D082 Task 2 - Gabrielle Simpson

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School

Western Governors University *

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Course

D082

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Communications

Date

Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by AmbassadorDanger12835

D082 Task 2 A. Personal Values 1. Honesty – Honesty is personally meaningful to me because of my past personal trauma centered around lying. I spent many years of my life having lies told to me by family and loved ones. I was made to believe the lies and ultimately ended up very hurt at the end when the truth came out. My mom on the other hand always said honesty was the best policy. She taught me that liars can’t keep their stories straight and that lying will get you in more trouble than just telling the truth. Being honest with people also shows them that you can be trusted. It may be difficult to share the truth about a situation but, in my experience, sharing the truth, even when it is a difficult truth to admit, will give you better outcomes than in situations where you attempt to lie. For those reasons, I consider honesty my top personal core value. 2. Communication – Communication is personally meaningful to me because I believe that communication is the key to any successful relationship. No one is a mind reader; they cannot always tell how something has made you feel or what you need. When someone does not communicate with me, I find myself feeling frustrated. Effective and open communication allows room for many other things, such as empathy, trust, and a better understanding of that person. We spend all day communicating with the people around us in a variety of ways and it is important to me that I communicate effectively while using the right tools. Sometimes a conversation is better had in person or perhaps you need a quick answer, so a text is more effective. Communicating with your employer is important to discuss changes you wish to see with the company, goals you want to achieve, discuss the coworker who has been making you uncomfortable, or even request days off. 3. Empathy – Empathy is an especially personally meaningful value to me. As someone who has had to live through more than I think anyone my age should have to go through by my age, I think it is important to share and receive empathy. Being able to understand and share in another's emotions is a key part of emotional intelligence and allows you to build better and stronger relationships with people since humans are rather emotional creatures. I have recently struggled with my mental health after finding out my mom, who I am quite close to, has stage 4 cancer. My coworker one day made a harsh opinionated statement about mental health not knowing I struggled with those thoughts. My working relationship with that coworker took a major hit that day when she expressed her lack of empathy toward people struggling with mental health. I have always regarded myself as being highly empathetic and it is important to me that my friendships and personal relationships be with people who are also empathetic. Understanding and sharing in others' emotions and being around people who understand and share in mine is a core value for me.

4. Autonomy – Autonomy is personally meaningful to me because I believe in people having the freedom to be themselves and have control over their own lives. I grew up with a controlling father and as a fresh adult ended up in a relationship with a controlling person. After spending so many years of my life being controlled by others, having control over my own life is important to me. In the workplace, giving employees autonomy has been shown to improve creative thinking, employee engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity. Having workplace autonomy such as the ability to work from home or have a flexible schedule has been extremely helpful in navigating my personal life while also still giving my best to my career. B. Compare Values 1. Honesty is an essential core value to have for you to be trusted by those you interact with. Even when it is difficult to share the truth, being honest will get you further than lying. Alliah Company’s practices have a good chance of being aligned with the value of honesty. Alliah company recently changed its ethics and corporate social responsibility statement. Alliah Company's ethics statement now says they are committed to doing the right thing for their stakeholders. While their corporate social responsibility statement says they are committed to reducing their environmental impact. If Alliah is following through on these two commitments, then they are sticking to the value of honesty. Being honest about Alliah's successes, and even failures, towards keeping to these commitments they have made will benefit the company by helping keep their customer base and bring in a new customer base which in turn benefits the stakeholders with increased profits. Today customers are more concerned than ever before about the environmental impact companies make in day-to-day operations and it is becoming more commonplace that customers pick which companies they do and don’t support based on that company's commitment to reducing their environmental impact. 2. Communication is a key part of any successful relationship, especially effective and open communication. Good communication is needed to express concerns or dissatisfaction in the workplace. Alliah company seems to be misaligned with this core value. They don’t see the importance of open communication with the leadership team and instead rely on a strict chain of command for communicating. The leadership team might not even be aware of issues within the organization or employee dissatisfaction because a chain of command relies on the person below you to communicate the issues the people under them brought up. If leadership changed to more open communication, employees would have a better chance to address the things they want and need to be changed to be more productive and achieve the goals Alliah Company wants to achieve. Opening communication channels within the company will also improve employee morale and trust because they will feel seen and heard and this in turn could boost their rating on the A-Z List of Emotional Intelligent Companies.

3. Empathy is the ability to share and understand other people's feelings. It is an important core value to have for high emotional intelligence and building good relationships with those around you. Alliah company is on the right track for aligning with this value but in its current state, they are more misaligned than aligned. Alliah has decided to schedule emotional intelligence training for its staff which is a good first step to get all employees to prioritize empathy since it is such an important part of emotional intelligence. However, the company leadership has chosen to not be in attendance. This makes it appear that leadership does not feel like they need or have room for improvement in their emotional intelligence. On the other hand, Human Resources has told leadership that they need to understand the employees have values and merits as individuals which shows a lack of understanding and empathy on leadership's part. Successful and great leaders have high emotional intelligence. If the leadership fails to attend the training, how can they lead by example? Alliah is more likely to improve their ratings on the A–Z List of Emotionally Intelligent Companies if they were to improve their empathy for their employees and their emotional intelligence overall. 4. Autonomy is the ability to have control over your life and make decisions for yourself. In the workplace, autonomy has been shown to improve job satisfaction, creative thinking, and productivity. Alliah Company is misaligned with this core value. They have shown resistance towards allowing employees to work remotely as they feel like this would decrease productivity. However, allowing employees to work from home, even if part- time or as needed, is one way to increase workplace autonomy. If Alliah company increased workplace autonomy, they would find the opposite of their concerns and find an increase in productivity. Increasing workplace autonomy also increases creative thinking which would greatly benefit Alliah company and meet their desired goal of creating a more innovative workplace culture which in turn increases company profit. C1. Explanation of Improvements 1. If Alliah company follows through with the Human Resources suggestion to hire a more diverse workforce, then this is one potential way that they can improve their cultural intelligence. Hiring a more diverse workforce and creating teams of people who have individuals who come from different cultures will prevent group thinking. Group thinking occurs when you have a group of people that all share the same or similar cultural traits. Hiring individuals who grew up in a different country, practice a different religion, are a different gender or age than most employees, or live with a disability are all ways to increase employee diversity. These individuals will bring new ways of thinking and increased creativity to the workgroups. Alliah wants to create an innovative culture and the best way to do that is to bring in new and diverse individuals who will have innovative ideas that differ from their peer group that shares a similar culture.

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2. Expanding to different cultural markets is another way that Alliah can potentially improve its cultural intelligence. One way to do this would be to expand their products to another country. With the expansion, Alliah company can create a local branch in the new country and hire locals to run that branch. Alliah can send employees from their corporate office to the new branch to train the new employees and collaborate towards a successful launch in the new country. Sending employees to work in other countries that are willing to commit to learning the local culture will allow those employees to improve their cultural intelligence. The customers in the new country that will be buying the products will also benefit from Alliah having greater cultural intelligence. Products can be tweaked to better match the needs of the new customers, those employees working on the production lines back at headquarters will need to learn the tweaks that are being made and why they are important for Alliah’s success in the new county. Alliah’s production line employees are now also improving their cultural intelligence by learning about how the changes will increase the success of the product. C2. Explanation of Potential Challenges 1. Potential diversity challenge: Communication Issues As Alliah hires a more diverse workforce they may start to encounter communication issues. Someone whose first language isn’t English or who has a heavy accent might be difficult for other employees to understand. Or maybe the new younger employees prefer to use the office instant messaging program and text to communicate instead of emails and phone calls. As Alliah expands into a new country the local workforce being hired could speak a different language, making training and cross-country team collaboration difficult. 2. One action that Alliah could take to overcome this challenge would be to create a clear policy on office communication practices. This policy would outline what forms of communication were appropriate to use and when those forms of communication should be used. The policy could state that the office instant messaging program or texts should only be used for quick questions that are not time-sensitive. While items that are time- sensitive or require more explanation should warrant a phone call. Another action that Alliah can take to overcome language barriers would be to hire bilingual staff for the teams that will be collaborating with those in the new country. Hiring bilingual staff will increase the company's success and competitiveness in new global markets where the primary language is not English. Bilingual staff can assist with training and marketing in the new country.

C3. Hofstede and Communication 1. Identify the Hofstede dimension that you will use: Femininity/Nurturing 2. Key characteristics that the dimension of Femininity/Nurturing relies on are relationships, connections, quality of life, interactions, and collaboration. Alliah Company will need all of these to achieve its goals of increasing its emotional intelligence rating. Alliah can increase workplace flexibility and work-life balance by allowing employees to have flexible schedules, and remote work capabilities to respectfully communicate to employees that Alliah values quality of life. Alliah’s emotional intelligence training respectfully communicates to employees that Alliah values good relationships with their team and managers. Hosting workplace social activities such as a company lunch allows employees to interact and make connections across other teams. The training and work social events respectfully communicate that Alliah values connections, interactions, and again quality of life.

D082 Task 2 - Gabrielle Simpson

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