Organizational Behavior Interview Essay

Deborah Kingsley is the head of the Organizational Development department in one of the most respected publishing houses in Minnesota, Place in The Woods, Golden Valley. Deborah joined the company in 2003, being still a student and dreaming to publish books for children. Thus, she visited one of the annual book fairs in Minneapolis where she fortuned to meet her ideal soul mates holding the same views as she did. These were two friends who took children books publishing so close to heart that once decided to open their own publishing agency. At that moment they were just at the beginning of their way, a couple of strays with laptops and laser printer, but Deborah agreed to join them in the role of an office manager. Her task was to search for clients and partners and, on a large scale, to be a connecting link between future departments of the company.
It goes without saying that young publishers had to face a lot of problems on their start and during orientation process. There was a lot of bias from public who did not believe that they can reach any success with no professional experience and, what is more, without necessary links. But what trio did have was tolerance, enthusiasm, and, after all, deep and keen knowledge of the subject multiplied by the ability to keep the hand on the pulse of the time continuously.
Surprisingly to herself, Deborah demonstrated strong capacity to interconnect with people and understand what specific steps should be taken to overcome this or that challenge. That’s why, when the first hard times were in the past, the company was gradually expanding and Deborah found herself in a role of a “personnel management”, as all the functions on hiring new people including IT specialists, cleaners, security officers and so on were shouldered on her own.
Thus, they decided to organize special human resources department headed by Deborah Kingsley. She felt a strong need to work in this field as, on the one hand, their was a kind of vacuum in relation, and on the other hand, she wanted to apply her psychological knowledge and to redirect it to a new course. Not to fail with her new function, she read a lot of books on communication, relationship psychology and organizational behavior. She was not only hiring and firing people, but she also became responsible for all the internal communication in the growing company.
To fill the gaps in her professional experience, she also consulted the heads of other HR departments through the Internet and gathered a good base of statistics, studies, theories and success stories for her own department. Meanwhile, Deborah learnt to conduct polls and to speak with personnel of their needs, demands and propositions. Talking turned out to be one of the most effective tools in uniting people into one homogeneous, goal-oriented and efficient organism.
Of course, their was still much prejudice, as she was not only young, but also a woman, and there were elder men who could not accept a variant in which some “puny person, still wet behind the ears” would say what they should do and what they shouldn’t, although her style was never to dictate or press anyone. However, she had to learn to be tough in some situations and learn to reject those who rejected partnership with her, as showing no flexibility in this issue would result in conservatism and stiffness in much more important stages. Stress and resistance contributed much to Deborah’s wisdom.
To get success, Deborah taught her assistants to bring out the best in each employee in order to achieve the goals of both employees and the company; to align their interests and apply their talents with accordance to the aim of the publishing house. Together with her team made up of her deputy and two assistants, they set a program of standards and rules to work out the culture of Place in The Woods and to impart those specific values to everyone working on or with the company. As their main field was children literature, they hardly had any chance for making mistakes. It was a very high responsibility, so it was not a place to have rest or to shirk the work. The rhythm soon became very tough and pace, therefore Deborah’s help and support was needed both to managers and to the staff. For her it was always important to be on alarm and to be always available for people. It can be even concluded that she was a kind of engine for the whole company, though she sometimes failed in ability to distribute responsibilities trying to do as much as possible on her own. This was not always beneficial as she spent too much extra energy and sometimes even demonstrating lack of trust to employees. This problem probably came from not knowing the conventional boundaries of HR, while the heads of other departments having special education and skills could often show more competence and find better strategies from their own point of views.
On the whole, she was quickly gaining credibility among administration, but she had to “slacken the reins” to receive appropriate feedback from the staff, as still the main two goals were productivity and success without “breaking the bank.” Deborah investigated the trends within the company and outside regulations as well and analyzed them thoroughly to see the full picture and to work out a new system of relationship coordination.
Tracing the existing patterns and keeping an eye on global shifts in organizational behavior development, Kingsley’s department was soon renamed into Organizational Development department. Such a step was motivated by the obsoleteness of the term “HR” that was often misunderstood. Through the last several years, the work of the department has been seriously improved by technological advancements and software upgrade. In particular, the process of data gathering from and distributing to departments was computerized and adjusted. Though, machines still cannot substitute communication, and they cannot analyze how individuals behave in team and separately, and they cannot fully execute the role of recruiter who is seeking for motivated, driven and creative employees capable to work under tension and ready to sacrifice something for the benefit of the publishing concern.
Now Deborah Kingsley is older than many of their staff, and she is hairy enough to share her knowledge not only with her own team, but she also sells her knowledge to others. She takes part in special courses on organizational behavior as a trainer and knows for certain that “value of one is value of a team” and today human resources professionals should be approached as equal business partners and should indisputably have entrepreneurial approach to their work.