Respond to peer discussion below with either disagreeing with or expanding their ideas.

Part 1

Upon reading "Examining the Evidence: Snakes, Self-Efficacy, and Task Performance: Too Much of a Good Thing?" I have identified whether self-efficacy can affect individual task performance and how managers can enhance the positive effects of self-efficacy on their employees.

Understanding that self-efficacy is influenced by one's belief in their knowledge, skills, and abilities to accomplish a given situation or task is inherently important for employee motivation, success, and performance (Bandura, 1977). In assessing self-efficacy and its effect on task performance in the workplace based on the conflicting data from research, it can be concluded that in moderation task performance can increase and instill a true sense of confidence. Conversely, having an excessive level of self-efficacy has been shown to cause overconfidence and therefore can result in task underperformance.

To enhance the positive effects of self-efficacy in their employees, Khalique & Singh (2019) assert "For an employee to imply self-efficacy in improving his performance at the workplace, he must understand the sources of developing effective self-efficacy" (p. 2). Those sources are mastery experience, social modeling, social persuasion, and psychological responses, as noted by Albert Bandura. Within each source, managers can influence the positive effects of self-efficacy by helping their employees create S.M.A.R.T goals, task them with projects to complete that align with their goals, and provide them with constructive feedback along the way to goal attainment. These steps will enable employees to gain self-confidence which is at the heart of self-efficacy while allowing managers to coach, teach, and mentor their employees to realize the positive effects of self-efficacy.

Part 2

Upon taking the General Self-Efficacy Assessment in Chapter 3, I scored 38 out of 40. This illustrates that I have strong general self-efficacy and am likely to be able to effectively cope with challenges while remaining adaptive to stressful events. I would consider this assessment to be aligned with my confidence level in reacting to stressful situations. I tend to remain calm during stressful events so I can continue to think critically while I attempt to solve the problem at hand. This also benefits others around me in a work setting insofar as I can coach and mentor employees on how they can learn to cope with unknowns in real time so they can increase their self-efficacy through the use of social modeling.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review, 191-215. Retrieved from https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=f2a6f8b3-22e8-48d4-abf0-105011f4b534%40redis