Interpersonal styles & operating effectiveness among university teachers-an empirical study

Interpersonal styles play a very significant role in the overall development of not only the individual managers, but also the teams, and inter team in their dyadic relations between supervisors and subordinates an organization. Eric Berne has described the impact on the various ego stages of an individual in terms of transactional analysis stating the parent, adult & child ego states and also described how they are important in developing the transactional profile of individuals in an organization. Building on the concept of these 3 ego states Dr. Uday Pareek (1988), has developed 12 ego states under an instrument called SPIRO-M, which is divided into six functional (i.e. positive) ego states called (ok styles) and six dysfunctional (Negative) ego states called (not ok styles). Since, very few of the researchers have taken Pareek’s functional and dysfunctional concept into their study for performance or effectiveness, an attempt is made in this study to find the style profile of teachers and the impact of performance, gender and seniority on the profile of influencing styles. Since, the SPIRO-M inventory is devised for industrial managers, no modifications are made in the questionnaire as it is suitable for teachers as managers in the university system. The questionnaire administered to a total of 102 teachers belonging to assistant professor and associate professors and responses were collected, using a google form. Student’s “t” distribution statistics was used for test of significance at p< .05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that performance, gender and seniority all impacted on the style profile of teachers. While Innovative style came out as the dominant style among male, efficient and senior teachers, confronting style dominated the female and junior and low score teachers.