SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE
• Intelligence, or IQ, is largely what you are born with. Genetics play a large part. Social intelligence (SI), on the other hand, is mostly learned.
• SI develops from experience with people and learning from success and failures in social settings. It is more commonly referred to as “tact,” “common sense,” or “street smarts.”
What are the key elements of social intelligence?
1. Verbal Fluency and Conversational Skills. You can easily spot someone with lots of SI at a party or social gathering because he or she knows how to “work the room.” The highly socially intelligent person can carry on conversations with a wide variety of people, and is tactful and appropriate in what is said. Combined, these represent what are called “social expressiveness skills.”
2. Knowledge of Social Roles, Rules, and Scripts. Socially intelligent individuals learn how to play various social roles. They are also well versed in the informal rules, or “norms,” that govern social interaction. In other words, they “know how to play the game” of social interaction. As a result, they come off as socially sophisticated and wise.
3. Effective Listening Skills. Socially intelligent persons are great listeners. As a result, others come away from an interaction with an SI person feeling as if they had a good “connection” with him or her.
4. Understanding What Makes Other People Tick. Great people watchers, individuals high in social intelligence attune themselves to what others are saying, and how they are behaving, in order to try to “read” what the other person is thinking or feeling. Understanding emotions is part of Emotional Intelligence, and Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence are correlated – people who are especially skilled are high on both.
5. Role Playing and Social Self-Efficacy. The socially intelligent person knows how to play different social roles – allowing him or her to feel comfortable with all types of people. As a result, the SI individual feels socially self-confident and effective – what psychologists call “social self-efficacy.”
6. Impression Management Skills. Persons with SI are concerned with the impression they are making on others. They engage in what I call the “Dangerous Art of Impression Management,” which is a delicate balance between managing and controlling the image you portray to others and being reasonably “authentic” and letting others see the true self. This is perhaps the most complex element of social intelligence.
COGNITIVE INTELLIGENCE
• Cognition or cognitive intelligence refers to “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses”.
• It encompasses many aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: attention, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and “computation”, problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language.
• Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE
• Cultural intelligence or cultural quotient (CQ) is a term used in business, education, government and academic research. Cultural intelligence can be understood as the capability to relate and work effectively across cultures.
• Cultural intelligence or CQ is measured on a scale, similar to that used to measure an individual’s intelligence quotient. People with higher CQs are regarded as better able to successfully blend into any environment, using more effective business practices, than those with a lower CQ.
Four CQ capabilities
• The four CQ capabilities are motivation (CQ Drive), cognition (CQ Knowledge), meta-cognition (CQ Strategy) and behaviour (CQ Action).
i) CQ-Drive
• CQ-Drive is a person’s interest and confidence in functioning effectively in culturally diverse settings.
• It includes:
- Intrinsic interest – deriving enjoyment from culturally diverse experiences
- Extrinsic interest – gaining benefits from culturally diverse experiences.
- Self-efficacy – having the confidence to be effective in culturally diverse situations.
ii) CQ-Knowledge
• CQ-Knowledge is a person’s knowledge about how cultures are similar and how cultures are different.
• It includes:
- Business – knowledge about economic and legal systems
- Interpersonal – knowledge about values, social interaction norms, and religious beliefs
- Socio-linguistics – knowledge about rules of languages and rules for expressing non-verbal behaviours.
iii) CQ-Strategy
• CQ-Strategy is how a person makes sense of culturally diverse experiences. It occurs when people make judgments about their own thought processes and those of others.
• It includes:
- Awareness – knowing about one’s existing cultural knowledge;
- Planning – strategizing before a culturally diverse encounter;
- Checking – checking assumptions and adjusting mental maps when actual experiences differ from expectations.
iv) CQ-Action
• CQ-Action is a person’s capability to adapt verbal and nonverbal behaviour to make it appropriate to diverse cultures. It involves having a flexible repertoire of behavioural responses that suit a variety of situations.
• It includes:
- Non-verbal – modifying non-verbal behaviours (e.g., gestures, facial expressions)
- Verbal – modifying verbal behaviours (e.g., accent, tone)
MOTIVES
• The concept of motivation focuses on explaining what “moves” behaviour.
• In fact, the term motivation is derived from the Latin word ‘movere’, referring to movement of activity.
• Working, studying, playing and caring are some important daily activities which are considered purposeful. Motives help explain our movement towards the chosen goals.
• Hence, motivation is one of the determinants of behaviour.
• Instincts, drives, needs, goals, and incentives come under the broad cluster of motivation.
The Motivational Cycle
• A need is lack or deficit of some necessity. This condition leads to drive, which is a state of tension or arousal.
• Drive energises random activity. When one of the random activities leads to a goal, it reduces the drive, and the organism stops being active.
• The organism returns to a balanced state.
Types of Motives
Basically, there are two types of motives: biological and psychosocial.
Physiological / Biological Motives
• Biological motives are also known as physiological motives as they are guided mostly by the physiological mechanisms of the body. It is the earliest attempt to understand causes of behaviour.
• This theory states that organisms have needs (internal physiological imbalances) that produce drive, which stimulates behaviour leading to certain actions towards achieving certain goals, which reduce the drive.
• The earliest explanations of motivation relied on the concept of instinct. The term instinct denotes inborn patterns of behaviour that are biologically determined rather than learned.
• Some of the basic biological needs explained by this approach are hunger, thirst, and sex, which are essential for the sustenance of the individual.
Psychosocial motives
• Psychosocial motives are complex forms of motives mainly resulting from the individual’s interaction with her/his social environment.
• Social motives are mostly learned or acquired.
• Social groups such as family, neighbourhood, friends, and relatives do contribute a lot in acquiring these motives.
Need for Affiliation
• Need for affiliation is aroused when individuals feel threatened or helpless and also when they are happy.
• People try to get close to other people, to seek their help, and to become members of their group. Seeking other human beings and wanting to be close to them both physically and psychologically is called affiliation. It involves motivation for social contact.
Need for Power
• Need for power is an ability of a person to produce intended effects on the behaviour and emotions of another person.
Need for Achievement
• Achievement motivation refers to the desire of a person to meet standards of excellence. Need for achievement, also known as n-Ach, energises and directs behaviour as well as influences the perception of situations.
Curiosity and Exploration
• Often people engage in activities without a clear goal or purpose but they derive some kind of pleasure out of it. It is a motivational tendency to act without any specific identifiable goal.
• The tendency to seek for a novel experience, gain pleasure by obtaining information, etc. are signs of curiosity, Hence, curiosity describes behaviour whose primary motive appears to remain in the activities themselves.
General Motives
• This is an intermediate category of motives between the physiological and socio-psychological.
• The motives in this category are unlearned but not physiologically based.
Classification of Motives at Work
Primary & Secondary Motives
• Primary motives are unlearned, physiological needs that include hunger, thirst, sleep, sex, avoidance of pain etc.
• These needs are important for survival and are virtually universal, but they vary in intensity from one person to another.
• Secondary motives are learned, social motives that arise as a result of interaction with other people and develop as people mature.
• Included in this category are affiliation – desire to associate with others; recognition – need for frequent tangible proof that one is getting ahead; status – need to have a high rank in society etc.
Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
• Extrinsic motivation is related to tangible rewards such as salary and fringe benefits, promotion, contract of service, the work environment and conditions of work.
• Intrinsic motivation is related to psychological rewards such as the opportunity to use one’s ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, receiving appreciation, positive recognition and being treated in a caring and considerate manner.
Importance of Motivation in Organisations:
• Employee motivation is essential to the success of any organisation, big or small. In the modern workplace, human resources are valued above all others.
• Motivated employees are productive, happy and committed.
• The spin-off of this includes reduced employee turnover, results-driven employees, company-loyalty and workplace harmony.
• Motivation is very important for an organisation because of the following benefits it provides:
• Increased productivity and improved employee performance
• Stability of workforce
• Positive workplace culture
• Better teamwork
• Workplace harmony
Theories of Motivation
• There are many competing theories, which attempt to explain the nature of motivation.
• These theories centre on three different aspects of motivation: the individual’s predisposition, the cognitive process, and the consequences deriving from the individual’s action.
• Based on these aspects, there are two types of theories of motivation:
• Content theories – These theories are concerned with identifying people’s needs and their relative strengths, and the goals they pursue in order to satisfy these needs.
• Process theories – These theories are concerned more with how motivated behaviour is initiated, directed and sustained.
CONTENT THEORIES
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• Abraham H. Maslow attempted to portray a picture of human behaviour by arranging the various needs in a hierarchy.
• His viewpoint about motivation is very popular because of its theoretical and applied value, which is popularly known as the “Theory of Self-actualisation”.
Maslow’s model can be conceptualised as a pyramid:
• Bottom/base of the pyramid hierarchy represents basic physiological or biological needs which are basic to survival such as hunger, thirst, etc.
• Once these needs are met, need for safety arises. In the absence of physical safety – due to war, natural disaster, etc people may experience stress etc and take steps to ensure physical safety. In the absence of economic safety – there will be preference for job security.
• Once these needs are met, there is need to seek out other people, be social and involves feelings of belongingness.
• After these needs are fulfilled, the individual strives for esteem, i.e. the need to develop a sense of self-worth.
• The next higher need in the hierarchy reflects an individual’s motive towards the fullest development of potential, i.e. self-actualisation. A self-actualised person is self-aware, socially responsive, creative, spontaneous, open to novelty, and challenge.
• Lower level needs (physiological) in the hierarchy dominate as long as they are unsatisfied.
• Once they are adequately satisfied, the higher needs occupy the individual’s attention and effort.
Alderfer’s ERG Theory
• The ERG theory is an extension of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
• Clayton Alderfer (1972) suggested that needs could be classified into three categories, rather than five. These three types of needs are:
• Existence Needs: physiological and safety needs (such as hunger, thirst and sex).
• Relatedness Needs: social and external esteem (involvement with family, friends, co-workers and employers).
• Growth Needs: internal esteem and self-actualisation (the desire to be creative, productive and to complete meaningful tasks).
Peculiar features of ERG theory include:
• The ERG theory allows for different levels of needs to be pursued simultaneously.
• The ERG theory allows the order of the needs be different for different people.
• The ERG theory acknowledges that if a higher level need, remains unfulfilled, the person may regress to lower level needs that appear easier to satisfy. This is known as the frustration-regression principle.
Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory
• Herzberg concluded that there are two sets of needs: the hygiene needs, which produce job dissatisfaction and the motivator needs, which produce job satisfaction.
• Taken together, the hygiene factors and motivators are known as Herzberg’s two-factor theory of motivation.
| Motivation factors – job satisfaction | Hygiene factors – job dissatisfaction |
| Achievement | Supervision |
| Work itself | Company policy |
| Recognition | Working conditions |
| Added Responsibility | Relationship with supervisor, peers, subordinates |
| Advancement & Growth | Salary & Security |
McClelland’s Learned Needs Theory
• David McClelland proposed that an individual’s specific needs are acquired over time and are shaped by one’s life experiences. Most of these needs can be classed as:
• Need for achievement – The desire to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of standards and to purse and attain goals.
• Need for affiliation – The desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.
• Need for power – The desire to control one’s environment and to influence others.
PROCESS THEORIES
Process (or cognitive) theories of motivation focus on conscious human decision processes as an explanation of motivation.
Reinforcement Theory
• B.F. Skinner and his associates proposed the Reinforcement Theory of Motivation, which posits that behaviour depends on its consequences.
• Behaviour that is accompanied by favourable consequences is likely to continue, while behaviour that is followed by unfavourable consequences is not likely to be repeated.
• Based on this principle, reinforcement theory describes four contingency methods of shaping behaviour:
• Positive reinforcement – It occurs when behaviour is followed by a favorable consequence that encourages the repetition of that behaviour. For example, recognition, promotion, money, approval, fringe benefits etc.
• Negative reinforcement – It occurs when behaviour is accompanied by the removal of an unfavourable consequence that results in strengthening of that behaviour. For example, Salary Cut, etc.
• Punishment – It occurs when the administration of an un-favorable consequence discourages certain behaviour. For Example: Suspension conditions
• Extinction – It occurs when the target behaviour decreases because no reinforcement follows it. For example, research suggests that when mangers stop congratulating employees for their good performance, that performance tends to decline.
Carrot & Stick Theory
• The Carrot and Stick approach of motivation is based on the principles of reinforcement and is given by a philosopher Jeremy Bentham, during the industrial revolution.
• In this, an individual is given carrot i.e. reward when he performs efficiently and is given a punishment in case of non-performance.
Expectancy Theory
• Victor Vroom (1964) suggested that motivation is a product of three factors: expectancy, instrumentality and valence.
• This means that if any of these is zero, then the motivation to do something will be zero as well. In simple terms:
Expectancy x Instrumentality x Valence = Motivation
• Expectancy – Is the belief that more effort will result in success.
• Instrumentality – the person’s belief that there is a connection between activity and goal. If one performs well, one will get reward.
• Valence – the degree to which a person values the reward, the results of success.
Equity Theory
• The theory was suggested by Adams (1965) and is based on Social Exchange theory.
• According to this theory, people compare their contribution to work and the benefits to the contribution and benefit of relevant other persons.
• If people perceive that the ratio of their inputs-outputs to the ratio of referent other’s input-output is inequitable, then they will be motivated to reduce the inequity.
• There are two types of inequity—under-reward and over-reward. Individuals may attempt to reduce inequity in various ways:
• Change the inputs – A person may change his or her level of effort. Ex. an employee who feels under-rewarded is likely to work less hard.
• Change the outcomes – A person may try to change his or her rewards. Ex. asking for a raise
• Change the comparison other’s inputs – A person may change the behaviour of the reference person. Ex. By encouraging that person to put forth more effort.
• Change the comparison other’s outcomes – A person may change the outcome of the reference person. Ex. By asking the boss to stop giving favourable treatment to him/her.
• Change the comparison other – A person experiencing inequity may change the reference person and compare him or herself to a different person to assess equity.
• Change one’s perception – A person may believe that the co-worker is doing more or that the higher outcomes that the other receives are no better that his/hers.
• Quit the Situation – A person may avoid thinking about the inequity by keeping away from the situation. Ex. Quitting the job.
Goal-Setting Theory
• Locke and Latham (1990) primarily developed the goal-setting theory. It states that specific, measurable and attainable goals motivate an employee to achieve the goal.
• The basic components of goal-setting theory are:
• Set challenging but attainable goals
• Set specific and measurable goals
• Goal commitment should be obtained – allow employees to have a role in setting goals and making decisions and obtain commitment.
• Support elements should be provided – material resources and moral support required for attaining goals.
• Knowledge of results is essential – goals need to be quantifiable and there needs to be feedback.
OTHER IMPORTANT MOTIVATION THEORIES
McGregor’s Participation Theory or XY Theory
• Douglas McGregor proposed the X-Y theory in his 1960 book “The Human Side Of Enterprise.” The theory formulated two distinct views of human being based on participation of workers in the organization.
• Theory X assumes that the typical employee has little ambition, avoids responsibility and do not want to associate themselves with the organization’s goals.
• Consequently, Theory X concludes the typical workforce operates more efficiently when all actions are traceable to the individual responsible.
• This allows the individual to receive either a direct reward or a punishment, depending on the outcome’s positive or negative nature.
• Theory Y managers assume employees are internally motivated and enjoy their job. Employees additionally tend to take full responsibility for their work and do not need close supervision to create a quality product.
• Managers who choose the Theory X approach have an authoritarian style of management.
• On the contrary, managers who choose the Theory Y encourage participation and values individuals’ thoughts and goals.
• Since, there is no optimal way for a manager to adopt either Theory X or Theory Y, it is rational that a manager will need to adopt both approaches depending on the evolving circumstances at the workplace.
Theory Z
• Theory Z was given by William Ouchi.
• Theory Z promotes stable employment, high productivity and high morality and employee satisfaction.
• The loyalty of employees is increased by offering them a job for life with a strong focus on employee well-being both on the job as well as in their private lives.