Learning: Self-Efficacy

In the last byte, we looked at social learning and the role of self-efficacy in the same. In today's byte, we look at how self-efficacy can be developed and used by a manager.

It is clear from the last byte that self-efficacy is an extremely sought after behavior. Managers who want to develop self-efficacy in their teams would need to work on their available people resources - give them challenging jobs then support them with time investing in coaching, counseling to ensure that the performance improves and finally reward the employee's achievement. It would be very important in this attempt that the employees are empowered, power shared with them - these help increase the employee's self-esteem and self-efficacy.

At this point it would be important to highlight that social reinforcement in combination with self-efficacy can have a very strong influence on the behavior and performance of employees at work. It was also recognized by Bandura that financial and material rewards often occur following or in conjunction with the approval of others and also, undesirable experiences often follow social disapproval.

The actual challenge in real life for a manager lies in selecting and developing employees to achieve higher self-efficacy at work! The remaining would pretty much follow...