Reaction Paper on "Performance Final"

Reaction Paper 15 pages (4318 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Personal and Professional Change

Over time, many people will experience some defining moments in their lives that will serve to clearly demarcate their transition from one stage to another. Events such as high school graduation, marriage, deaths and so forth all serve as such defining moments that not only make people feel older, but serve as social milestones from one stage of life to the next. In some cases, though, these life-shaping events are less clear-cut, but nevertheless influence people for the rest of their lives. These less clear-cut events can include reading a particular book or even a quotation that strikes a resonant chord that drives people to overcome the inertia in their lives and take some type of action. The reading discussed below can represent several such life-altering events as well, making their analysis and discussion a worthwhile and timely enterprise. To this end, this paper provides personal reactions to several readings, including a discussion concerning how these will be used to improve performance in the author's personal and professional lives. An assessment concerning how the insights that emerged during the reading can be used to facilitate organizational change in the future is followed by a summary of the readings and important findings in the conclusion.

REACTION: REVIEW AND DISCUSSION.

There is certainly an abundance of advice available concerning how best to achieve personal or professional development, but finding the right mix of personal interest and the content presented makes the likelihood that any given reading will have a lasting influence on an individual remote. Nevertheless, in some cases, this personal mix become active to the extent that something that is read or seen will be placed in long-term memory, perhaps even for life because it carries a high degree of personal significance and relevance for the reader or viewer. For instance, when tens of millions of Americans witnessed the use of vicious police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators on television during the sixties, many people who had been previously complacent or benign about civil rights were outraged and moved to action in supporting the cause. These types of events, though, are extremes but the same level of forceful change can be achieved when the advice is sufficiently sound and these issues are discussed further below.

One such excerpt that has potential life-altering implications for those entering the job market or wondering why their careers are foundering is provided by the author in the chapter, "What moves us," wherein he describes the importance of finding something one is not only good at, but truly enjoys doing as well in order to develop "the flow" (Goleman, p. 105). People are in the flow when they are doing things they enjoy, to be sure, but they are also in the flow when they are doing more challenging work that keeps them actively engaged in a self-fueling, reciprocating fashion. For instance, according to this authority, "Motive and emotion share the same Latin root, motere, 'to move.' Emotions are, literally, what moves us to pursue our goals, they 'fuel our motivations' and our motives in turn drive our perceptions and shape our actions. Great work starts with great feeling" (p. 106). When star performers are doing something they love, the author notes, they achieve a high flow level because for them, "excellence and pleasure are one and the same" (Goleman, p. 107). This may sound a tad Panglossian for some readers, but it is also true that when people love what they do, it is perceived less as work and more a personal fulfillment.

Yet another passage that may be remembered for a long time is the selection by the author that notes, "There is a saying in India, 'When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are the pockets'" (Goleman, p. 111). This saying of course means that the pickpocket is pragmatic in his focus, ignoring the potential personal growth and eternal rewards that could be gained from interacting with a saint. The saying, though, also implies that the pickpocket in question is a successful thief (and should therefore read: "When a [successful] pickpocket . . . .") who keeps his eye on the prize. From this perspective, achieving success in both personal and professional development requires keeping one's eye on the ultimate goal, whatever that might be, and actively pursuing those courses of action that will lead to its attainment.

This, of course, is easier said than done and many people are waylaid as they pursue a goal, requiring changes in the goal itself as well as what should be done to achieve it -- if anything. It is easy enough to give up and allow complacency to erode personal and professional dreams, but by keeping one's "eye on the prize." progress will be made in ways that will encourage further progress still. This strictly pragmatic analysis therefore fails to take into account the need for taking into account the larger picture and limits the ability to achieve personal and professional improvements over time. When people routinely experience failure to achieve lofty goals, they will likely become discouraged and simply quit trying. Perseverance, though, means not giving up but rather keeping things manageable.

One way of doing this is to set realistic goals that are achievable within a reasonable amount of time. In this regard, the author cites a useful example in setting reasonable goals for personal and professional development: "It seems like an innocent enough challenge. Toss a ring over an upright peg. The catch is that the farther away the peg is, the more points you make, and you get to set the peg yourself" (Goleman, p. 116). The resulting cost-benefit analysis, therefore, provides people with some degree of control over their pursuits, but the true winners in the peg setting-game are those who can more readily discern ways to legitimately place the ring over the hoop on a regular basis. Interestingly, people who seem to know where their efforts will be maximized along the peg-payoff continuum can apply this same intuitive analytical technique to other aspects of their lives, including both personal and professional development. For instance, Goleman points out that, "An intuitive decision is nothing but a subconscious logical analysis. Somehow the brain goes through these calculations and then comes up with what we would call a weighted conclusion -- it seems more right to do it this way than that way" (p. 53). Likewise, Goleman suggests that people are not automatons that simply take data from various sources and subject it to a mental algorithm that provides a neat and tidy result. Rather, Goleman emphasizes that, "Our minds are not designed like a computer [that] give us a neat printout of the rational arguments for and against a decision in life based on all the previous times we've faced a similar situation. Instead the mind does something much more elegant: It weighs the emotional bottom line from those previous experiences and delivers the answer to us in a hunch, a gut feeling" (p. 52). To make this "gut feeling" or intuitive decision as accurate as possible is a challenging enterprise to be sure, but some people seem to have a knack for the process while others rarely succeed.

Because everyone's ability to make such intuitive decisions is based on their unique set of beliefs about reality which span the entire range of the human conditions, it is clear that everyone's ability to formulate decisions in this fashion will vary, but those who are able to do so consistently will emerge on the top of the corporate heap provided they have the moral compass that is also needed to determine what "seems more right." In this regard, Goleman emphasizes that, "Personal values are not lofty abstractions, but intimate credos that we may never quite articulate in words so much as feel. Our values translate into what has emotional power or resonance for us, whether negative or positive" (p. 57).

By inculcating personal values that are morally and ethically sound, people stand a better chance of making intuitive decisions that are congruent with the Golden Rule and which will, over time, result in improved personal and professional performance. According to Goleman, "People who follow their inner sense of what is worthwhile minimize emotional static for themselves. Unfortunately, too many people feel that they cannot speak up for their deep values at work, that such a thing is somehow impermissible" (p. 58).

While it is certainly possible that the type of organizational culture that is in place discourages such feedback from employees, it is also reasonable to suggest that unless people speak their minds in the workplace about perceived disparities and wrongdoing, they will become sufficiently disillusioned that they will seek greener pastures elsewhere or become increasingly dissatisfied in their existing positions. In this regard, there may be some important gender-related differences involved in who feels most comfortable in speaking their voice in the workplace. For example, a statistical analysis conducted by… READ MORE

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