28 Dec MANAGING GROUPS AND TEAMS

MGT501 Management and Organizational Behavior

Module 1 – SLP

MANAGING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

The SLP for this course involves making a personal assessment of a relevant set of skills, focusing on your strengths and identifying any weaknesses that may have been revealed. You will then create a plan by which you can “grow” your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. By the end of the project, you will have a personal management profile and action plan.

As we have discussed, your values and attitudes interact with your personality to create a strong effect on your work life. The fit between an individual’s personality and a company’s “style” is essential to job satisfaction. Someone who is risk-averse, for example, would probably be unhappy at 3M, a company with a reputation for innovation and risk-taking. Understanding the impact of your own personality on others helps you build productive work relationships with peers, subordinates, and bosses, alike.

Refer to the required and optional sources for this module, and any other materials which will help you in understanding personality styles and how they affect organizational effectiveness. Remember to follow Trident’s guidelines for masters-level writing. (See The Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper.)

Assignment

Click on this link to access and complete the Jung Typology personality test. After you complete the test, you will want to read the description, but in order to fully understand what this test measures, you should also review “Personality Type explained.” Then review the pages on career choices, learning style and communication skills. Incorporate this information in formulating your responses to the questions below.

Include the actual results in an appendix at the end of your paper. (Note: This appendix requirement will likely increase your paper’s Turnitin similarity score; however, your professor is aware of this.)

Prepare a 2- to 3-page essay that addresses the following:

How does my personality type affect my career and effectiveness at my job?

Discuss:

o What did the test reveal about you?

o What can you infer from this test about your strengths and weaknesses?

o How does what you have learned from your module background materials about your personality type affect your motivation? Is this limited to a specific type of situation?

o What specific steps can you take to increase your strengths and build up weaknesses?

Refer to at least two module readings plus any other materials to help you in understand personality styles and how they affect organizational effectiveness. Complete the assessment according to the guidelines. Include the actual results in an Appendix section as the last page of your paper.

Follow the writing guidelines and other sources listed under the Optional Materials heading on the Module 1 Background page.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Your paper will be evaluated using the criteria on the SLP rubric (see the rubric for more detail): Assignment-Driven, Critical Thinking, Business Writing, Effective Use of Information, Citing Sources, and Timeliness.

You can find the rubric under Assessments>Rubrics at the top of the page.

MGT501 Management and Organizational Behavior

Module 2 – Case

MANAGING GROUPS AND TEAMS

Assignment Overview

Group Dynamics and Teams

We will continue our experiential approach to the study of Organizational Behavior by engaging in a personal applied case on the topic of group dynamics and teams. As in Module 1, use the following outline to structure your 4- to 6-page paper. You may use the subtitles as headings for your paper.

Introduction: Discuss the topic of the paper and how you will approach it. It is best to write this section after you have written the rest of the paper.

Concrete Experience: Begin with a specific situation/event. Describe an experience with a group or team that was meaningful to you. It may have been an extraordinarily good experience – or it may have been an experience that did not work out very well at all! The important point is that it should be an experience which you would like to understand better. Be objective and focus on just the facts: who, what, where, when, and how – as if you were composing a newspaper article.

Reflective Observation: Reflect upon that experience from multiple perspectives of persons involved or affected in the experience. Step back from the situation, look at the experience from your own viewpoint, and from the perspective of all other parties involved or affected. You want to look at the circumstances surrounding the experience from every relevant point of view. Why did you behave the way that you did? Why did others behave the way that they did? Did others have the same positive (or negative) experience? Explain. (Note: your discussion of theories and models from your module materials belongs in the following section.)

Abstract Conceptualization: (This Abstract Conceptualization section is the “heart” of your paper.) Use critical thinking skills to understand and interpret the experience at a deeper, more generalizable level. Interpret and understand the events you have described by drawing on the concepts, theories, and models in the background material from this module. Explain how they apply to your experience. For example, what behavior patterns can you identify in yourself and others that are similar to the ones described in the material on communication, teams, and conflict management? Does the model of Force Field Analysis (home page) help you better understand why people behaved the way they did? Be sure to apply at least three concepts, theories, and/or models and cite all references to concepts, ideas, and/or quotes that you use from any outside source.

Active Experimentation: Identify ways to respond to the next occurrence of a similar experience. What have you learned about the way groups work from this analysis? What have you learned from your mistakes? How are you going to put what you have learned to use? What actions will you take to build more effective work teams in your job?

Conclusion: Sum up the main points of your analysis and the key learning you are taking from it.

Reference List: List all references that you have cited in the paper using APA formatting. References include materials from the required background readings as well as any outside internet or library sources you used in researching and writing your paper. If you have APA questions, refer to the optional listings on the background page.

Assignment Expectations

Your Case paper will be evaluated using the criteria on the assignment rubric (see the rubric for more detail): Assignment-Driven, Critical Thinking, Business Writing, Effective Use of Information, Citing Sources, and Timeliness.

MGT501 Management and Organizational Behavior