I O Psychology Motivation and Leadership Topics

Peer Reply 1: Brian Walker
Hi, Brian! It sounds like you have some very interesting pastimes that help you relax, unwind, and recharge. I appreciate you sharing a bit about yourself and find it inspiring to see someone who has obviously been successful in life taking the same class I am taking. It makes me think I am doing something right by being here, since others like you who have already come such a long way in life are here with me. Hopefully, we can all learn a little from each other. Like you, I look forward to learning how to read people more effectively and learning how to motivate people using I/O psychology. One of the important principles I have learned about human motivation in the past, at least according to Maslow’s (1943) theory of the needs hierarchy is that the goal is to get people to be self-motivated, i.e., self-actualizing. The way you get them there is by helping them to meet their lower level needs, such as the need for shelter, food, security; higher up the rung of needs are friendship, love, and esteem. Once those have all been met one is able to move on towards becoming self-motivated because one is no longer dependent upon external incentives.
References
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370.
Peer Reply 2: Audrey White
Nice to meet you, Audrey, and it sounds like you have a very interesting life. I have never actually thought of being a funeral director or embalmer or what that must be like, so now I’m wondering if you’re at all worried about catching the COVID 19 in your line of work and if there are many precautions you have to take? Anyway, thanks for doing what you do, as I’m sure you’re right—you all no doubt do get forgotten in that line of work.
I think it is great that you are interested in psychology for personal reasons. I would like to wish I was that motivated to go to school, but I am here primarily because I want to use this course for my own work in management. I want to be able to lead well and understand all the different ways to motivate people. I have read that Rogers (1951) believed people are best motivated and happiest when their ideal self and their self-image overlap and there is congruence between the two. That is an idea I would like to explore more deeply and I wonder if we will go over it at some point in this class as it is surely interesting.
References
Rogers, C. (1951). Client-Centered Therapy. MA: Riverside Press.
Peer Reply 3: LynseEby
Hi, LynseEby, that is a great lesson you have shared about feeling like you are talking to a tree but if you adjust your perspective to that of your children you get a better vantage point on how to communicate. I think that is a great message and thanks for sharing it. I know that I have struggled a lot in the past to communicate well with others and it feels like no matter how many times you are saying it you are just beating a dead horse, and it all gets really frustrating. I think that taking a minute to see what one is saying from the perspective of one’s audience can help to clear up a lot of the confusion and create message that can be communicated in a more meaningful way. I hope that this is something we learn more about in our I/O class because I think communication is so important to leadership and to psychology. Hopefully we can all support one another during this difficult time as I, like you, find it difficult to work from home—there is just too much going on for me to concentrate. But we have to keep going and try to find our footing, because there is no other way. Thanks for sharing!
Peer Reply 4: Jennifer Flores
Hi, Jennifer, I think that is a great point you make about your sales being down when you are in a bad mood and how you beat all your metrics when you are in a good mood. I bet there is some explanation for this in I/O psychology and I look forward to learning about it. I also think it’s great that you want to use this knowledge to work with children. In my experience children and adults are really not all that different—honestly. I feel like I myself still act like a child in a lot of ways and I certainly feel the same about other adults I know. Of course, developmentally we’re supposed to be more advanced but one of the ways that children are more advanced than adults is that they are far more honest (most of the times at least), whereas adults seem to always be trying to trick others or even to trick themselves. It is like adults have built up a way in which they see themselves and the world and they do not want to deviate from that personal reality because then they feel insecure and unsheltered. I hope this course goes into that as well! Good luck—and I am interested in Maslow’s theory, too!
Peer Reply 5: Juan Guerra
Hi, Juan, great to meet you! I think you’re right that understanding the mentality of people in the workplace today is very important. We have a culture that has essentially made everyone very sensitive and people take offense to things that no one would have thought twice about 20 years ago. I think social media plays a big part in that because social media is basically like the mob and people feel a lot of peer pressure when they perceive the mob coming down on them.
For me, I just want to help everyone develop a sense of congruence between their self-image and their self-ideal, as Rogers (1951) put it. I think that is a great way for people to understand who they are and what they can be. In doing so, they can apply themselves more efficiently and I think that is what’s most important in workplace psychology—just getting people focused on doing what works for them so that they can contribute to the workplace in a meaningful way. I am sure we will discover a lot of great theories about human motivation as well as what types of leadership styles are most effective and which are best for certain circumstances.
References
Rogers, C. (1951). Client-Centered Therapy. MA: Riverside Press.