Business Diary

My working place is a clinic with a multilevel structure and a number of departments, which cover clients’ needs. Working at the dental clinic is a motivating and exciting job. It is tightly connected with stress, an undetermined schedule, and challenging tasks, though. However, my colleagues are versatile personalities that are open to communication and sharing experiences, which makes my workplace comfortable. Observing my colleagues is sometimes intriguing. I try to guess their next steps and learn their behavior. Such a practice helps in understanding and communicating with colleagues and patients as well as structuring the line of behavior. It allows me to feel confident in the team and show positive professional results. The experiment with writing down my observation in a diary was helpful for I could read and analyze the previous notes. This approach provided another perspective of the situation. This paper presents the result of my experimentation.

Day 1

Monday takes an effort to concentrate, and leave weekend thoughts behind. Some people still cannot fully devote their energy to work. Most of them are in exalted mood but few persons look morose. Mood can affect the quality of work, cause damage to social status, and be critical in rational decision-making. Usually, we have a meeting in the middle of the day. The chief manager gathers the doctors to share the latest professional news, changes concerning the clinic, nearest plans, and objectives. I consider joking relevant at these meetings. However, it is important to understand whether a particular situation allows using humor. I do not think that it affects our job in a negative way. Instead, jokes help to feel more open to dialogue and self-confident. The lead of the company is an assured and straight in statements person. His working performance is very efficient, which allows everyone to get precise instructions and develop his/her creative potential as well. The management activities include organization of the decision-making process, resources allocation, and directing the activities of personnel to goals attaining. This role foresees planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. The stuff must follow an inspiring and resolute leader. Otherwise, the system will not work appropriately. Communication and networking are the key factors of head’s success as well. At the meeting, people faces become serious, the atmosphere in the room changes. This week, except performing my ordinary work, I will also participate in the preparation for the large dentistry exhibition. The first feeling that I faced when discovered it was honor. Due to this opportunity, I feel worthy to present my company and show the best it can achieve to the clients. Second, I realized that there are many things that have to be prepared before the conference. After the meeting, everyone who had got additional tasks looked slightly exhausted even in the middle of the day. However, increasing the employee’s involvement, the company enhances job motivation and satisfaction, gains greater organization commitment, and achieves higher working productivity.

Day 2

The second day gives a clear vision of the tasks defined yesterday. In the morning, I meet with my four colleagues, and we discuss what has to be done within the preparation. Everyone has got the ideas. I can determine a group leader at once: he is an experienced doctor as well as intelligent person. What is more, he possesses an ability to gather people around himself and lead them. His ideas are precise and thoughtful. It seems to me that the things I propose are creative and innovative, and my colleagues’ reaction on them confirms it. It is a wonderful feeling when you combine the ideas in your head, find new applications for them, and see that they are useful. Personal and team creativity success can help in career development and “new horizons opening.” The organization can increase its level by offering comfortable work space for people, providing the teams with outdoor activities, setting the parameters of tasks, and engaging adaptability (Taylor, 2016).

I can notice that people share their thoughts during the whole day. During coffee break, my colleague from the other unit asked me about the future conference. It seemed that she also wanted to participate, and I can understand it. Involvement in activities means that management trusts you and can provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your most developed professional skills. It also serves as brilliant motivation. During the day, I observe colleagues creating formal groups and working for the result. The others unite into informal circles, which are aimed at news and gossip sharing. On the one hand, I do not approve rumors spreading since it may lead to defining better or worth co-workers who can handle or not the tasks given. In addition, it may slightly turn into the motivation decrease and employees’ conduct deviance. I have faced similar situations for a few times, mostly in the earliest years of my career. At first, you are happy for a person. Later, you start thinking why is he or she better than you and feeling decay. This feeling significantly affects your working performance quality. On the other hand, people need small informal talks during the difficult days. For example, we discuss weather, political or economic situation, family affairs, and holiday plans. Without doubts, sometimes, these talks concern our staff and its members. If the conversations of this type have “healthy” measures, they do not disturb the working effectiveness but let people to distract from their duties for a short period of time in order to assist them in reaching better concentration in the future.

Day 3

The main task of an efficient manager is to keep everything under control and correct certain actions when it is needed or help with the ideas realization. Today, the key organizer gathered the information about the intermediate course of action. I can notice that the lead of our organization often tries to look more “powerful” than a situation needs. However, this person is friendly and cheerful at free time. When it comes to projects and ideas realization, he starts to pretend that he has got more power and authority than he actually does. I think the manager has to concentrate on motivating the stuff, selecting the most effective communicative channels, and resolving problematic cases. Due to it, everyone would recognize the chef’s authority and follow the rules without demonstrating any insubordination. There is no need to show this multi-functionalism every time it is possible. It is more effective to use a situational approach.

It is intriguing to notice other people moods and nonverbal signals. In addition, it seems interesting to observe human behavior in different cases. It can be demonstrated through the next situation. Today, two nurses in the clinic were promoted, and we congratulated them sincerely. I had met one of them during the break, and we had a conversation. That person worked for the result; now, she feels that one more step of the hard way is covered. She is a young woman and has joined us about a year ago. What is more, she is a highly-motivated person and performs very well. These factors along with professionalism are the keys to career development. Salary rate is often the most relevant reason for the skills improvement, job search, and motivation gaining. The payment in the dental clinic is transparent and objective. Each doctor/nurse gets it according to the professional experience, performance quality, and amount of work done during certain period. Therefore, everyone tries to do his/her best to reach better payment and faster career promotion. Job characteristics of the employees include skills variety, task identity proficiency, ability to define priority, autonomy and cooperation as well as timely feedback. In addition, the processes of rotation, staff enlargement, and professional degree and proficiency enrichment are always present in the organization. The promoted nurse’s performance formula includes motivation, ability, and opportunity. Motivation and ability are the factors, which are dependent on the employee’s will (Sablynski, 2008). The opportunity to perform, in its turn, depends on both a person and organization. I feel happy for her and her colleague’s success and proud that I am a part of justified and equitable organization where everyone is evaluated fairly. After observing the conduct and activities of all the individuals of the dentistry, I can say that more than two halves of the personnel are fully satisfied with working conditions and highly motivated.

Day 4

During working days, I can improve my emotional intelligence skills and watch whether I remain aware of my feelings demonstration within the clinic despite various factors including family relations, friends, children’s school progress, political and economic conditions among others influence me. Detecting the emotions in other people is another issue. To my mind, it is a certain practice to guess these signals and respond to them on time. One of my co-workers looked depressed starting from Monday. Today, I have talked to him and revealed that he got the financial difficulties. What is interesting is that after our conversation, when I met him in the hall, he smiled to me. I had a feeling like we have shared a secret. I cannot help him with the existing problems but still can support him and remove a part of the weight from his shoulders. I can see that the above-mentioned colleague is thankful for the dialogue and understanding. In this case, even such a small thing may help the person to solve problems and keep qualitative presentation at work.

From the situation described above, I have made the conclusion that a progressive manager had to use the emotional intelligence skills and analyze the collective mood. He or she must consider job satisfaction, working environment, informal groups interaction, official and unofficial relations between doctors, individual situations, and private questions. Almost every day, I notice certain changes in colleagues’ attitude, level of motivation, and other things. Even barely perceptible signs of body language, for example, body or head turn, eye contact, gesture, sitting position can show the interlocutor’s mood (). It is essential to manage these emotional cues and prevent unpleasant cases, for instance, depression because of financial problems, which may affect the performance of the whole department or clinic and customers’ level of satisfaction with services.

Day 5

The clinic has a multifunctional structure and cooperative web. Employing people that strongly meet the requirements is a major task of the human resources department co-workers. One of the key demands is strong team working. In the realities of the modern world, it is almost unreal to remain apart from communication within a collective and with customers during the day. In the clinic, each department has its interpersonal relations status. Mostly, it can be characterized as friendly and reciprocal. Every doctor is ready to help a colleague in a complicated case, and every nurse can change her shifts in favor of someone who needs to solve certain individual question. I can state that our collective is a friendly one, and mutual understanding is its distinctive feature. That system was not built in one day. Gathering people within a collective took a long period of common language search and sifting (Hall, 2005).

On Monday, the lead manager reminded about team building activity arranged on Saturday. As a note, if there is any team building or personal development training, it is mostly held on Saturdays. I think that it is not very convenient. Everyone wants to use weekend time implementing his/her own or family plans. I believe that the trainings could be conducted on working days as well. However, it is an opportunity to learn something new and useful as well as spend time with colleagues. This Saturday, we are going to have a paintball game. It was decided by the majority of the votes of the employees. Everyone will come with his/her family member or friend. We are going to relax, forget about work and private problems for a few hours, and have a great time together. To my mind, it is a positive experience to organize these sessions within a company. At to the end of the week, to be truthful, my thoughts were “turning” to the weekend plans for almost all day long.

Analyzing the company and the team for a week, observing individual emotions and moods demonstration, formal and informal groups’ collaboration, I understood that there are numerous independent factors influencing the working process. However, a number of things remain highly dependent on employees’ performance and clients’ attitudes. In my opinion, an employee willing to become an effective professional has to investigate and try managerial skills improvement. A person who wants to be successful has to practice creativity and guidance. Original and lateral thinking are highly valued today as well. The proficiency does not come at once but takes time and desire. A successful leader has to provide good self-preparation and be able to transfer the gained knowledge to colleagues. It has to be a justified decision, and all employees have to receive equal development chances and abilities. In sum, these factors can provide a strong increase in the organization’s activity enhancement.