I was once called in to help a football club prepare psychology for their last 10 games, they were in a relegation battle, and needed to win 9 out of their 10 games. They had not won 9 games all year. Myers 2012) Talks about how we become the centre of our world. This team on my first observation had become the centre of their own existence. At least that was my realization after carefully going through videos of their performances, talking to players, staff. And anyone who had any potential influence on the players performance. I asked the players in a team meeting why they thought they were in the position they were in, after all they performed really good in a cup match against a team a few leagues higher, though could not win a game in this league. One of the players, said luck, another said referees, another said the coaching. And many said a combination of all 3 and many other external factors. Many of which were un controllable and there may have been some logic. After all in the course of a season i am sure things will balance themselves out. So i began to get the team to focus on controllable factors, application and effort. The could all focus intrinsically not matter what the refereeing decisions were, luck so on and so forth. After all just like it says in Goodwin (2010) our memory can be selective. And whether these players were right or wrong , they started to pay alot of attention on every little thing that did not go their way, and the management and staff were reinforcing it. So they were not seeing the things that were going their way, worse still they were reacting to everything that perceivably went against them and not focusing on what went well.
Now in the video, Laurent education ( 2012) the manager uses external indicators to measure the staff competency, he uses a points scale. Daly ( 1998 ) Discusses the glass ceiling phenomenon. In the video, in the first category, the manager talks about the two members of staff score related to organizational agility.
After he gives the grade the first staff member responds about the new packaging system and branching out, looking for new ideas and feedback, she is looking external, and it is an attribution bias as she says she has no doubts, though no systematic way of backing it up. The second person goes on to say how busy she has been this year. She has not had time to work with other departments. They all seem equally if not more busy. She is basing her performance externally; she talks about taking notes and being the silent observer, and implying she is the expert on everything. Her attention is bias as she is only putting her spin on things and assuming. There is a self serving bias as she is insinuating others.
On the category of communication the first person blames the shipping error on her shoulders. And says she felt terrible, so she is at cause it is an internal attribution, though she talks about having a solution. The second women immediately say the error was not her fault. Externally attributing it to Ken her co-worker .Saying he promised he was going to do it, and she will do it herself next time, there is no fundamental substance in what she is saying.it is attribution bias. A fundamental bias error, as she keeps saying how her promise she always keeps though gives no examples.
In the category of planning and prioritizing and the final score the first person, says how the score means the world to her, and her hard work is paying off, she is attributing her hard work with the score and says she will work harder next time and focus even more. As it is a just world hypothesis as there are no guarantees by focusing and working hard she will elevate her score.
In the 3rd category of planning and prioritizing and the final score, the second persons response was external and a fundamental attribution error. Saying everyone else’s score must be lower than hers . And how next year she will work harder and wow the manager.
References
Laurent Education Attributes ( Multimedia Online)
Daly,D.M. ( 1998) Attribution theory and the glass ceiling: Career development amongst federal employees.Internal organization journal theory and behaviour, 1, ( 1) 93-116.
Goodwin, C.J,( 2010). Research in psychology: methods in design, 6th edition. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons