Reflective practices are useful tools for monitoring progress, identifying strengths, addressing shortcomings, and obtaining a new perspective on a well-known issue. The following paper is a reflective summary of four-week journaling of emotional and cognitive experiences documented on a three-hour basis. Its main objectives are improving reflective abilities, applying the results of self-observation to OD practices, and providing a better understanding of the concept of an organizational feeling.
After reviewing entries in my journal, I was able to identify four main recurring issues. First, it turned out that when approaching most tasks, I often ended up tangled in details. This was especially evident while working on large-scale projects, but could also be traced in smaller instances. The obvious result of such a shift in perspective was the loss of direction, compromised pace, and deviation from the initial goal. Simply put, I gradually became focused on the unnecessary level of complexity, spent more time on individual irrelevant objectives that could be handled in one overarching move (or ignored in some cases), and lagged behind the deadline at least twice. Most importantly, the two feelings I can ascribe to that effect were the unjustified satisfaction from pursuing irrelevant milestones followed by anxiety and confusion upon comprehending the futility of effort and disproportionately massive resources allocated for its completion. I would say that this effect can be observed within the organization before the intervention as well as in OD practices. The former occurs when employees lack coherent guidance and leadership and lead to setbacks in performance and the deterioration of understanding and trust between the management and the employees. I would say this possibility must be acknowledged whenever similar issues are reported by the customer requesting an OD intervention. The latter can be observed in the process of the intervention and may create setbacks similar to those described above. I should also add that there is an additional risk of late identification since the issue may not be apparent in the early stages.
The second thing I was able to identify was the tendency to get overwhelmed with the feelings of others. This phenomenon is connected to the previous one as I was able to observe it when working out through the details of the project. The more information I obtained regarding the feelings and emotions of the participants, the more I started empathizing with them. While empathy is certainly a necessary component of the negotiation and may provide useful insights, it must be controlled to ensure it does not get out of hand. In my case, I eventually found myself feeling the very anxiety and annoyance I was briefed on. While I cannot come up with a similar organizational feeling, I want to point out that such an issue is a common mistake of an OD practitioner in the field. Empathy is a useful tool for gaining an inside view of the state of the organization, but it must be approached with caution since the received emotions can be easily confused with personal feelings of the practitioner, which will skew their perspective and may compromise the trust of the customer and involved stakeholders in the early stage of the program.
The third issue I was able to identify, mostly through feedback from peers, is my significant sensitivity to non-verbal means of communication. More specifically, some clues given away by the interlocutors, such as facial expressions or body language, can affect my emotional state. What makes this observation particularly interesting is the fact that I consider myself a relatively reasonable person who puts the value of communicated information above the accompanying emotional background. This illustrates the vulnerability of individuals regardless of their self-perception and is equally applicable to organizational feelings and OD practices. In the organization, the issue can emerge when the management is not proficient in leadership techniques dealing with the emotional state of the employees, which leads to poor communication with the employees and eventual deterioration of the workplace climate. Also, it may become the reason behind individual conflicts between employees who are not required to be proficient in communication. For the OD practitioner, it poses an additional risk of miscommunication with the customer and a lack of cooperation from the employees in the case where they unintentionally provoke conflict.
Finally, one of the journal entries prompted me to reflect on the role of perceived support. I consider myself highly sensitive to justice and objectivity and sometimes lose my temper when I observe inadequate feedback to the effort I made. It later dawned on me that this is one of the mechanisms behind the perceived organizational support (POS), where the workers tend to perform better and demonstrate stronger involvement when they feel that their input is valued. While it is tempting to downplay it as effectively addressed by adequate compensation, I believe that at least some employees perceive the issue the same way I do – by objectively evaluating all observed actions of the organization, which cannot be achieved by monetization alone and necessitates culture change.
Notably, all of the described observations are consistent with the course materials. Nevertheless, the reflective practices provide me with a new perspective through the identification of my weaknesses and projection of theory on concrete, real-life examples. With these conclusions on hand, I expect to maximize my effectiveness as an OD practitioner in the future.