Learning People | Course Paper

LEADING PEOPLE AND TEAMS – Séance 1

Introduction:

Individual > leadership > Organizational outcomes > Business goals

A. Organizational outcomes:

• Job satisfaction

• Job performance

• Withdraw behaviours (par ex absenteeism), deviance and all negative work attitudes

• Staff turnover

• Citizenship behaviour and other positive work attitudes

B. 3 levels of the factors that drive humans’ attitudes & behaviours in organizations:

1. Individual

2. Group

3. Organizational

I.Organizations

A. Definition

An organization is a group of people who work together in an organized way of share purpose.

Organizations have:

• Structure

• Culture and identity

• Standardized processes

• Polices and internal regulation

• Performance metrics and incentives…

Chain of command: a chain of command is a military or civil organization by which instructions

or orders are passed from one person to another. (=line of authority and responsibility)

Span of control: it’s the number of subordinates or functions one can efficiently manage

B. Tall vs. flat structures:

TALL STRUCTURES

PRO’S

CON’S

• Specialist approach

• Appropriate for training

• More career opportunities

• Compartmentalization

• Slow decisions

• Difficult to coordinate

FLAT STRUCTURES

PRO’S

CON’S

• Generalist approach

• Fast decisions

• Acess to CEO

• Work overload and multitasking

A. Centralization vs. decentralization

The goal is to put authority in the hands of a person closest to most knowledgeable about the

situation.

Centralisation:

• Better control

• Easier coordination

• Slower decisions

B. Formalization:

A formal organization is an organization with a fixed written set of rules regarding structures

and procedures.

Purpose of formalization:

• Efficiency (optimization of processes and communication)

• Easier control and coordination

• Quality management

• Automation

• Uniform quality across divisions and locations

C. 4 types of organizational structures:

• Simple (flat): startups and small teams

• Functional: most common one. People who do similar tasks are grouped together.

Employees specialize in one domain, it’s easy to coordinate and supervised. But the

difficulty is for cross-functional projects team, which are difficult to coordinate with

this type of organization.

Multidivisional: typical for large MNCs. Workers are grouped into divisions based on the

products or projects that meet the needs of certain type of customer. It’s brought

• lot of efficiency for many companies, but it’s also brought rivalry among large divisions.

• Matrix: fusion of functional and multidivisional. Groups people into functional

departments of specialization, then further separates them into divisional projects and

products. Typical for organizations with diverse products lines and services.

I.People in organizations

A. Job satisfaction: is a measure of workers contentedness with their job, whether or

not they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work, supervision,

reward ect…

2 slides of job satisfaction: Affective (emotional) and Cognitive (evaluative)

JDI: Job Descriptive Index: the most common measure:

• Co-workers

• Supervision

• The work itself

• Pay

• Opportunities of promotions

B. Personality-Organization fit (P-O):

Jobs who require certain personality traits and soft skills.

Ex: Heavy teamwork and collaboration, a lot of control and frequent feedback, a lot of

autonomy and no feedback…

The theory: hiring employees who are the best fit to this will decrease turnover and increase

employee satisfaction and performance

How to asses? With psychometric test (MBTI), situational analyses interview, simulations…

Exemples of soft skills / personality traits :

• Strong work ethix

• Time management

• Communication

• Flexibility

• Critical Thinking

• Decision making…

LEADING PEOPLE AND TEAMS – SEANCE 2 – Recruitment

I.Five steps of recruitment and selection

a. Pre-recruitment

Defining external context and long-term needs.

PESTEL external factors:

• P: immigration policy, taxes and tariffs

• E: salary scales, competition

• S: demographics

• T: digitalization and automation

• E: reduction of impact, relocation

• L: labour law

Defining internal context:

• Structure: prepare a career development

• Culture: identify values, traits…

• Internationalization: language and mobility needs

• Resources: budget, equipment, staff, time…

Defining the profile:

• Job specification: qualifications, experiences, knowledge required

• Person specification: physical attributes, intelligence Levels, aptitudes, interests…

• Job description: title of the job, location, title of employee’s line manager, grade of

the job, tasks, details…

b. Recruitment

Sourcing the profiles:

• Internal: intranet, promotions and rotations, candidates previously applied

• External: company website, social media and job boards, recruitment

agencies/headhunters, higher education recruitment programme, current staff

recommendations

a. Selection

Interviewing

The form:

• Face to face: intersubjective

• Jury: objective to cross the perceptions with a common repository

• Collective: for invite candidates to introduce themselves, to discuss the job, to

discuss other subjects without directives

The organization:

• Directive: strict framework, answers excepted, shorts and precise

• Nondirective: the decision-maker ask the candidate about some points

• Semi-structured: conversation, the objective is to create the best conditions to

understand the candidate’s personality

Testing

OBJECTIVES

EXAMPLES

CAPACITIES

To measure particular capacities to

manage a specific job

Logical reasoning

Languages

General culture

PERSONALITY

To measure personality, ability to

socialize, ambition and dynamism

ASSESSMENT

CENTRES

To judge a candidate’s capacity and

behavior while dealing with a current

professional situation

• Case interview

• Situational Judgment

Test (STJ)

• Watson-Glaser Critical

Thinking Appraisal (W-

GCTA)

• In-tray test

• Call simulation

• Sales negotiation

• Critial event to solve

Situational Judgment Test (STJ)

• Popular psychological tool used to evaluate behavioral and cognitive abilities when

presented with hypothetical work-related situations. Candidates are required to

choose the best course of action from a list.

• SJT do not have a specific format and often have different criteria.

Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal

• Critical thinking is the ability to consider a range of information derived from many

different sources, to process this information in a creative and logical manner,

challenging it analyzing it and arriving at considered conclusions which can be

defended and justified.

• You are given a statement and a list of arguments in support of the statement. You

need to assess the strength of the arguments.

• A strong argument is important and direct related to the question

• A weak argument is not directly related to the question or minor importance or may

be related to a trivial aspect or confuses correlation.

a. Integration

Employee integration