The psychodynamics of social networking

Module 4 Resources

Module 4 – Networks and Connectedness

You will need to:

Conduct a SWOT Analysis on yourself

Complete at least two self-assessment tools including Gallup StrengthsFinder

Include naturally occurring data about yourself, for example feedback from others

Submit a final report including:

- Introduction (who you are and what has got you to this point)

- Research Methodology (20%)

- SWOT Analysis (30%)

- Diversity (20%)

- Organisational Fit (your fit with the organisation from Assignment One)

- Conclusion (where to now)

The final 30% is allocated to communication – how you communicate and present the report.

Assignment Two – Self Reflection

Additional Reading:

What makes a Leader? Daniel Goleman

Goleman is considered a guru on Emotional Intelligence - a group of five skills that enable the best leaders to

maximize their own, and their followers, performance

Self-Awareness: knowing one’s own strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and impact on others.

Self-Regulation: controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses, emotions and moods (to develop trust, integrity).

Motivation: being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement (unflagging energy to improve).

Empathy: understanding other people’s emotional make-up (including sensitivity to cross-cultural differences).

Social Skill: building rapport with others to move them in desired directions (including extensive networking).

Network Maps

Last Week:

YouTube - Rediscovering Personal Networking: Michael Goldberg at TEDxMillRiver (19 minutes)

Reading – Networking for Business Success

Reading – Business Networking can be Taught

This Week:

Reading - The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

Chapter of Book - Psychodynamics of Social Networking, Aaron Balick (165 pages, Chap 2)

Recommended - Video - Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce, Karen Lawson (1:09 minutes)

Not discussed – Political campaigning 2.0: the influence of online news & social networking sites on attitudes & behaviour.

Module 4 Resources

How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

The paper examines the psychological consequences of engaging in networking – it focused on people who initiated the networking.

The authors agree that networking behaviours are essential to individual’s career success and the paper introduces different types of networking:

professional networking – work-related, task execution, professional success

personal networking – friendship and emotional support

instrumental networking – proactive and with a specific goal

spontaneous networking - connections that simply emerge.

How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

The authors proposed that:

Professional-Instrumental networking clearly has a selfish intent, because the person initiating the relationship is doing so to obtain certain benefits.

Because this intent is clear to the initiator, but perhaps not to the other person, the initiator may feel guilty about this form of deception.

Therefore, professional-instrumental networking feels morally compromising and harder to justify to oneself. People who experience immoral behavior often say they ‘feel dirty’, as opposed to the feeling of cleanliness with moral behavior.

How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty

The authors found that:

Professional-Instrumental Networking produce greater feelings of dirtiness.

Professionals who feel dirtier tend to engage in it less frequently, and in turn, have lower job performance.

The greater the power people have when they engage in instrumental networking, the less dirty such networking can make them feel. Why?

The content (professional or personal) and approach (instrumental or spontaneous) of networking both influence the psychological experience of those engaging in it.

Outcomes for Senior Managers

To foster the advancement and effectiveness of professionals at low hierarchical levels or in minority groups – who have minimal power in the organisation – organisations need to create opportunities for emergent forms of networking.

Those who need instrumental networking the most are the least likely to engage in it.

Psychodynamics of Social Networking

Psychodynamics, also known as dynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasises systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience.

Psychodynamics is that conscious and unconscious mental and emotional forces that determine your personality and motivation

Is the development of what has come to be called “Web 2.0” changing us in some fundamental way, or is it simply a novel technological platform through which the same old psychological traits express themselves through a different medium?

“Virtual relating is real and it is different. I have come to the conclusion that the way in which we are relating online may be changing us in some way - this is neither good nor bad, but neither is it neutral”.

“More and more, our internal and external worlds are merged as aspects of ourselves are present online twenty-four hours a day. As a result, we are, at the same time, made more accessible than ever before, but also more relationally distracted because we all share in this accessibility”.

Psychodynamics of Social Networking

The fundamental differences between identity play online and real life fall into four broad categories of online difference:

The instantaneous nature of online engagements.

The ease of replicability of information online.

The ease with which privacy can be lost.

The way in which information logged online may never be erased and may be accessed at any time (the digital dossier).

Psychodynamics of Social Networking

Psychodynamics of Social Networking

Younger generations are more connected-up than ever, deploying much of their identities, relationships, and social capital across online social networks. The numbers seem to indicate that there is no going back; identity, social life and relationships are now mediated online.

There are however some rumblings that there may be a backlash of sorts – 61% of Facebook users have taken a break of several weeks or more.

Professional organisations are still finding their feet in this rapidly changing world of online relating. While it is vital that institutions and professional organisations create their own codes of ethics and procedures with regard to social networking, it is also incumbent upon them to think psychologically about the choices they are making in the construction of such codes.

Psychodynamics of Social Networking

“The psychodynamics of instantaneous, connected-up culture has its consequences, and one of the consequences of hyper-connectivity may be a kind of relational fatigue, a fatigue that is further exacerbated by the lack of boundaries present in the online world”.

“Living in boundary-less space can ultimately result in feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness”.

Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce

Collaborative Consumption – a powerful economic force – defined as:

“a class of economic arrangements in which participants share access to products or services, rather than having individual ownership”. You obtain and provide services or valuable resources to other customers either directly or through a mediator

→ Ownership, accumulation, substitution

→ We are shifting from ownership of assets to sharing access to assets

→ Three laws of collaborative consumption: Idling capacity, critical mass, high costs

→ If you answer yes to all three you have the capacity for collaborative consumption

→ Generation Comparison – need for new platforms due to change in values – a

lifestyle that is fulfilling

Collaborative Consumption Examples

do not own hotels or any other assets

do not own vehicles or any other assets

do not own any equipment, tools or any other assets

Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce

Shifting Collaborative Values:

Collaboration

Empowerment

Openness

Humanness

New Currency - trust

Trust between strangers – digital credibility allows this to happen – your online profile

We can now aggregate and collect information and filter and sort it to understand people’s values and behaviours – it reduces risk and creates trust.

Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce

Disruption is happening in every market and every industry.

You will either be disruptive or be disrupted.

How does this impact on the future of work?

The race is now who can monetise the new currency – trust.

The barriers to equity are changing - Crowd-funding is where you donate cash and receive a reward or equity in the business.

Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce

Equity-based crowd funding is now legal in Australia – up to $5 million per year can be raised - this will remove barriers to funding (banks) and increase connectivity with the community. $5.2 billion has been raised in crowd funding around the world.

Australia is ranked 5th in the world in terms of contributions but most of our money was going overseas.

-You give money to a business and get a small share of the business

Example: The Flow Hive – a bee hive that provides honey on tap – wanted to raise $70,000 via crowd funding and raised $15.3 million. Now have 51,000 customers in 130 countries with bee hives. Check out: https://www.honeyflow.com.au/

Collaborative Consumption and the Future of the Workforce

How will this affect labour and how people find jobs?

The role of Universities is not to help people get jobs but to help people monitise their time and their talent, removing the barriers between the individual and opportunity.

Example: AirTasker - https:// www.airtasker.com/

People are now becoming ‘super taskers’ – they have digital credibility, they have developed trust, they can charge higher rates, and they are aligning with other people to build businesses.

Collaboration in Adelaide - Coworking

313 Halifax Street

Drink, Eat, Work

Little City Studio

Clarence Coworking for professionals is a step above the standard coworking spaces.

Has semi-private booth options, acoustically treated meeting rooms, casual meeting spaces, abundance of networking events and more facilities

There are 3 Sydney CBD locations to suit people’s business needs

Collaboration could be facilitated through the professional community offered

NO contracts involved and flexible payments month by month

With mail management facilities, you have three choices of ideal desk space to choose from based on what suits you

https://clarenceprofessionalgroup.com.au/coworking-sydney/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvIyX7a715gIVDw4rCh08vwP5EAAYASAAEgK5J_D_BwE

Coworking spaces in Sydney – Clarence Coworking

Clarence Coworking - Sydney

]

133 Castlereagh St, Sydney

111 Elizabeth St, Sydney

65 York St, Sydney

Clarence Coworking – Hot desk Flexible

Clarence Coworking – Hot Desk Unlimited

Clarence Coworking- Exclusive Desk

Challenges….

Distractions

Noise-induced illness

Communicable diseases

Issues with other workers

Differing social and professional expectations

Over management

Varied personal environmental preferences

A sense of overcrowding

Privacy issues

Source: https://zenbooth.net/blogs/zenbooth-blog/top-9-coworking-space-challenges-the-office-pod-solution

Do you have an attitude of a leader?

Coworking….

Do you prefer coworking? Group activity…….