Power and influence are two very important characteristics to have in order to be an effective leader. In class we defined power and the capacity to influence, and influence as all about action and power in motion in an attempt to influence someone. In order to distinguish between the two we explained it like this, power is like when you are at the top of a ski slope just looking down (potential energy). Influence is all about motion, or kinetic energy. This is the energy being released when skiiing

Cognitive Bias

Retrievability Bias
I find myself using retrievability bias when I am driving in areas that I am not familiar with. This happens when I am traveling in an area I have only been in a few times. I try and pick out certain structures, houses, signs, or businesses. I use something in my memory to make a decision while driving and base my decision off that assumption.

Insensitivity to Sample Size
The best example I can think of where sample size had an effect on a past event is when my sister and I were at a bmx event at Woodward Camp. There were a couple of famous bmx bike riders there and the camp was giving away a signed bike for free. My sister and I both entered our names in the drawing. In order to win the bike, participants had to be present at the time of the drawing. I knew a lot of people were not going to stay that late so I convinced my mom to stay. The sample size was smaller because of everyone going home, therefore our chances of winning were greater. After drawing four names with none of the people present, my sisters name was drawn and we took the bike home with us that day.

The Politics of Going to College

I believe that Obama has started a trend and convinced many American’s that it is essential to continue your education after high school. I want to make a point as to why I believe this. The number of people that are living on this planet is increasing everyday, so the openings for jobs are slowly becoming scarce. Parents are raising their kids with the mindset that it is necessary to go to college so they do not have problems when it comes time to look for a career.  As college graduates are becoming older and having kids, they want to support a candidate that will allow their children to receive help from the government when it comes to paying for college. We can see this point being proven with the number of Democrats increasing that are “better-educated” and the growth of college-educated people entering the elections.

I think Santorum is going to have a hard time receiving votes from people who have a college degree because he believes that education is the responsibility of the consumer, the parent. He is not using rational thinking and considering the consequences associated with the idea that it is full responsibility for the parents to be paying for college. I think Romney is thinking rationally and is using conformity to support his thinking. On his website he made a point that is exactly what Obama said in the article, “post-secondary education cannot become a luxury for the few.” His decision is based off of what Americans want to see happen with our government funding towards higher education. 

Stay in Afghanistan or withdraw troops?

Motivation

In class Monday we watched a video on what motivates us. This is my second time watching this and I loved it just as much this time as I did the first. He took a very effective approach with this lecture. He started out explaining the typical assumption, if you reward something you get more behavior you want, and if you punish something, you get less behavior you want. This said, top performers get a bigger reward and lower performers are ignored. Four economists, two from MIT, one from University of Chicago, and one from Carnegie Mellon, did a study that proved this assumption wrong. They proved that a larger reward lead to poor performance when you are above rudimentary cognitive skill. When a task gets complicated this type of reward does not work. They discovered three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction. These three factors are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed. Mastery is the urge to get better at something. Purpose is the reason why you are at work and what you need to accomplish. We can relate these three factors to the equity theory, which we discussed in class. The equity theory is about incentives. If the incentives are beneficial to the employees, they will engage in activities they like. This is kind of like the company that gave employees 24 hours to work on whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and with whomever they wanted. In these 24 hours, employees accomplished a huge amount of work and came up with innovative ideas. There are three things that make up the equity theory, effort that leads to performance, which leads to various outcomes. Effort and autonomy can be related because the more effort you put into a task, usually you have a desire to get somewhere with your work. Performance and mastery can be related because everyone has the urge to excel at what they’re doing so their interactions within the company increase. Finally purpose can be related to the various outcomes as a result. You are working for a firm so you can produce results with the materials you’re working with. 

The Organizatonal Kid

I personally believe that the amount of success that students at Princeton University have can be due to the parenting ways of the parents. To attend Princeton, students are not paying the price we pay here at Shippensburg. The kids attending Princeton usually have parents that have high paying jobs, which are also very good jobs. They are more likely to raise their kids similar to the way they were raised. With that being said, I think they push their kids to become “Future Workaholics of America” and become the best of the best. The students are putting so much effort into their schoolwork that they have no time to get involved in larger issues. This could be an issue in the future because if every student is putting all their time into school, how is a student suppose to follow politics, or get involved in crusades? 

The author also mentioned in the article that these students are extremely respectful to authority. I believe a big part of this deals with not only Princeton students, but also people all over the world. Our society has a “norm” that everyone wants to follow. It is not a part of the “norm” to argue or disobey people of authority. We can see this early on in out childhood years. If we were told in kindergarten to get in a straight line, we all followed the teacher’s directions and formed a straight like. As a college student if we are told to hand in a paper on a specific date we do what we are told and turn in the paper that day.

Richard Grasso

Power and influence are two very important characteristics to have in order to be an effective leader. In class we defined power and the capacity to influence, and influence as all about action and power in motion in an attempt to influence someone. In order to distinguish between the two we explained it like this, power is like when you are at the top of a ski slope just looking down (potential energy). Influence is all about motion, or kinetic energy. This is the energy being released when skiing down the hill.

Richard Grasso worked his way from the lowest of the low in the New York Stock Exchange to becoming CEO years later. He was the kind of man that knew all the ins and outs of the NYSE. We discussed in class where power comes from and can relate these sources to Grasso and his success within the walls of the stock exchange. The 5 sources of power are referent, expert, coercive, reward, and legitimate. I personally think that Grasso uses coercive power because he was known to come off as intimidating and was “very good at destroying people.” Referent power also applies to Grasso because he was very good and maintaining interpersonal relationship with people. He believes that surrounding yourself with people that have similar interest will keep you on your toes.  This is interesting because he could be the complete opposite of this and come off as a prick to everyone. A final source is expert power. Grasso has been working at the NYSE since he was 22. He knew what kept the stock exchange running. With many years of experience he had something no one else had, and that’s, knowledge.