Category: In my last post, I talked about looking forward to the CCL class, but not necessarily looking forward to the reading. My perspective has changed!
There are nine CCL pre-reading assignments, of which I’ve completed roughly half. I started by reading ‘6 Glasses‘, which was definitely a fun history assignment. I ran into a snag on “Clash of Civilizations”, which is an extremely dense account of the differing cultures and world viewpoints. However, tonight’s readings, “The Four Basic Social Bonds” and “Worldwide Differences in Business Values and Practices”, have brought back my CCL excitement!
“The Four Basic Social Bonds”, by Fiske and Haslam from Interpersonal Cognition, outlines the four Relational Models (RM) that make up daily interaction. People can act communally, authoritatively, equally, or through market pricing structures. These four RM’s can be used to explain both ‘cordial and conflictual interactions’; when a group of people interact under the same RM, they tend to have a cordial situation, and under differing RM’s, a group will tend to have a conflict.
“Worldwide Differences in Business Values and Practices”, by Cornelius N. Grove, discusses a panel survey done across countries, evaluating the similarities/differences between the perceptions of values and the actual practice. The survey shows that the higher we value a certain behavior, the less likely it is being done in actual practice. This shows that people tend to value behaviors more when they are absent, as opposed to performing a behavior because it is valued.
These two psychology readings are interesting to me as I think about my own behavior in the workplace and workplace dynamics. One of my main goals from the Cross Continent program was to learn “soft” skills such as leadership and negotiation; by reading these two studies, I feel I have a somewhat better understanding of workplace dynamics and the resulting behaviors. I can already see how this knowledge will work to my advantage as I transition into more of a leader in the workplace.
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