RespondTo2ColleaguesD1W8.docx

Prior to preparing your response to two (2) of colleagues, pay particular attention to the following Resources:

Emotions At Work: Needless Or Necessary? (forbes.com)

The Four C’s of Emotions – “See attachment”
Emotional Incompetence or Gender Based – “See attachment”

Respond to at least two (2) of your colleagues’ in one or more of the following ways:

· Share an insight about what you learned from having read your colleagues’ postings and discuss how and why your colleague’s posting resonated with you professionally and personally.

· Offer an example, from your experience or observation, which validates or differs from what your colleague discussed related to emotional intelligence.

· 4 – 5 paragraph response per each colleagues

·
No plagiarism

·
APA citing

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1st Colleague – Natasha

Discussion 1 – Week 8

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Natasha Mills 

Organizational Reflection

COLLAPSE

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This course has been instrumental in helping my understanding of organizational culture, particularly the individual components that make up effective cultures (Schein, 2009). More importantly, the weekly discussions have been insightful because they were based on real life experiences that colleagues narrated. These narrations made it easier for me to relate what was provided in the course materials to organizational contexts, a factor that improved my grasp of the practicality of the course content. This paper will address the major “aha” moments that I had during this course.

The first aha moment that I had was when culture and leadership were described as two sides of the same coin (Schein, 2009). The basis of this moment of enlightenment is that I had initially believed that a leader had little to do with an organization’s culture. Instead, I held the view that their responsibility was to conform to the existing culture, which was often the result of company policies and guidelines. Therefore, when I learned that leadership is a vital part of organizational culture, my perspective changed.

The next aha moment occurred when I learned that cultural assumptions are the source of an organization’s identity and strength (Schein, 2009).  As a result, it is necessary for organizations to get in touch with the underlying cultural assumptions for more effectiveness in their operations. This was an aha moment because it is usually difficult to determine the cultural assumptions of most organizations. However, I can now determine the cultural assumptions of an organization by looking at how the organization identifies itself, as well as its strengths. After that, it will be easy to know to what extent the organization adheres to its cultural assumptions, and the subsequent implications of that level of adherence on its effectiveness.

Another aspect of the discussions that turned into an aha moment for me were the discussions about organizational reflections on culture, when I learned that culture should not come first, but should be used as a strategy execution engine (Berkeleyexed, 2016). This idea stemmed from the exploration of how to enact culture change within an organization. I found this to be an aha moment because all the other proposed strategies in the course materials proved challenging. However, deploying this strategy of using culture as a strategy execution engine, meaning it is secondary to strategic aspirations, sounded simple.

The last aha moment concerns the criticality of a leader’s emotional intelligence in maintaining an emotionally balanced organizational culture. From this I developed the perspective that it is essential for a leader to have high emotional intelligence levels, which can be acquired through learning and experience if the skills do not come naturally to the individual (Serrat, 2017). The key lesson that I learned from this concept is that emotional intelligence is not an individual affair for someone in a leadership position. Rather, a leader’s emotional intelligence affects the entire work environment.

I consider each of the aha moments as a lesson that I am planning to implement as a leader. These lessons will help me develop a positive organizational culture, create emotionally balanced work environment, and implement culture change that is fully internalized whenever necessary. In other words, the aha moments will significantly boost my leadership effectiveness with regard to an organization’s culture, especially because leadership and corporate culture are inseparable (Schein, 2009).

From one of the aha moments, I also learned that the organization I selected in week one, Red Cross, had a slight shortcoming in its organizational culture. The negative cultural component exists in the disparity between the organization’s mission and vision statements and one principle governing its operations. The principle regards Red Cross’s mission to alleviate suffering in the face of a disaster, while it remains a neutral humanitarian actor (Red Cross, n.d). I believe that the neutrality of Red Cross may be significantly crippling the organization’s realization of its mandate of alleviating suffering. Therefore, an improvement strategy for this organization’s culture could involve the leaders’ involvement in more proactive than reactive operations, such as defending the rights of those within disaster prone areas. This strategy would be more effective in alleviating suffering during a disaster than the existing one.
 
Berkeleyexeced. (2016). Leadership style & adaptive cultures. Retrieved from 

Red Cross. (n.d). Covid-19: The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s Approach. Retrieved from: 
https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/COVID-19%20Movement%20Approach.pdf

Schein, E. H. (2009). The corporate culture survival guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Serrat, O. (2017). Understanding and developing emotional intelligence. In Knowledge solutions (pp. 329-339). Springer, Singapore.
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2nd Colleague – Ryan

Discussion 1 – Week 8Top of Form
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Ryan Sharatt

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The lead take away from this course is the significance of emotional intelligence and how that impacts a leader and the success one will position themselves to have. Callahan (2008) illustrated four C’s of emotion and how emotions serve as the social lubricant for interactions Callahan, 2008 p. 33). This writing further solidifies the foundation of emotional intelligence within me and encourages me to remain diligent in my own participation and validation of emotional intelligence impact in business and personal life alike.
Inspiring other with various techniques and methods. Simon Sinek (2008) starting with why and from the inside out. The law of diffusion innovation was actually very rewarding and took me down many paths of further investigation and research (Sinek, 2008).
During the coursework of emotions at work in week six, I found that many of my own leadership flaws exist in emotions like empathy and just overall understanding of the individuality of the employee. I often forget how unique everyone is, specifically in a word of trying to create and conform to standards. Ilfeld (2016) breaks down a systematic approach in dealing with workplace emotions (Ilfeld, 2016) that resonated with me to the point of sending the article to my senior leaders.
Finally, week three has really stuck with me regarding soft power and balance of power. Nye (2008) illustration of soft versus hard power and how combining both into an effective state of smart power (Nye, 2008 p.10) has influenced my day-to-day activities within my own organization. In my organization, I am operating in an element where few have tried and even fewer have succeeded. The mixture of cross talent and disciplines is hard to manage and even harder to lead, however, as Pinchot (1992) illustrated, in transitional organizations, decisions are first made cross-functionally in both formal and informal teams, then refined by functional chiefs (Pinchot, 1992 p.3) which is why many others before my organization have failed, where I know we can succeed.
In closing, this course has been enlightening to means and methods that I have struggled to put in place, and now with information gained, will be able to further refine and better implement the transitional organization that my mind assures me will succeed.
 

References:

Callahan, J. L. (2008). The Four C’s of Emotion: A Framework for Managing Emotions in Organizations. Organization Development Journal, 26(2), 33–38.
Ilfeld, J. (2016, June 6). Emotions at work: Needless or necessary? Forbes. Retrieved from 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2016/06/06/emotions-at-work-needless-or-necessary/?sh=f854808917bb
   
Nye jr., J. S. (2008). Soft Power. Leadership Excellence, 25(4), 10.
Pinchot, E. S. (1992). Balance the power. Executive Excellence, 9(9), 3. Retrieved from 
https://ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fbalance-power%2Fdocview%2F204533567%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D14872

 
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