The Psychology of Personal Orientation
Health care administrators have to understand the psychology of the people that they interface with daily. A cooperative management environment is essential for the continuity of sound health care. However, to do so, administrators must understand something about the personnel psychology that exists among their managers and other workers. This is no easy task, since administrators are always dealing with individuals with unique personalities. Therefore it becomes necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their personalities and tap the critical strengths found among these personalities to enhance the cooperative managerial climate within the organization.
Behavioral scientists have delineated four major types of personal orientations that exist and can have an influence on the work environment. The four types of personal orientations-competitors, individualists, cooperators, and equalizers-all hold significance in understanding the managerial science of cooperation in long-term health care. Competitors have an inherent disposition to compete and look to win at the expense of another's loss. Individualists are those that are concerned with enhancing their own self-interest, often at the expense of others. Cooperators are those that have a proclivity to maximize the outcomes of the group or team. Finally, equalizers are those that attempt to reduce differences found among the group (Greenberg & Baron, 2008).
A dilemma frequently exists for many administrators. The dilemma of "How does as an administrator bring the myriad of personal orientations together to establish a cooperative work environment" is one that can be bedeviling and quite frustrating. Since many personal orientations are well-entrenched into an individual's personality, leaving them with a predisposition to act in a certain manner, attempting to change a person and their inherent predispositions may be an impossible task. Yet many administrators nevertheless attempt to shape a person's behavior to their own ideals. To some extent there is nothing wrong with that since it is important for administrators to be able to get their managers and workers to believe in their vision. However, attempting to change them in totality can be an important error.
It is amazing the great deal of effort that administrators and upper level managers invest in attempting to change the personal orientation that others hold toward one that is more consonant with their own view. What usually results are administrators and managers becoming frustrated and brooding about why they cannot get others to be carbon copies of themselves. Some even become antagonistic and contentious toward those that fail to change their personal orientations. Therefore, many administrators attempt to manage different personal orientations by taking on an approach of "most resistance" rather than "least resistance." This is not often a sound investment of their management time and one that typically ends in fruitless efforts on behalf of the administrator to establish cooperative teamwork and work environments. Therefore the question that follows is how can one manage the diverse personal orientations that exist and do so in a manner that can bring reduced levels of frustration and enhanced productivity?
One important element in this question that needs to be understood is that attempting to completely change individuals to a personal orientation that you feel is consonant with what you believe to be correct is typically not going to happen. However, the administrator has to understand that given this different array of personal orientations, there will always be periods where tension may exist, and that aligning individuals that hold certain personal orientations with particular tasks may augment the productivity of your long-term care environment.
Therefore it is important to understand your people and know what types of personal orientations they hold that may potentially cause difficulties for you and your team, as well as if used judiciously to assist with certain tasks, may fit well with their personal orientation. For instance, competitors may not work well in the human resources role. In this role you often need a person that can help address conflict in a productive manner.
Competitors who are looking for wins at the expense of another person's loss, may be quite unproductive in this role for your organization. In fact, since this person often is needed to quell many types of labor issues, a person who takes on a highly competitive personal orientation may actually lead to heightened problems in this area. However, a business or marketing person who holds this same personal orientation may work quite well in their positions, especially since they are placed in a very competitive environment where complacency cannot exist.
What about the individualist? Individuals who have very high ratings in this area may be counterproductive for a team environment in totality. However, even within a long-term care organizational framework these individuals, if placed appropriately, can have a strongly productive impact on the overall framework of the organization. Since these individuals often like to work alone and have a strong concern about maximizing their own productivity, they often work well as schedulers and supply clerks. Their assiduous nature toward enhancing their own individual productivity works well in these areas.
Understanding personal orientations that people hold is crucial for creating a productive organizational environment. Understanding an individual's personal orientation and fitting them into the proper role is critical, and often this is a major role for administrators who are the leaders of the health care environment. Although, as previously mentioned, attempting to change personal orientations can be a fruitless endeavor, realizing and placing individuals in positions in which you are able to exploit their personal orientations is often much more productive and realistic in the long run. Although personal orientations are quite enduring, behavior itself is always a function of the person times their environment (B = P x E). Although most administrators or managers are not specialists in human behavior, you do not have to be to understand this simple principle.
So, one of the important questions that all administrators and managers should be asking themselves is, "Do I want to take on the path of most resistance or least resistance"? After answering this question the next question is "which path is often the most productive in dealing with personal orientations within a long-term health care environment"?
Again, attempting to shape and modify certain organizationally unproductive behaviors is needed. However, attempting to shape and modify enduring and intractable personal orientations is something different. The administrator or health care manager has to make this critical distinction. Moreover, learning to find ways that one can put these personal orientations to work for the good of the organization is critical. Good leaders either explicitly or implicitly understand this and they are able to complement the organizational environment by placing the right person with the complementary personal orientation in the correct position.
Therefore, well-oiled long-term care organizations have more than just people who are intelligent and skilled carrying out their tasks. These long-term care environments understand the importance of taking an inventory of personal orientations and matching their orientations to the correct position and tasks. This ultimately leads to an organization that can address issues by placing workers that have the correct dispositional strengths in the correct positions to deal with issues as they arise.
References
Greenberg, J. & Baron, R. A. (2008). Behavior in Organizations. Upper Saddle River, Prentice-Hall.