Mastering Human Relations for Personal and Professional Success

[Music] it's a natural to be thinking what am I going to get from this course or what's

in it for me this is a common question in all human relations although it's seldom directly asked and answered

here's the short bottom line answer the better you can work with people the more successful you will be in your personal

and professional life life is about relationship it's all people people people

this may be one of the few courses you'll take which you can actually use what you learned during the course of

your personal life as well you don't need to wait till you graduate to apply what you've learned and develop your

human relations skills now let's expand on what's in it for you by exploring some of the myths and reality

surrounding what we call human relations but first let's define human relations the term human relations simply means

interactions among people now let's discuss the top three myths about human resources before exploring the world of

human relations in more detail myth number one technical skills are more important than human relations some

people believe that human relations or organizational behavior course is less important than more technical courses

like computer science however the reality is that in a survey of job recruiters of the 26 attributes

identified organizations are looking for human relation skills it's commonly said that people are an organization's

greatest asset or key to their success not technology because people working together develop that

technology number two human relations is just common sense some people believe that human relations is simple and

Common Sense do all these people and organizations get along and work well together if human relations is just

common sense then why are people issues some of the most prominent concerns of business own and HR managers alike it's

because high quality relationships are important to success think about the jobs you've had did everyone get along

and work well together how did human relations affect your personal job satisfaction myth number three leaders

are born not made some people believe they can't develop leadership skills effective leaders have good human

relation skills the question are leaders born or made has been researched multiple times over the years leadership

experts generally agree that leadership skills can be developed virtually all large major corporations spend millions

of dollars a year on leadership training why would those organizations spend all that money if human relations skills

couldn't be developed regardless of your natural ability to get along and work well with people using this information

you can develop human relations skills the goal of human relations is to create a win-win sit situation by

satisfying employee needs while achieving organizational objectives a win-win situation occurs when the

organization and employees get what they want if an employee wonders what's in it for me the employee is expressing his or

her own needs when a manager expects high levels of performance from employees that manager is identifying

organizational objectives when employees and organization goals align performance tends to follow the total person

approach realizes that an organization employs the whole person not just his or her job skills so it's important to

understand the whole person people play many roles throughout their lives indeed throughout the day think about this if

your child is ill how would you react to being asked to work overtime the study of human relations

looks closely at the way people behave why people behave the way they do or what makes them and the people around

them tick behavior is what people do and say human relations fuels Behavior the three levels of behavior are individual

group and organizational human relations takes place at group and organization levels individual behavior is what

people say and do here basic psychology and communication principles apply individual Behavior influences group

Behavior an organization is a group of people working to achieve one or more objectives as individuals and groups

interact their Collective Behavior constitutes the organization's Behavior Behavior thus organizational behavior is

the collective behavior of an organization's individuals or groups human relations affects

individual and group behavior and has resulting effects on organizational performance performance is the extent to

which expectations or objectives have been met performance is a relative term performance levels are more meaningful

when compared to past performance or the performance of others within and or outside the organization since

relationships are the lifeblood of organizations poor relations impede individual group and organizational

performance popularly called organizational behavior and rooted in the behavioral sciences the science of

human relations was developed in the late 1940s it's based primarily on psychology which attempts to determine

why individuals behave they do and sociology which attempts to determine how group dynamics affect organizational

performance social psychology economics and political science have also cont contributed to organizational

behavior Frederick Taylor an engineer known as the father of Scientific Management focused on analyzing and

redesigning jobs more efficiently in the late 1800s and early 1900s which led to the idea of mass production scientific

managers focused on production not people they assumed that workers always acted rationally and were motivated

simply by money from the mid 1920s to the early 1930s Elton mayo and his associates from

Harvard University conducted research at the Western Electric Hardware plant near Chicago the research conducted through

the Hawthorne studies has become a landmark in the human relations field in fact Elton Mayo is known as the father

of human relations as a consequence of these studies the hawthor effect was discovered

the hawthor effects refers to an increase in performance caused by special attention given to employees

rather than tangible changes in work during the research Mayo changed the lighting and ventilation in work areas

to his surprise performance went up regardless of working conditions through interviews Mayo realized that the

control group during the research felt important because of all the attention they got therefore performance increased

because of the special attention given to those employees with the knowledge of the results of the Hawthorne studies

some managers used human relations as a mean of manipulating employees well others took the attitude that a happy

worker is a productive worker Studies have shown that happy workers are usually but not always more productive

than unhappy workers during the 1940s and 1950s other major research projects were conducted

in a number of organizations notably Peter ducker's management by objectives was popular in the

1950s during the 1960s Douglas McGregor published Theory X and Theory Y in the 1980s the US rate of

productivity was much lower than that of Japan William Ochi discovered that a few particularly successful firms did not

follow the typical us model after years of research and investigation Ochi developed Theory Z Theory Z integrates

common business practices in the United States and Japan into one Middle Ground framework appropriate for the use in the

United States total quality management was popular during this time in the 1980s