editing, and I am good at making ideas and putting them down. This is optimal for writing a
paper.

We are self-directed for the most part as this is a widely open project, and we assign
tasks relating to completion of our projects, compare our work, and make changes to each
other’s work, and this system seems to work extremely well for us.

This experience has made me realize something about myself – I do not work well in
large teams. I believe this is due to the increased lack of coordination the larger the group, and
not having the same amount of communication with each team member while completing the
task. Smaller groups allow you to check in on each other easier, remain on task, and clarify the
importance of your role on the team. Smaller teams also allow for increased team spirit,
cooperation, and create more urgency for members to complete their portion of the task.