By Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP

There are two behavioural philosophies that exist that explain why ordinary people can sometimes do extraordinary things:

• Our behaviours are a result of our strong dispositions (both genetic and learned) to think, act and feel in certain ways
• Our behaviours are dependent on the situational factors that we find ourselves in, at any given moment

If you believe the first, you subscribe to what’s known as the ‘dispositional theory of evil’, which Michael Shermer describes as ‘the bad dispositions in people’. The second subscription tends to the situational theory of evil, which ‘holds that evil is the product of corrupting circumstances.’

We are shaped by our environment, which gives us our tendencies, characteristics, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Philip Zimbardo, over thirty years ago, exemplified this behavioural dance in his famous Stanford Prison Experiment. His findings were replicated in the real world Abu-Ghraib prison scandals of 2004. What he found was that the systems within which we operate influence the situations that directly shape our behaviours.

Other psychologists have added to this idea by showing that the ways in which we identify ourselves within systems influences our behaviour. In a recreation of the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam showed how several factors affect the ways in which we identify (and become influenced by) the groups we belong to, including: the permeability of group boundaries and the legitimacy of the group’s structure (with respect to roles and operations).

Of course, it’s not necessarily evil circumstances which produce evil behaviour. More often than not, people are able to do extraordinarily good things because of the situations and systems they find themselves in. Such can be the case in our workplaces.

The workings of our work systems start with those with the most influence in our organizations. The approach senior leadership takes is paramount to creating a successful, positive and extraordinarily productive work environment. This is because leaders are among the most visible people in our organizations; therefore, their actions are readily apparent and influential to the ways in which we act at work. Their approach reinforces the foundations of the organizational systems, which house the various workplace situations that direct our behaviours. We can be enabled to do extraordinarily good things, but it is the leaders who can set the tone for these things to happen.

In our organizations, the informal guidebook which aligns organizational behaviour and outcomes is in the form of the stated values, shared across workgroups. Values are the underlying beliefs for what’s right (with respect to thinking, feeling and behaving) as they relate to organizational goals and objectives. For extraordinary behaviours to happen, it is the responsibility of the leaders to exemplify these values. Through the human ability to read and mimic intentions, those who perceive these examples are influenced to act in kind; the result is a reinforcement of situational factors which enable our (extraordinary) behaviours.

How does your leader make you extraordinary?

Nilesh Bhagat, CHRP, is a rewards coordinator with Best Buy Canada. Nilesh graduated from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, First Class Honours. He majored in Human Resources Management and tacked on an extended minor in Psychology. He’s a self-confessed nerd (the first step is admitting), likes to read, loves hockey and is struggling with the complexities of learning the game of golf.