PM—A new method of behavior change

Abstract

Effective managers are characterized by balanced proficiency in a number of categories. Administrative, interpersonal and technical skills stand out as the most important. Administrative skills are required for goal specification and policy formulation. Interpersonal skills help stimulate greater human productivity and job satisfaction. Technical skills are exercised to make nonhuman inputs productive. Of the three, interpersonal skills are most often taken for granted and typically most lacking. The effectiveness of managers who must accomplish organizational objectives with and through others is seriously eroded by a deficiency in interpersonal skills. All too often, managers are assumed to be skillful at working with people merely by virtue of their membership in the human race and periodic exposure to motivation theory. Typically, when probing the human variable in management, motivation theory as developed by A. H. Maslow, Frederick Herzberg or V. H. Vroom comes into play. By exploring hypothetical causes of behavior, such as attitudes, needs, motives and expectancies, motivation theories have supposedly enhanced managerial understanding of human behavior. However, the difficulty comes in applying motivation theory to on-the-job situations. The net result is that material resources are generally more efficiently and effectively managed than human resources. Because managers must do more than simply understand behavior, motivation theories based on causation are not as useable as principles of learning in the form of practical behavior change techniques. Precision has been the rule in all facets of management except the management of people. Now, proven principles of learning arc beginning to receive some attention in management circles, and they promise to introduce gq'eater precision and down-to-earth practicality to human resource management. Positive Management (PM), which will be explained in this article, is based on these principles of learning.