Mental Models and Perception Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Mental Models and Perception - Essay Example As the report declares several organizations have coaching and mentoring schemes to facilitate employee learning and skill development. This involves having role models within the organization who serve as a reference point for employees. This is most common when nurturing leadership skills in young employees who learn certain skills from the current leaders. Individual organizational members undergo a learning process that contributes to the overall organizational learning. The human mind has proven to have cognitive limitations as well as an infinite capacity in terms of learning. Much of organizational learning depends on individual stimulus-response by continuous interactions with other members. This paper stresses that human beliefs are based on individual perceptions and assumptions and those about the world around us. The accuracy with which employees understand their employers and clients depends on how they perceive their subjects. Understanding how organizations should be led or managed contributes to the development process of employee bias. Employee interaction with managers, mentors, client, and fellow workers determine the type of perception formed in their mind. These features form the mental framework that drives assumptions, beliefs, and the ultimate actions. The quality of the relationship between employers and employees determines the quality of learning in the organization. Successful organizational learning and change depends on the ongoing participation and commitment of employees. This determines the level of interaction and how each member of the team perceives the other person. Team work in every organization facilitates learning and depends mostly on in dividual perception (Waldeck, 2006). Human beings rely on their senses to form mental models about the world surrounding them (Lecture 1-3, 2012; Parker, E. S. 2007). These models create the lens through which human beings view the world. This in turn determines individual attitude, behavior, results, and relationships with others. Mental models can occur in the form of attitudes, beliefs, opinions, perceptions, assumptions, and so forth. They can also occur in the form of generalizations such as certain types of people are untrustworthy or are caring than others. Mental maps of the way things are and how they are supposed to be form frames of reference. These references are consulted every time an individual meets a new person or acquires a new experience. Many individuals in an organization fail to reach their optimum potential due to negative mental models harbored in their minds. Ideas and innovations also fail to be translated meaningfully due to their conflict with the mental models existing in an organization (Morgan, 2002; Hoeft, R. M.2008). Individual reactions to people are determined by the mental models formed through perceptions. They determine the type of details recorded by the mind when an individual meets new people. This explains why some employers or employees love certain people in an organization and others despise the same people. The type of details recorded by an individual’s mind when they meet for the first time determines the relationship that will exist afterwards. Workers in an organization can have ingrained internal images about employers or fellow workers that make them fail to adjust even when they are