Performance Management

Unit 5
Ongoing Mentoring & Managee Development
5.1 Purposes of Managee Development
Some broad purposes of managee development in this context are;
1. Improving performance – effectiveness of managees.
2. Developing managees with requisite knowledge, problem-solving and social skills to
meet the needs of their current and future roles and tasks.
3. Creating conditions that allow and encourage individual managees to grow into what
they are capable of becoming.
Efforts to develop managee performance enhance overall quality of the workforce in
an organization promoting a climate conductive for continuous learning and professional
growth, enhancing relevant skills, knowledge and attitudes to stay ahead of changes, thereby
helping sustain managee performance at levels that meet or exceed expectations. They have
further the organization’s mission.
For an organization to retain its image of excellence and stay competitive, its
workforce must possess real-time information, the ability to use concurrent technologies,
adapt to environmental and organizational change, function effectively in newer
organizational architectures calling for diverse cross-functional and cross-cultural skills, be
effective in team and other collaborative situations. Managees, too, recognize the need for
them to continuously learn in order to experience satisfaction in their current performance as
well as career progression. In that sense, it is a win-win situation.
There are several legitimate development options for each managee that could interest
the managee, and/or her organization. These may be immediate-role –related aimed at
improving the managee’s current role-performance; or futuristic-career-related that address
her needs to capture opportunities palpable in the near future, or those for her potential
development towards improved long-term prospects. All these various kinds of managee
development goals are relevant and important. Managees with their unique attributes will
need different, customized development packages that the managers must envision and
develop. Four of these may merit pointed mention in the context of PfM:
(a) Those in response to planned self-development initiatives from the managee.
(b) Those necessitated by determination or review of performance standards.
(c) Those indicated by the ongoing monitoring (observation and feedback) process.
(d) Those called for as outcomes of the appraisal process.
 In all cases, development effort must related to specific functions and tasks in the
managee’s job description, organization’s goals and strategic initiatives, as well as associated
performance standards. To be convergent all staff development must respond to present and
future needs of the organization, those of the managee’s unit or department, and of her own
future career.
5.2 Process of Managee Development:
The whole process of managee development is necessarily result-oriented; and
results- in terms of the above objectives – can be achieved predominantly through efforts in
three different ways which are interrelated. The process of managee development, starting
with the identification of learning needs, is schematically shown in the following figure.

Identified Needs

Selection of
Developmental
Initiative

On-site Off-site Organizational

Development Development Development

Opportunity for Special Courses for Conducive

Interaction with the Increased knowledge Organizational

manager Development of Structure.
Supporting and / or Problem-solving skills. Rewards structure and
problem-solving Development of skills systems.
feedback. for social interaction. Organizational Culture.
Increased delegation of Development of Organizational
responsibility. conceptual skills. Climate.
Job rotation. Plans and Objectives.
Special assignments.

Results
Through
Enhanced ability, encouragement and system support
 On-site efforts involve intensive interaction between managee and her supervisor,
supportive problem-solving feedback from the supervisor, opportunity to exercise greater
responsibility, job rotation and special assignments, etc.
Off-site efforts may consist of formal training through courses, programs, or
workshops either within the organization or outside – aimed primarily at imparting
knowledge in specific areas, relating to the organization and its processes, the managee’s role
or its tasks, development of skills in solving problems and in interacting with people.
Organization Development interventions are essential, because training can merely
impart knowledge, develop skills as well as create awareness about different attitudes and
their implications. Application of what is learnt in the classroom would, however, require
simultaneous developments within the organization that help and encourage such application.

5.3 Briscoe’s Principles

In his ‘The 10 commandments of Development’, Dennis R, Briscoe suggests the
following principles that successful development initiatives usually respond to:
1. All development is essentially self-development: The door to learning, they say, is
locked from inside. No development can take place unless the managee has an inner urge
to develop. The organization must provide a favourable – even – seductive – learning
environment, but the primary responsibility for her personal and professional growth must
vest in the managee.
2. Managee development is an essential part of a manager’s job: Attending to
development of managees is among the manager’s primary responsibilities. Managerial
appraisal systems must include this is a factor for appraisal. Experience by itself is often
not adequate for learning. Therefore,
 Developmental, as contrasted to performance, feedback from the manager is essential to
requisite learning and change of behaviour.
 Supportive coaching and counselling can help managees organize the train-and-error
opportunities better and extract more learning out of these.
 Creative management of mistakes can reinforce learning behaviour without
discouraging risk-taking behaviour.
 Mentoring is another useful developmental intervention – particularly to enhance
psychological security at work. A manager must periodically brush up her mentoring
skills, and keep these in shape.
3. Organizations must recognize the totality of an individual: Humans are multi-role
entities. Their pursuit of satisfaction in each role influences performance in all other roles.
Besides, each individual is unique in her physical, intellectual and emotional make-up. To
optimize human contribution, therefore, the organization needs to recognize individual
differences inter-alia in their:
 Aspirations.
 Work and lifestyle values.
 Personal as well as work needs and interests.
 Family situations.
 Stress tolerances – self defined limits within which they manage their lives.
 Capacity and place for learning.

4. Development occurs essentially on the job: Learning and development is essentially

experiential. People learn best while doing. The most relevant and sustainable learning
happens on-the-job. On-the-job challenges push managees to stretch themselves. Yet,
where managees perform only those tasks that they already know about, they can’t
develop new skills or proficiencies.
5. A developmental job offers challenge or stretches: Developmental jobs induce learning
by confronting individuals with what they don’t know or haven’t yet mastered. Individuals
must constantly practice skills and push themselves beyond their existing skill levels in
order to improve.
6. Challenge must be continually and gradually experienced by the managee: Job
assignments must be so structured and paced as to continually offer challenge to
managees, but within bounds of the managee’s tolerance level. A job may cause too much
stretch, when:
 Successive assignments are too varied in terms of knowledge, skills or attitudes needed
to complete them.
 The level of responsibility in successive assignments rises very fast.
Optimum development occurs if:
 A sequence of job assignments is identified in consultation with the managee, such that
it makes sense to the managee.
 The skills required in these successive assignments build upon those used by the
managee previously, and with which she is comfortable.
  The time needed to develop requisite skill(s) for a new assignment is not so long as to
frustrate the managee. Rather, awareness or proficiency in new areas and the prospect
of success in a new assignment should cause excitement and enthusiasm.

7. Alternating stretch and let-up consolidates learning: In athletics, typical workout

schedules are known to follow the hard-easy-easy pattern – in other words more easy than
hard. This is so because too much and constant stretch can become counterproductive. The
physical, intellectual and emotional aspects in human beings need security, which comes
from remaining in touch with the original state from which they are learning new
behaviour, or changing. In the hard-easy-easy pattern, the hard means stretch and the easy
means reverting to the original state of comfort. The easy also helps recuperation of
energy, which needs to be invested in learning.
8. Career progression must depend as much on assessed potential as on observed
performance: Job seniority and performance are useful considerations for promoting
manages to higher responsibilities, and higher levels on organizational hierarchy. But,
these are not sufficient conditions. The managee’s enthusiastic willingness and potential to
perform at such responsibilities and levels of an essential condition in sound promotion
decisions. Managee potential can be assessed formally through methods such as
assessment centres, special short-term assignments, or somewhat in formally through
managerial observation and day-to-day dealings.
9. Successful development programs require imaginative monitoring: All said and done,
managee development is not the number one priority for organizational managers. There
are powerful and urgent pressures on managers, managees and organizations to deliver
their commitments to stakeholders. Managee careers may need foci that are different from
immediate task needs; and call for appropriate planning and monitoring to ensure that they
develop smoothly with minimal personal and organizational side effects. Thus, some,
agency, external to the manager-managee dyad, within the organization, may be asked to
monitor execution of the managee development plans. Achieving ongoing and
organization-wide development of people requires focussed and coordinated effort.
5.4 Training
While the term training is generally used in the context on improving managee skills
that are relevant to her current performance, development is used more in the context of
enhancing the managee’s future potential. PM is interested in both.
 Any training effort must start by assessing training needs – both in the larger context
of organizational strategy and culture, as also in the specific context of the managee’s
immediate role. The latter may be aided by the managee’s role description, supplemented by
her experience during the job performance as well as appraisal. The larger context requires a
different level of perspective. The process of identifying training needs in this larger context
may follow logic such as below.
 If Training succeeds, it must result in learning.
 The natural consequence of Learning is Change. So, the organization must ascertain:
- The change it is envisaging in and for the managee.
- The functionality of this envisaged change for the managee in the organizational
context and the specific ways in which it is so functional.
- The degree to which this change aligns with-or helps align – the managee and the
organizational goals or objectives.
 In the managee’s learning process, training is not like staple food. It is rather a
supplement, much like a vitamin pill of those who don’t eat balanced food.
 In the normal source of learning, staple food is work. Therefore, work itself must be
recognized as the primary learning system.
- Work content and design as such, must be the first focus of the organization and the
manager.
- The work context must provide in appropriate incentive for learning.
 If the door to learning is locked form inside, how does the manager or the organization,
see through that door to assess the managee’s need to learn and gain insights into the
managee’s desire to learn? In other words,
- How does the manager or the organization understand the managee’s motivation to
learn?
- How does the organization or the manager determine the extent to which the motivation
of the managee to learn is aligned with the need of the organization to use the
managee’s learning?
- Aligned motivation is like a magnet with the power to attract and to repel.
- Unaligned motivation is like crude iron, which is relatively powerless.
 Identification or assessment of training needs is best based on:
- Individual needs, so that the managee applies herself to learning meaningfully.
- Organizational needs, so that the organization can productively use the new knowledge,
skills, awareness, etc., acquired by the managee.
 Appropriate learning can help:
- Remedy a managee’s deficiencies in relation to current assignments. Such areas for
improvement are best identified jointly during counselling sessions. The manager must
help identify areas of deficiency and the managee must acknowledge such deficiency in
her knowledge, skill or awareness areas, besides demonstrating the willingness to make
it up through learning.
- Develop the managee potential for higher achievements or higher responsibility.
However, uncovering an individual’s aptitude for growth and development is not easy.
Besides, the direction in which the potential needs to be developed is not easy to pin-
point because
o Very few organizations have systematic career planning at the individual managee
level.
o In bureaucratic systems prior identification of – and efforts at enhancing – individual
potential is often frowned upon. Yet, it is possible to take appropriate initiatives in
these directions once the managee has been chosen for a new or a higher
responsibility.
- Support the organizational systems by reinforcing;
o Existing ongoing systems.
o Modified or improved existing systems.
o Newly-introduced appropriate systems.
This is usually the most productive area for training. Such training requires high
volumes to cover large numbers of people working on or in connection with the concerned
systems. Mere sprinkling of training around a small of managees may seen like waste.
- Orient the new or the existing managees in areas concerning the organization’s culture,
values and goals. This includes:
o Meticulous induction training for new entrants to the work force.
o Periodic reinforcement for the existing staff.
This area also calls for covering large volumes of individuals and groups in the
organization.

 Training Must be meticulously planned, which means that;

- Training content is carefully determined, so that it provides a learning focus and
responds to some specific purpose(s).
 - Training pedagogy is appropriately chosen depending on whether it aims at imparting
knowledge, developing skills or changing and reinforcing awareness.
- The whole process, including training content and pedagogy is funnelled through filters
relevant to the organizational context and culture.
 Training can be powerful input into the organization’s culture, processes, work ethics as
also climate. Impact of such training can be either positive or negative: it can either
strengthen or confuse the organization’s culture. It is often not neutral.

Where training is to be used as a vehicle for remedying the managee’s deficiencies in relation
to a single job, task or role, a simple step-by-step procedure can be followed to identify
needs:
Step 1: List each attitude, skill and knowledge area required for effectively performing the
specific job, role or task. The managee or the manager or both together can do it.
Step 2: The manager and the managee together rate the contribution of each task to
performance of the total role. They also rate the managee’s current level of proficiency on
each listed attitude, skill or knowledge area to perform high contributing tasks.
Step 3: The two identify areas of knowledge, skill or attitude deficiency by comparing the
data generated at steps one and two. They also determine the priority learning needs –
areas of learning that will be most efficient in terms of improving the managee’s overall
performance and contribution.
Step 4: Having thus identified and prioritized the areas of learning that will result in
improving the managee’s performance, the manager – if needed in consultation with the
managee – locates or structures specific learning events or opportunities that will fulfil the
priority needs. To build these learning events or opportunities into the managee’s
performance plan, it is necessary that these events or opportunities are allotted specific
time slots in terms of when these will take place during the year.
If this process is followed, the motivation of the managee to learn the agreed specifics
should already be in place. The manager must ensure that the planned learning event happens,
as planned, without any hiccup or major deferment. Although a training event has been
planned in dialogue with the managee during the training need identification stage, it is
extremely important of brief the managee immediately before she commences training.
During such a briefing, the manager helps the managee to recall the purpose for which the
particular learning event was planned, and list:
 What can realistically be expected out of the learning event?
  What are the end-results of such an event of the managee that she has the responsibility
to realize as much as possible?
 What kind of approaches and initiatives on the managee’s part will be productive and
appropriate?

5.5 Delegating
‘In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to
take on responsibility’, says Michael Korda, Editor-in-Chief, Simon & Schuster. The purpose
of delegating is to enable the delegatees to assume increasing responsibility. Apart from its
other virtues, delegating is an excellent way to releasing the busy manager’s time for carrying
out various PM activities. Successful delegation of work responsibilities necessarily involves
coaching and counselling delegatees.
A basic problem in delegation arises from a misfit between the readiness of the
managee to perform at a certain level and the allocation of task(s) to her. When the manager
delegates too much responsibility before a managee is equipped to handle it, she may quite
unintendedly be setting the managee up for failure at the task, and consequent frustration.
Where delegation is too little compared to the managee’s readiness to perform the task
without supervision, the result may be managee de-motivation, alienation, a feeling of
restiveness, or a perception of inequity. The trick in effective delegation, therefore, is
achieving optimum fit between the managee willingness and ability to perform and the
responsibility delegated.
Situational leadership model explained earlier provides one method for determining a
managee’s readiness to perform any given task. The leader uses a leadership style appropriate
to the managee’s developmental level – defined in terms of managee competence and
commitment – to perform a specific task. A high degree of delegation occurs when the
managee competence and commitment are at a level that she neither needs task direction nor
relationship support.
Stage 1: Where the managee can perform a single, carefully – delineated task.
Stage 2: Where a managee can anticipate the manager’s future needs, in addition to
performing the above task.
Stage 3: Where the managee is able to participate meaningfully in planning, problem-solving
and evaluation of the task.
Stage 4: Where the managee is able to handle successfully the complete task from planning
to evaluation, without supervision and reinforcement.
 Glaser summarizes the process of delegating as follows:
1. The manager identifies the task to be delegated and the competencies needed to
complete it. She is certain that she fully understands the task to be delegated.
2. The manager evaluates the managee’s developmental level and her probable stage of
readiness in relation to this specific task.
3. The manager divides the task into segments that generally fit the above four-stage
model.
4. The manager explains clearly to the managee what she wants done, how she wants it
done, why she wants it done, when it is to be completed and with whom the managee
is to interact.
5. Encouraging participation, the manager gains the managee’s commitment to the task.
6. The manager demonstrates trust and support throughout the process.
7. The manager and the managee together set up progress checkpoints.
8. The manager and the managee, jointly review the work. The manager reinforces
correctly – implemented tasks or parts of tasks.

5.6 Mentoring
The term ‘mentor’ is thus credited with the connotation of an advisor or a wise
person. While the agenda for coaching arises from the manager’s concerns, the agenda for
mentoring, like counselling, must answer the managee concerns. A long time ago, some wise
person coined five factors of production. These were, Money, Material, Machines, Men and
Management.
Mentoring is important to a management in its task of optimizing human resource to
make the productive process or the work system, maximally efficient, economic and
effective.
There are organizations that consider human beings as having a value over and above
that of a factor of production and believe in their development and welfare as such. To fulfil
this value, then, they experience the need for a suitable nurturing mechanism for the human
beings associated in their business – other than what the supervisors can do in their normal
course. Mentoring is one such mechanism. To realize the full potential of mentoring and to
avoid or reduce tension between the supervisor’s primary concern for production and her
consequent concern for people, they vest the role of a mentor in another suitable functionary
of the organization, other than the supervisor.
5.6.1 Objectives of Mentoring Process
 Bridge communication gap
 Model behavioural norms
 Listen to personal and job concerns
 Help mentee in searching alternative solutions for her problem(s)
 Respond to mentees’ emotional needs without making her dependent on the mentor in the
long term. In fact, the mentor must work herself out of this role in respect of a individual
mentee as soon as possible – by quickly making the mentee self-reliant in handling her
problems in organization.
 Perpetuate organizational culture and values.
 Promote a sense of belonging to commitment to and nurture emotional integration with
organization.
 Improve psychological maturity and effectiveness of both the mentor and the mentee.

5.6.2 Role of mentors with respect to their respective mentees:

 Guide and friend
 Counsellor (not coach)
 Facilitator
 Positive role model
 Well-wisher
 Motivator
 Developer of problem-solving skills, social sensitivity and behavioural flexibility – in
other words, emotional maturity.
5.6.3 Attributes of a Mentor
 A high performer should be well respected in organization.
 A functionary, senior to the mentee in her experience, having superior competence and
human skills, such that she can secure the mentee’s respect and confidence and in
whom the mentee can have faith and trust.
 The ability to respond to various situations and use appropriate approaches and
strategies.
 Inter-personal communication, counselling and helping skills.
 Accessibility and willingness to invest time in development of potential and capabilities
of mentees – genuine concern – empathy for people.
  Exploratory attitude – ability to help the mentee suggest alternatives rather than
suggesting or prescribing, by posting questions rather than imposing solutions.
 High commitment to organization’s goals and objectives.
5.6.4 Benefits of Mentoring System
A: For the Mentor
 Increase peer recognition and sense of parental pride.
 Able to pass on one’s experience, learning to the mentees.
 Develop her own human and people’s skills.
B. For the Mentee
 Increased self-confidence, a sense of self-worth and self esteem.
 Increased ability to cope with the formal and informal structures of organization in
particular, and to survive in the organizational jungle in general.
 Increased sense of psychological comfort while working in organization that can
release tremendous energy for more effective task performance and a genuine feeling of
being cared for as a worthwhile human being.
C: For organization
 Improved staff morale and motivation.
 Stronger values-based organizational culture.
 Lower staff grievances, failures and frustration, leading to higher staff retention.
 Higher team spirit and co-operation.
 Higher task effectiveness of individuals and teams.

5.7 Engendering Trust

The magic of trust can’t be explained better than through what is called the Placebo
Effect – by which the period of recovery of a patient is significantly related to the level of
confidence she has in the medicine and / or the doctor. The higher the level of confidence, the
lower the period of recovery!
In coaching, counselling or in mentoring, mutual trust is a necessary ingredient for
success. If we trust other people, it encourages them to trust us. The reverse is also true – if
we distrust others, they also tend to lose confidence in us.
The Johari Window model of interpersonal awareness commends that self-disclosure
preceds feedback. The candour with which we talk about our own failings and shortcomings
encourage people to trust our developmental intent of offering negative feedback to them.
 In order to enhance her reliability in the eyes of managees, a manager needs to
proactively approach likely problems before they materialize. If apprehended problems don’t
occur, managees feel confident about the manager’s trustworthiness, initiative and her ability
to protect them from ensuring environmental threats. Their belief in the manager’s capability
to help them succeed is thus immensely reinforced.
Certain key behaviours contribute to whether or not others perceive one as
trustworthy – that by blending principles implicit in the following four questions, a manger
can enjoin interpersonal trust in her work-relations, enhancing her trustworthiness and
acceptance as a trustworthy leader, coach, counsellor or mentor.
1. Is my behaviour predictable or erractic?
If a manager’s behaviour is confusing, indecisive or inconsistent’, her managees
cannot anticipate her behaviour or reactions even in known and familiar situations, leave
alone new or unforeseen circumstances. A fair degree of predictability is required for
managees to feel at ease with the manager, which feeling indicates and facilitates confidence
and trust. Predictability comes from consistency of personal values and organizational aims
seen in the manager’s decisions and behaviour in the multifarious situations she handles.
2. Do I communicate clearly or carelessly?
Transparency is not tentative – it entails serious responsibility. The greater the power
differential between a manager and her managee, the more injurious can irresponsible
transparency become. Transparency implies that the manager herself is clear about what she
means and she expresses herself in a manner that her intent and import are clearly
understood.
3. Do I treat promises seriously or lightly?
If a manager takes her own commitments seriously, the managees will follow suit. If
she treats them lightly, again, the managees will get the message. While we have earlier
discussed the problem of communication, here we talk of intent. Managers must promise only
that which is within them to fulfil. Agreeing to something in order to get over an immediate
problem, in the hope that it can be wriggled out of in due course, is dishonesty.
4. Am I forthright or dishonest?
Honesty doesn’t require full disclosure. It does, however, require a clear indication of
areas about which complete candour should not be expected and an explanation of why it is
not appropriate. Still, greater disclosure between people generally makes for better working
relationships and easier resolution of problems, should they arise.
5.8 Making a Fresh Beginning
A good assumption to start a new relationship, even with a person with whom we
already have an existing relationship, is that we need to know and understand each other
afresh from the standpoint of the new emerging relationship. IN the instant case, the manager
and the managee already have a relationship – we may call it supervisor –supervisee
relationship. In this relationship, with task accomplishment as its goal, both the manager and
the managee manifest certain behaviours and attributes, which are conducive to successful
task accomplishment. When the same two persons decide to enter into another kind of
relationship, say counselling, the goal changes – it now becomes self-development of the
managee, which will most likely demand a different set of behaviours and attributes on the
part of either party to become effective.
It is in this context, that both the manager and the managee need to know and
understand each other afresh – the manager in the counsellor role and managee in the
counselee role. Neither has had any past experience, knowledge or understanding of each
other in this new role relationship. Beginning to know our dyadic partner in a new
relationship will include understanding her legitimate interests, concerns, wants, hopes,
expectations and fears from the new relationship, as also what responses from us will be
appropriate as well as effective to meet these to a reasonable extent.
It is also important that neither party mixes the distinct roles assumed by her in
different dyadic relationships. The manager’s new role as the managee’s counsellor, for
example, should not raise, in the mind of either party, any expectations in their supervisor-
supervisee relationship which are inconsistent with the immediate limited goal of task
accomplishment.
This means adopting a learning attitude and an ability to switch roles as relationships
undergo change – keeping sharp focus on enriching current relationships all the time in order
to optimize contribution towards the mutual goal.
There is another face to this learning attitude – our willingness to learn from others is
a recognition of our dependence on others in achieving our goals, no matter how powerful we
are! As a consequence of this recognition, the lease that we can do is to acknowledge the
contribution of those, from whom we learn in our successes and thereby create a vested
interest in them, however small, to help us learn more from them.
5.9 Role of Efficacy
Pareek has done a lot of work on what contributes to role efficacy. According to him,
the performance of an individual working in an organization inter-alia depends on the way
she experiences her role in the organization. The extent to which the organizational role
satisfies her role-related expectations greatly influences her role performance. Unless the
individual has knowledge, technical competence and skills required for the role, she cannot
be effective. Yet, with all these requisites, she will not be able to perform to her full potential
if the role does not allow her to use these or if she feels frustrated in the role. Pareek holds:
‘The closer the role taking (responding to the expectation of various other people) moves to
role making (taking the initiative in designing the role creatively so that the expectation of
others as well as of the role occupant are integrated), the more the role is likely to be
effective’.
He calls this potential effectiveness, efficacy – ‘the psychological factor underlying
role effectiveness’. He has developed several instruments to assess the efficacy of the
organizational roles. One of these assesses role efficacy from the viewpoint of the role
occupant.
5.8.1 Dimensions of Role Efficacy
Pareek suggests that 10 dimensions influence a managee’s role efficacy: Centrality,
Integration, Proactivity, Creativity, Linkage, Helping, Super ordination, Influence, Growth
and Confrontation. The more each of these dimensions is present in a role, the higher the
efficacy of that role is likely to be. He describes the 10 dimensions as follows,
 Centrality vs. Peripherality: The dimension of centrality measures the role occupant’s
perception of the significance of her role. The more central that a managee feels her
role is in the organization, the higher will be her role efficacy.
 Integration vs. Distance: Integration between the self and the role contributes to role
efficacy and self-role distance diminishes efficacy.
 Proactivity vs. Reactivity: When a role occupant takes some initiative and does
something independently, that person is exhibiting proactive behaviour. On other hand,
if she merely responds to what others expect, the behaviour is reactive.
 Creativity vs. Routinism: When role occupants perceive that they do something new or
unique in their roles, their efficacy is high. The perception that they do only routine
tasks lowers role efficacy.
 Linkage vs. Isolation: Inter-role linkage contributes to role efficacy. If role occupants
perceive interdependence with others, their efficacy will be high. Isolation of roles
reduces efficacy.
 Helping vs. Hostility: One important aspect of efficacy is the individual’s perception of
how she gives or receives help. A perception of hostility decreases efficacy.
 Super ordination vs. Deprivation: One dimension of role efficacy is the perception that
role occupant contributes to some larger entity.
 Influence vs. Powerlessness: The role occupant’s feeling that they are able to exercise
influence in their roles increases their efficacy. The influence may be in terms of
decision making, implementation, advice or problem solving.
 Growth vs. Stagnation: When a role occupant has opportunities – and perceives them
as such –to develop in her role through learning new things, role efficacy is likely to be
high. Similarly, if the individual perceives her role as lacking in opportunities for
growth, the role efficacy will be low.
 Confrontation vs. Avoidance: When problems arise, they can either be confronted to
find solutions for them, or they can be avoided. Confronting problems to find solutions
contributes to efficacy and avoidance reduces efficacy.