Participant: Arunkumar S

Reflection of day 1
Class: Organizational Behaviour, Day 1 – 20/8/2016

Participant: Arunkumar S

As part of day 1 organizational behaviour, DISC principle of personal behaviour was illustrated
in utmost detail. The process of doing the exercise was intriguing as the abstract questions were
bringing several personal/professional, events/incidents to memory for a retrospective analysis.

Once the score was computed and each person identified themselves as I/D or C/D, a wave of
murmur and speculation happened on what the descriptors for D,I,S & C might be and which is best.
The DISC score evaluation and plotting the graph was quite a task in itself. But once the plotting was
done, it was indeed a revelation about the true personality. The introduction of DISC basis in
correlation with nature of axes like Assertive, open, receptive and controlled; was a very good eye-
opener and drew attention instantly.

On Self-Image scale, I turned out to be a person of type -Highest influence / Lowest Dominance and
my dominance marker on the plot was below the middle line. I learnt that people with this graph
outcome are very friendly, people oriented, agreeable, peaceful, talkative etc, which is so true.
Based on my personal experience, the factor which I would like to disagree is that people with High
I/Low D will talk nicely but fail in delivery. Personally I have not exhibited this behaviour.

On work mask scale, I turned out to be a very similar person as described on self-image scale. This
was explained as I take the liberty of being myself in my workplace, which is true as well.

Coming to Being under pressure scale, my graph plot shrunk in size and the DISC markers were
placed in different points. This indicated that I do not handle pressure well. Though I remember one
occasion about 5 years back, where I fumbled big time under pressure, I have been doing a fairly
good job since then. But still, I would like to take this observation as a reflection of my trait and see if
I need to work in making myself better.

On stress evaluation, the indicators were clear that I do not have any stress, which was a good to
know information from this behavioural analysis.

On character traits, People orientation stood out as the significant behaviour which I can be
identified with. Other list of traits which I would like to work further and improve myself would be –
being modest, being fast paced and being more enthusiastic.

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Overall, it was like taking great look into the mirror after living under the rocks for ages. I am sure
this behaviour evaluation would stay etched to our minds for days to come and make us better
business person.

Reflection of day 2
Class: Organizational Behaviour, Day 2 – 21/8/2016

Participant: Arunkumar S

Today, we looked into the following items,

Emotional intelligence

When a person is emotionally affected by another person’s behaviour it means the seed of the
problem persists in some level within the complaining person. To illustrate this further we looked
into examples from Tamil literature ( Silapathikaram), Sigmund Freud’s realization on power of sub-
conscious mind and the story about a lady who could not drink water.

When I listed the characteristics, I listed and did not check the following – arrogant, materialistic and
bring too picky. Per the emotional intelligence theory, I am someone who has the seed of being
arrogant and/or materialistic and/or being too picky. I agree to this to most part and I will also work
towards addressing the same.

Also, following interesting correlations were observed and understood.

When something we value is violated, we get Anger

When source of the danger is known – it’s Fear

When source of danger is not known – Anxiety

When something that we value is received – we sense Joy

Anger leads to frustration and Frustration after long period of time leads to depression.

Mature person has many options to restore anger but an immature person resorts to violence. The
ideal approach to handle any emotion is

 Be aware of the emotion

 Name it
 Determine the intensity
 Evaluate options to restore

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Then we looked into Neo-Cortex / Amygdala where Neo-cortex is the reasoning part of brain but
amygdala is the part of brain tuned to fight/flight response.

Then, we looked how the marshmallow experiment significantly established that folks with higher
EQ outperform folks with lower EQ. Daniel Goleman analysis also highlighted how emotional
intelligence isolates star performers from typical performers in any organisation.

Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientation - Behaviour

As part of interpersonal relationship analysis, we took FIRO-B test and evaluated ourselves against
the scoring sheet. It was indeed impressive to understand ourselves on the following interpersonal
needs – Inclusion, control and affection against “willingness to express” vs “need/want”.

Based on the score, I ended up in the following rating

INCLUSION CONTROL AFFECTION

(Social) (Leadership) (Deep Relationship)

Expressive 8 6 5
Wanting 4 5 4
INCLUSION:

E-8: Extremely comfortable with people

W-4: Selective about people

CONTROL:

E-6: Mature. Open to take responsibilities and also open when others take responsibility

W-5: Mature level.

AFFECTION:

E-5: Mature

W-4: Mature

Also we learnt, the two qualities why humans are successful is due to Altruism and nurturing.

MAXIMIZING RESOURCES GAME

Then we moved onto the game of “Maximizing resources” using the scenario where World Bank
funding four provinces of a country. In this game, we noticed that the act of maximizing resources
happens when Option ‘C’ is written by each of the teams. But this equilibrium was not obtained in

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our entire batch. This shows how trust build and how change is driven in a larger context. This is
truly a very deep learning that we, as future leaders, would carry for our lifetime.

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Then later, as part of assignment, we filled in the questionnaire called “ How I act in conflict’. Based
on the evaluation of score, I came out as the following,

Common Style: The owl – Confronting

Least common Style: The Fox – Compromising

Also, we learned that, under pressure, we adopt ourselves to the least common style. And we need
to asses and consciously ensure we choose the style of our choice.

Reflection of day 3
Class: Organizational Behaviour, Day 3 – 22/8/2016

Participant: Arunkumar S

PERSONALITY

 We looked at personality and theories proposed by great minds. Sigmund Freud explained
personality as
 SE – Super Ego
 Ego – Balancer between SE & ID
 ID – Animal instinct
 In this context Ego is good as it’s a balancer. If Super Ego is too big he becomes a person who
values principles and ID person goes for his instant gratification (Eg: Rapist)
 Next, we looked at how Adler classified. According to him, power is crucial and overcome
helplessness rationally by consciousness.
 Then Sullivan suggested that Social interaction is critical. The social role assigned by the
community shapes our personality. This follows what is generally known as Pygmalion effect
– you do anything with strong belief it leads to reality.

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 Afterwards, we looked into concepts by Fromm. He said human has to “search for the true
self” is the greatest differentiator. Based on Fromm’s experience in concentration camp he
says, the best or the worst of people comes out during extreme hardships.
 Then we briefly touched upon Hippocrates and his theories which were earlier looked into.
 Enneagram suggested you try to understand yourself based on your core weakness.
 Jung came with relatively a popular concept, which was based on 4 polarities humans have.
This concept was operationalized by Katherine Briggs Meyers and Isabel Briggs Meyers.

This test is called Meyers Briggs Type Indicator. Based on the MBTI indicator test, my profile
evaluation resulted in ESTJ type. We received a profile of ourselves in details which matched about
80-90% and we are saving it as reference.

How you re-energize yourself?

 If you re-energize yourself with other people, then you are an extrovert. Extroversion is
Action – Reflection - Action
 If you do alone – Introvert. Introversion is Reflection – Action – Reflection.

Since the purpose of relationship is completeness, Ideal long term relationship can happen between
Introvert & Extrovert. Unless they respect their differences, problem could persist.

What a person pays attention to?

 If he pays attention to details – he is a sensing person

 If he looks at bigger picture/abstract – he is using intuition

How do you make a decision?

 By Thinking
o Primarily evaluates for self
o Fair, without any partiality
o Evaluation of facts, just impersonal. No chance of nepotism.
 By Feeling
o Thinking with others in mind
o Mercy and compassion
o Human values and motives in mind.

Lifestyle of a person

Judgement – This person is systematic and planned

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Perception – This person has no plan and is spontaneous

TEMPARAMENT ANALYSIS based on MBTI

On this class we analysed that we have 4 kinds of temperaments

SJ Epimethean One who follows tradition and customs

NT Promethean Creative and high achievers
NF Appolonean Oracle type and predicting future generally
SP Dionysian Excellent trouble-shooters, Live-the-moment type, Needs freedom
and space, negotiators.

Most corporates tend to promote SJ and NF type as this gives them greater stabilities.

Reflection of day 4
Class: Organizational Behaviour, Day 3 – 23/8/2016

Participant: Arunkumar S

NOTE: The cave rescue game was played on third day end but the values part was discussed Day - 4

VALUES:

This day we moved on to understand values. So, we were asked to play the cave rescue game. As an
objective of the game, we were asked to write the order in which we save the 7 characters and it
was told that the last person would die eventually.

To probe ourselves, we had a 12 point values evaluation sheet which helped us to introspect
ourselves and broadly rate what we value the most in life. And based on the aggregated max score in
ascending order for each value. It came out that most preferred security of family first, affection and
love second and Salvation as last. But, the game outcome had Paul as the first person to be rescued
and Joshi was the person to die.

There was a great comparison drawn between the values rating and actual game result. This was
indeed a great learning about values and what we really value.

Values should drive decisions in life. Not just belief, but adhering to values and practising it is
essential in life.

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Values should be compatible or similar in a relationship. If you are in an incompatible situation with
value, you will experience COGNITIVE DESONANCE.

Steps to understand values:

1. Be aware
2. Analyse what extent to which it is practiced.
3. How compatible my value is with that of the organization?
4. If you have to compromise or violate, do it with consciousness.

Quick observation shared by professor is, until last year, the young graduates, i.e. XLRI MBA
applicants used to choose Love & Affection as #1 value. But beginning this year, even they choose
Security of family. This is a great change in young minds.

PERCEPTION

Later, we moved on to understanding perception. We also were asked to play a game with
neighbours and were asked to observe the eye-movement patterns.

We understood that, whenever we think, eye balls move in some direction.

The different ways the yes can move is depicted in the picture above.

Often it’s said that when a person looks down when he speaks, he is nervous and avoiding eye-
contact. This is not true as per behaviour and perception analysis. He is a kinaesthetic person and
hence he likes to look down during thinking.

Understand other person’s thoughts and start conversation with that.

Children who are good in spelling:

Visually see a word, auditoryly they listen and Kinesthetically they confirm.

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Then we looked at How Brain works.

When you see a person a neural pathway is created. When you see next time only when the neural
pathway ignites, then you remember the person. Same thing happens when you can imagine the
same person. Habit forming happens through this mechanism. This is how the old adage came “It
takes 21 days to form a habit”.

Experiment on basketball players also confirmed this. A group of basketball players were divided
into three groups. One group practised free throw on the court, second group visualized it mentally
and the third group were engaged in some other activities. When they were actually tested for
efficiency in free throws, the team who did not practice, and their efficiency came down. But, the
team who visualized and the team who actually practiced were having almost the same efficiency.

Overall Organizational behaviour course helped us gain a lot of insights which helps us to introspect
and consciously evolve us a better humans. After all, only a good human can transform himself into
a good leader. Thanks to GLIM, Dr. George for this eye-opening learning experience.

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VISION STATEMENT

My vision is to enter retirement with utmost contentment that can be experienced by an ambitious
individual. When I look back from there, I should have been,

 A very successful father to my wonderful boys, in helping them grow up as a responsible,

loving, caring, well-educated and humble yet enthusiastic human beings
 A successful husband and a re-energizing shoulder to lean on for my wife, in improving her
self-esteem and social status to her best possible potential
 A good family man who respects traditions and values, have high regards for parents,
believes in God and holds compassion for every other human being.
 A Top leader with a proven record in being change catalyst and motivator to drive excellence
and exuberance across entire workforce, thus enabling better welfare by touching lives.
 A good humanitarian caring for the underprivileged and also for the needy; making possible
contribution to social welfare, with special focus on children’s education improvement.

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OBITUARY

Arunkumar Suriyanarayanan was born on 17-12-1982 in Chennai. Right from childhood, he is known
to be amidst people and always charming. As a true extrovert, Arun never hesitates to mingle with
people and also win their hearts by his wit and humour. Owing to this, he has a lot of friends who
likes to spend time with him.

Arun got married to Sandhya Ragunathan in April 2010. The couple was blessed with two awesome
boys Siddhaarth Arunkumar and Sreejith Arunkumar. Operating always with “Family first” mantra,
Arun has been a great father to his sons and a loving husband to his wife, always ensuring their
overall care and wellbeing.

After graduation in Bachelor of Technology, Arun worked for a variety of Technology Companies
where he grew from strength to strength becoming a holistic professional. Later he moved on to get
his Management Education at Great Lakes Institute of management to pioneer as Top level
executive. From then on, there’s no looking back. Over the past several years, Arun has been truly an
inspirational leader, a great corporate figure, a motivator, a humble mentor and friend, touching
lives at various levels and enabling people with him perform to their fullest potential. His social
cause was making key differences in lives of the underprivileged; with special concentration on
education to needy children.

At this juncture, I am very proud and equally sad yet pray to God in making sure his soul rest in
peace. Let him be blessed with all goods one can get in afterlife, for the fact that he spread the joy
and cared for one and all when he was around.

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