Behaviorism @ Work

I am glad I decided to take this subject as a starter because this can really help me with my current career growth. This is extremely helpful when it comes to understanding why people do what they did and say what they said! In a work environment where I interact with adults, Behaviorism can be observed and applied in so many levels.

Now, everytime I go to work and encounter an odd behavior from a direct report or a commendable action done by an associate, my brain riderects my description of the situation to the fact that this can be an example of a successful stimulus – response plan or a failed attempt. Whatever the outcome, I always see it as an opportunity to learn and know why.

For instance, in my current work setting, it is very common that some employees commit recurring mistakes of similar nature! Surprisingly, the manager already applied expected punishment but it seems like it is not working at all due to recurrence.

I realize that there are various factors affecting this result which might root to the fact that the manager was not able to establish a trusting relationship with his direct reports which lead to the ineffectiveness of the punishment applied. As adults, a simple stimulus-response = reward/ punishment does not work linearly. It has to be seen in various angles considering multiple factors. After all, human is capable of multiple intelligence, hence, must take into account the fact that there could be a number of reasons why we do not get the result of what we want.

As an aspiring people leader, that will be my personal key takeaway.

Understand your people, know them more, learn their history and connect personally in order to come up with the best viable stimulus for them to be motivated well and be encouraged to provide you the result that you need. This time, it’s all about knowing the subject and building a genuine trusting relationship to make things work as expected and even excel expectations. Then and truly then, behaviorism can be aided to work to our advantage.