Class 5-6: Success and Transition Competencies Work Characteristics Lewin: Success and Failure “Flow” Hertzberg: Hygiene-Motivation Theory Maslow Lilliane

Class 5-6: Success and Transition

• Competencies

• Work Characteristics

• Lewin: Success and Failure

• “Flow”

• Hertzberg: Hygiene-Motivation Theory

• Maslow

• Lilliane Atwood

• Change and Transition: William Bridges

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceChange and Transition

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceMotivation and Learning Style

Know - Be - Do

• What information do I need to know to do my job?

• How do I have to be in order to work successfully?

• What can I do? What skills can I apply?


Knowledge - Skills - Attributes

• Knowledge Information related to a specific job role, or professional discipline

• Skills Abilities or skills required to fulfil a job role

• Attributes Personal characteristics, behaviors, styles and traits that impact motivation, task performance, and working with colleagues


“Accomplishments” Exercise

• Challenges: What was the issue?

Who was involved?

What was at stake?

What problems or obstacles had to be overcome?

• Actions:What did you do?

What kinds of decisions did you need to make?

How did you go about solving the problem?

• Results: What happened?

What was the effect?

How were results measured either quantitatively or qualitatively?


“Accomplishments” Review

• What did you notice about the skills being used in the accomplishment example?

• What values were expressed in the accomplishment story?

• What characteristics of the work or work environment were most important?

• What did you find most interesting and rewarding about the accomplishment?

• Has your sense of accomplishment or success changed over time?

Work Environment – Characteristics - 1


Work Alone -------------------Work As Part of Team

Self-Direction ----------------Moderate Supervision

Part-Time ----------------------Full-Time

Deadlines -------------------- Open-Ended Schedule

Routine Tasks --------------- Change in Content / Pace

Work Under Pressure ------ Slow, Steady

Short Cycle ------------------ Long Term Results

Work for Someone Else-----Self-Employed

Small Organization----------Large Organization

Cooperative-------------------Competitive

Structured ---------------------Flexible

Work Environment – Characteristics - 2


Hierarchical----------------------------ConsensusFrequent Meetings---------------------Few MeetingsManage Others-------------------------Not Supervise Others

High Challenge / Risk-----------------Minimal Risk

Frequent Public Contact--------------Little Customer Contact

Colleagues Dependent on Work----Work Self-Contained

Visible to Upper Management-------Minimal Exposure

Wide Variety of Tasks ----------------Few Tasks at a Time

Trouble-Shooting----------------------Predictable Tasks

Contact with Various People--------Contact with Same People

Planning and Preparing -------------Implementing and Doing


Lewin: Psychology of Success and Failure

• Achievement cannot be equated with a feeling of success.

• Success or failure is dependent on level of aspirations.

• Success or failure depends on degree of difficulty


What Influences the Level and Rigidity of Aspirations ?

• Ability • Prior level of achievement• Social group influences • Self-esteem• Nature of the task

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceSuccess, Satisfaction, Meaning

What Influences the Level of Aspiration?

• Level of aspiration is changed by success and failure

• Failure reduces aspirations or expectations, or results in person stopping the activity.

• Success increases level of aspirations.

• Natural conflict between keeping aspirations down (fear of failure) and raising expectations higher (wanting to achieve).

• When success follows failures, sometimes aspirations are abandoned.


What Influences Perception of Success?

• Degree of difficulty of task

• Acceptable achievement has a natural maximum and natural minimum

• Feeling of success or failure occur when task is close to upper level of achievement (a chance for success, a chance for failure)

• If task is above a certain degree of difficulty, no feeling of failure (“too difficult’)

• If task is below a certain degree of difficulty, no feeling of success (“too easy”)

Success ?

Satisfaction ?


Flow M. Czikszenthmihalyi


Flow Corridor

Skills and Capabilities

Challenges and

Opportunities

Anxiety

Anxiety

Worry

Boredom


Hertzberg’s Theory of Hygiene/Motivator Factors

“Hygiene” Factors

• Working conditions• Supervision• Fellow workers

Absence of hygiene factors leads to dissatisfaction but the presence of hygiene factors does not necessarily lead to satisfaction

Motivation Factors

• Recognition

• Advancement

• Responsibility

• Job Challenge

• Required for satisfaction

0Dissatisfaction Satisfaction

Hygiene Factors Motivators


Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Physiological Needs

Safety / Security Needs

Social Needs

Esteem Needs

Self-Actualization


Macoby’s Critique

Superficially, the concept appears to make sense, but the theory ignores all the cultural and psychoanalytical evidence of the role of values, of human character…What we choose to do depends more on our ethics than on satisfying needs. No evidence shows that satisfaction of lower needs triggers higher needs, or that these needs can indeed ever be satisfied. One thinks of hungry artists or generous villagers who transcend lower needs without satisfying them. One never satisfies needs for safety, food, or love, once and for all. We may learn better ways to satisfy these needs, we may raise the aesthetic quality of these needs, but they never disappear. Nor can we ever achieve all our potentials. How we develop depends on opportunity, discipline, and commitment………Once character is formed, satisfaction of needs does not necessarily change the motivation to work.


Lilliane Atwood - Case Summary

• Theater saved her from repressive childhood

• Drama coach; NYC Theater

• Market research firm

• Business sold, no gain from sale

• Approached by 3 firms

• Accepted offer

• Outward Bound

• Declines “fantastic offer”

• Burned by stove

• Starts own business

• Child / Work – no theater• Independence• Mom passes away• Business too demanding;

questions meaning• Develops Edith character• Tension with husband; wants

privacy• Losing contacts in business• Felt lost when away from

theater• Sense of ownership, “painting

my own life”


Lilliane Atwood - Case Questions

• What messages did she receive from her parents about enjoyment and work ?

• How did her mother’s life history influence Lilliane’s work/life choices and priorities?

• Compare success and meaning. Are these the same or different for Lilliane Atwood?

• What has motivated Atwood? How has this changed?

• What career anchor(s) are represented in Lilliane’s story?

• In what ways does Levinson’s concept of a life structure and developmental transitions help explain Lilliane’s transitions?


Lilliane Atwood - Case Q’s

• How has her family life and relationship with her husband affected her transitions?

• What connections do you see among her childhood experiences, her marriage, and her decision not to work for a company?

• How would you explain Lilliane’s passion for the theater ? Her development of the “Edith” character ?

• In what ways might the “Edith” character represent an “ending” for Lilliane?

• What events “marked” different points of her transition? What is the significance of these events for her?


Making Work Meaningful

“Self analysis…has its limits, as does analysis by category.

You are a category of one. And there is a larger plane

upon which it may be helpful to fix yourself: your

professional mission. Some people feel they have a

mission in their work…. Others use the old-fashioned

religious term “calling.” It implies that what you have to

contribute at work is unique, exceptional, and vital…”

- Adam Tobler


Change vs. Transition

Change and Transition are not the same

Change = a shift in the external situation

Transition = the psychological reorientation in response to change


Change vs. Transition

Events ----------------------- Experience

Situational ----------------- Psychological

Outcome-Focused --------------------- Process-Based

Relatively Quick ----------------- Gradual and Slow


Traditional Change / Transition Model

Shock and Denial

Suffering, Resistance, Anger

Exploration

Resolution and Commitment


3 Phases of Transition

Endings– Focus is on “losses” in meaning, structure, control, sense of

place, career identity

Neutral Zone– Focus is on exploration, creativity, opening up options

– Also a time of confusion and discomfort

Beginnings

– Focus is on planning, engagement, taking action


Why Manage Endings?

Transition starts with loss even as change starts with gains.

“You can’t steal second base with your foot still on first”

“Every beginning is a consequence. Every beginning ends something”

(Paul Valery, French poet)

Every exit is an entry somewhere else (Tom Stoppard, Amercican dramatist)


What Is Lost In Endings?

• Attachments - relationships with individuals- memberships in groups

• Structure - routines that make work comfortable- the sense of security- patterns about the use of

time

• Future - an expectation about what one would enjoy

• Turf - a location, a sense of place- ownership of work: project, customer

• Meaning - feeling of being valued- recognition and status- power and influence

• Control - being in control of destiny

• Identity - elements important in defining oneself


Aspects of Natural Endings

• Disengagement– Separating from familiar contexts– Leaving behind “cues” that define our roles, behavior

• Disidentification– Losing previous ways and signs of self-definition– Temporary assumption of a non-identity

• Disenchantment– Rethinking the “way things are.”– Shifting expectations and assumptions– Seeing another reality

• Disorientation– “Don’t know where I am going” feeling– “Lost enough to find yourself” (Robert Frost)


What Is The Neutral Zone?

• A time between an old identity and the new

• A “nowhere” between two “somewheres”

“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between we fear…It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold onto.” - Marilyn Ferguson, American futurist

“ One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” - Andre Gide, French novelist


Neutral Zone: Time and Confusion

“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood

- Henry Miller, American novelist

“ It takes nine months to have a baby, no matter how many people you put on the job.”

- American saying


Neutral Zone: Dealing With Ambiguity

• Consider it “normal.”– Not meaningless waiting and confusion, but necessary

reorientation and redefinition

– Aimlessness is important inner business

• Take your time– Avoid the “street crossing mentality” about transitions

– “Fix-It” versus “Experience” approach

– The way out is the way in.

– Watch for polarization: rush forward / back to “old ways”


Creativity In The Neutral Zone

• The Neutral Zone is chaotic, lacking in clear systems, structure, and signals about what to do.

• A lack of clarify can be ripe with creative opportunity

• Creative solutions emerge in the gap between the old and the new.

• Use setbacks, losses, disadvantages as opportunities for new solutions

“Chaos often breeds life, while order breeds habit”Henry Adams, American Historian


Managing The Neutral Zone

• “Normalize” it• Redefine it• Create temporary systems• Strengthen connections• Use the time creatively


Transition Characteristics

Transition Deficit• Lack of time to complete transition cycle before next change happens

• “Unfinished business” from other uncompleted transitions that gets carried along

• With a backlog of unresolved transitions, one small change can set off a major transition process

Marathon Effect• People and organizational units move through transition at different

speeds and in different ways.

• People become strung out along the path of transition like runners in a marathon.


Resonance

PERSONAL

“This relationship between the present and unresolved issues from the past is called resonance because the current issue activates the past as one string on a piano or violin can set another vibrating.”

ORGANIZATIONAL

“Transition is like a low-pressure area on the organizational weather map. It attracts all the storms and conflicts in the area, past and present. Transition decompresses an organization. Many of the barriers that held things in check come down. Old grievances surface. Old scars start to ache. Old skeletons come tumbling out of closets.”

Documents

Class 5-6: Success and Transition Competencies Work Characteristics Lewin: Success and Failure “Flow” Hertzberg: Hygiene-Motivation Theory Maslow Lilliane