Session 1.

CRAFTING YOUR LIFE AND CAREERS

Takeaways from simulation exercise (Harvard)

1. Decisions force trade-offs between two life categories (Work, relationships, self-care,
social impact)
2. Assess your trade-offs and choices while taking decisions and reflect
3. There are no right or wrong answers, you decide what a well-lived life means to you

Research shows money/success is a necessary condition for happiness but not sufficient Why?

1. Too much money is detrimental

2. Reflective of unhelpful motives (seeking power, social comparison, overcoming self-
doubt)
3. Ambition trap (Less focus on learning)
What makes one happy?

1. Healthy habits of the body

2. Healthy relationship with self (self-esteem, self-reflective)
3. Healthy relationship with others (close ties)

Justification of “Just this time” can lead you to make choices which do not align with your
priorities

FINAL TAKEAWAYS

 Success means living consistently with what matters most to you (Priorities) - there is no
right set of priorities or choices
 Clarifying priorities is critical to making choices that align with your values
 You must be prepared to deal with unexpected events and challenging conditions when
making decisions. Perfect decision-making will not exist
 You have more agency than often realized to shape your life by creating an alternative
option rather than immediately accepting the trade-offs and constraints given to you
 We cannot have it all 100% of the time. Trade-offs are necessary, and often more painful
than we would like
 Learning how to accept and cope with those trade-offs is a core life and career
management skill

Session 2. UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY AND SITUATIONS

According to Judith Rich Harris,

  Birth order affects the way children behave (with parents/siblings), the age they
begin to do things their parents don’t want them to do
 Birth order does not affect the adult personality since children at an early age
discover that many of the behaviors, they acquired at home are not relevant
outside and then they acquire new patterns

Personality is defined as unique and relatively stable patterns of thoughts, behavior, and feelings
– caused by joint influence of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, develops early, and explains everyday
behavior in normal situations

Personality framework gives you insights into a behavior that might feel natural but is
counterproductive. It also increases your ability to understand and influence others

NEO/Big 5 Personality Test:

 Reliable and Valid

 5 components: Low and high scores in each have unique strengths and weaknesses
 N – Negative Emotionality/Stability (How you experience emotions): Low N (Resilient
and composed but Unconcerned and uninspiring), High N (Reactive and Excitable but
Unstable and Insecure)
 E – Extraversion (How sociable): Low E (Reserved and Reflective but Aloof and Self-
absorbed), High E (Sociable and Assertive but Attention-seeking and domineering)
 O – Open-Mindedness (How open-minded): Low O (Persevere and data driven but
close-minded and dogmatic), High O (Creative and explorative but Unpredictable and
unfocused)
 Agreeableness (How cooperative): Low A (Competitive and challenging but
Argumentative and Low trust), High A (Compassionate and cooperative but Naive and
submissive)
  Conscientiousness (How organized/Achievement oriented): Low C (Flexible and
spontaneous but sloppy and unreliable), High C (Focused and driven but stubborn and
obsessive)

Research tells that effective leaders are most likely to be conscientious, emotionally stable and
open-minded extraverts

Personality traits can be changed if you want

A person’s behavior is a function of their own personality attributes and the environment

A person’s behavior is either changed by the situations or they change the situation (Depends on
the strength of the situation)

The systems perspective in organizations refers to how outcomes are produced by a complex
whole as opposed to a single element

THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR: We typically attribute people’s actions

and success/failures to their personal qualities and tend to underestimate the power of situations.

Example: Not helping someone in need because you’re in a hurry, hiring stars while
ignoring organizational factors

System (Situations) is as important as the leader (Person) in an organization to determine

behavior

Situations are more powerful drivers of our behavior than personality

Effective leadership in today’s world often requires a deep appreciation for systems

Session 3: BIASES AND STEREOTYPES

Ambiguous behaviors are easier to distort than more objective ones. For example,
‘Interpersonal skills’ vs. ‘Earnings generation’

Being a ‘solo’ member of a group increases visibility – 1. Tends to increase use of category, 2.
Tends to lead to extreme impressions

Category averages are used to interpret behaviors when people know less about an individual.
For example, Ann Hopkins was “high” on aggressiveness compared to the mean expectation for
women

Example: Wage gap between men and women:

 Tamil Nadu has the highest Agri gender wage gap

 Gujarat has the highest gender wage gap among the salaried class
  The gap widens as women move up the ladder

Backlash effects (for stereotype violations): Social and economic penalties for violating
stereotypes. E.g., “Even if women can be agentic, they still should not.”

There is more asymmetry in perception of leaders when men and women use a ‘directive’ style
than they use ‘collaborative’ style

When we create groups with strong identities a number of social category effects occur.
These categories simplify recognition and memory and hence guide thinking.

Occasional errors with category effects are that we use them more often for numerical minority
members of categories, can be too simple, instances in a category are seen highly similar vs.
Instances across categories which are seen very different

Significantly overlapping In-groups and Out-groups can be perceived as exaggerated differences.

Out-group Homogeneity: We believe out-groups are less variable than in-groups

In-group Favoritism: We are biased in favor of our “in-group” on socially desirable dimensions
(i.e., we exaggerate mean differences in favor of the in-group)

STEREOTYPES can cause (The self-fulfilling pathways):

 Biased Interpretation (Confirmation bias): Interpret ambiguous information as

consistent with expectations
 Biased treatment: Treat members of different groups as having stereotype
consistent traits --- It may elicit stereotype matching behavior
 Stereotype threat: Fear of confirming a negative stereotype; may interfere with
performance; can be overcome through shared identity and similarity-even if very
minimal
More example of stereotypes: Attractive individuals have a greater sense of entitlement
(Because of this they are discriminated against while applying for less desirable jobs)

Gender inclusive policies make conversations more positive in a workplace

Two types of biases: Explicit (You’re aware of) and Implicit (You’re not aware of)

When do we tend to use stereotypes: Three situations; 1. High cognitive load, 2. Low attention,
3. Ambiguous situations

How to manage stereotypes (Prioritizing fair procedure is the key):

 Awareness of stereotypes should be sufficient

 Blinding (Making categories invisible) is one way
 Contact across categories --- Familiarity --- Broader in-groups --- Increased accuracy of
perceptions

Session 4. INCENTIVES AND MOTIVATIONS

Compensation = a + bx

Fixed part: a = Salary, Variable part: b = Rate of Contingent Reward (E.g., piece rate, bonus,
profit-sharing, options), Performance: x = f (effort) (Imperfectly correlated with efforts, e.g.,
sales, stock price, manager’s evaluation)

Two key issues in evaluating compensation packages: Base pay (Fixed) and Slope (Contingent
rewards)

How much of a compensation package should be contingent on performance depends on trade-

off between motivation it can generate (Extrinsic incentives and increase in efforts) vs. Risk (risk
preferences, uncertainty in the system)
Pay for Performance (PFP) shifts risk to employees. Because employees are typically risk-
averse, the extra incentive doesn’t come for free.

Compensation level (Base level): If not contingent (i.e., salary), higher compensation level
increases quality of applicant pool and reduces rate of turnover (no outside option)
Compensation slope: Level is an expected value based on the employee’s expected
performance. Steepness of slope affects the type (confident or risk tolerant) of employee selected
and retained

When does P4P work well: From individual’s perspective (Strong link between effort and
compensation, Relative independence, Stability of rates, Transparent culture) and From
Organization’s perspective (Strong link between performance and outcomes, employees are
more productive, employees are selected for ability and risk tolerance)

Setting a goal (Mere goals, no pay tied) provides target, sense of satisfaction

Loss aversion – People are more motivated to eliminate a loss

Distance effects – Problems when too far above or below the goal don’t motivate enough

Obstacles of contingent rewards:

A) Inflated perceptions of contributions: Example – Among married couples, Sum of

contributions greater than 100% makes it harder to judge the contributions
B) Determinants of fairness perceptions:
a. Distributive fairness: Are the outcomes allocated fairly? Outcomes are distributed
in proportion to contribution/need/equally. The obstacle is deciding i) which rule
to apply, ii) level of contributions/needs, iii) weight on different contributions
b. Procedural fairness: Fair procedures make unfavorable distributions more
acceptable (THE FAIR PROCESS CUSHION)
C) Cultural context: Certain culture might not be supporting the use of contingent rewards

Alternative to contingent rewards: SOCIAL MOTIVATION (Respect/status, group

acceptance, competition), INTRINSIC MOTIVATION (Internal drive, inherent motivation)

Intrinsic motivation depends on Meaningfulness (Skill variety, Task identity, Task significance),
Responsibility (Autonomy), and knowledge of results (Feedback)

Social needs can also lead to intrinsic motivation

Your business can use intrinsic motivation as a substitute for extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic is
especially important if the things you desire cannot easily be measured

‘Surprise rewards’ create highest motivation, then ‘no rewards’, and then ‘expected rewards’

Extrinsic can hurt intrinsic motivation in the following ways: a) It signals that a task must not
be interesting otherwise why would you pay me for it?, b) It also signals that employer doesn’t
trust work to be carried out without incentive, c) shifts thinking to narrow ‘cost-benefit analysis’
Extrinsic awards are often insufficient for organizational goals because of a) scarcity of
adequate performance measures, b) balance between individual motivation and teamwork, c)
can’t take note of extra role tasks

Moralization of intrinsic motivation can lead to selective Pro sociality towards those who are
more intrinsically motivated than others

Motivation purity bias: Candidates’ expression of extrinsic motivation lead decision makers to
infer that the candidate is less intrinsically motivated and in turn bias against such candidates.
Implication: Job candidate avoiding talking about salary/bonuses

Session 5. JUDGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING

We need to look at all possible scenarios to detect relationships and beware of incomplete search.
Correlation does not imply causality because there can be a third variable or reverse
causality

JUDGEMENT TRAPS:

TRAP 1 (Availability Heuristic): We tend to rely on readily available information and fail to
ask about the quality or completeness of the information. Our judgement tends to get biased
based on recall (What is more recognizable) as well.

Always ask – Do I have all four cells? Is the data biased?

TRAP 2 (Goodness/badness depends on what it’s compared to): Example – Happiness on

comparing salaries with your colleagues

TRAP 3 (We find trade-offs difficult, so we use simple rules): Common intuitive rule is ‘Take
the one that beats something else’ - Decoy effect (Think about pricing of products where an
advanced version of product is available for only slightly higher price, we tend to purchase
advanced one)

TRAP 4 (We are overconfident): Overconfidence in our abilities of judgement/decision

making

TRAP 5 (Argument Dilution): with unnecessary information along with an important one;
affording equal weight to each information might allow non diagnostic information to dilute
overall judgement.

Example – FDA dampening consumers’ judgement of overall severity and risk of drugs
and increase marketability by listing all side effects (severe along with those most
frequent)
 Hence, while making a point, focus only on strong points (Less is More)

Remedies to avoid traps:

 Make a habit of asking critical questions. Enough data? any bias? Etc.
 Play devil’s advocate with yourself
 Shift from insider to outsider perspective
 Analogic exercises
 Use models/regressions
 Use teams to generate multiple perspectives

Session 6. TEAM DECISION MAKING AND COORDINATION

The Common Knowledge Effect: Commonly held info is more influential on group decisions
compared to unique information

 It may impact the initial preferences of team members

 More likely to be introduced in the meeting because most people have it
 More likely to be repeated
 As team converges on an answer, there is a tendency of not bringing up new facts

Unique points not shared or individuals holding information to appear cooperative may be the
reason of not reaching the potential

The primary aim should be to foster cognitive diversity in teams, and we should seek more
diverse opinions. (In contrast, we tend to agree more)

Consider the role of process in teams (All diverse and conflicting opinions should be weighed;
Team members should be open-minded and feel their involvement) --- The outcome of this can
be more informed decisions and more commitment to decisions

Sources of Agreement in a Group:

1) We’re right!
2) Absence of cognitive diversity
3) Two forms of social influence –
a. Peer pressure – Individuals tend to conform in groups; To combat: establish team
norms that ‘Task conflict’ is desirable
b. Anchoring on others’ opinions/Informational influence – People having different
opinions alone tend to come to one opinion when together; To combat: Make
people think independently
Process of decision making in a group of cognitively diverse people: Independent thinking
prior to discussion --- Norms for constructive disagreement and speaking up --- Turn-taking and
equal participation during discussion

Similarity, common identity, common enemy, shared success, and shared suffering are sources
of cohesion

Task conflict vs. Relationship conflict: To avoid the risk of relationship conflict in the process,
maintaining a trusting and safe environment is necessary (Building cohesion, Open-mindedness,
not taking the conflict personal)

How to prevent groupthink:

 Team members should be critical evaluators

 Don’t express opinions too early
 Examine all viable alternatives
 Outside experts should be invited
 Rotate playing the role of devil’s advocate
 Different independent team to work on the same problem