SCENARIO

A group of employees at Spruce Paper Company recently finished a major project that involved multiple departments, from creative to distribution. The goal of the project was to develop a new line of holiday cards. One of the group members, Ximena, worked on this project from the beginning.

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: XIMENA

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Ximena has worked in creative design for a few years. For the holiday card project, Ximena and the team work together to come up with new ideas for cards. Ximena spends most of her time coordinating with the group on what art will work best for each style of card, making sure they reach a consensus about each design.

The group spends time in each meeting checking in with Ximena on publication updates. Being the only member of the creative team on the holiday card project, Ximena does not have anyone to go to for advice. If an art-related issue comes up, she has to talk to someone outside the group and then report this information back to the group.

As she was born in Spain, Ximena brings a unique perspective to the job. However, she sometimes struggles with American idioms and phrases. To ensure she is understanding the perspectives of other group members, she often asks them to repeat themselves and then restates the main idea she heard.

1. Ximena’s Status

2. Ximena’s Role

3. How did Ximena’s status and role impact how she worked with others to complete the project?

4. What relationship-building strategy did Ximena demonstrate?

5. What are some collaboration strategies Ximena used to work with the team?

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: RITA

Rita has been leading the project from day one. She is a senior member of the marketing team and has been with the company for 15 years. Rita is responsible for managing multiple departments composed of diverse team members with a variety of backgrounds and skill sets.

It is ultimately Rita’s responsibility to set goals for the group, delegate tasks, and ensure the project is finished on time and within budget. Although Rita values the varied opinions, experience, and perspectives of all her team members, she tends to rely heavily on the expertise and opinion of Nimish. Because they have worked together in the past, she trusts him and gives him a lot of responsibilities. Rita relies heavily on Nimish to deliver progress updates on tight deadlines.

Rita’s frequent deference to Nimish makes some of the other team members feel that she favors him. Rita tries not to show favoritism by consulting the whole team before moving forward with the decisions she and Nimish have reached.

1. Rita’s Status

2. Rita’s Role

3. How did Rita’s status or role impact how she engaged and collaborated with others to complete the project?

4. Which type of relationship-building strategy did Rita demonstrate?

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: NIMISH

Nimish collaborates on the project remotely from India. As a Senior Associate with the marketing team, he wears multiple hats. Some of his duties include creating marketing materials and implementing Rita’s notes. He is also the team’s best resource for technical support. He has been employed by Spruce Paper Company for five years. He and Rita worked together at the corporate offices when he lived stateside.

Team members have complained to Rita that they have trouble understanding Nimish on conference calls because of his accent, and they are frustrated that he’s based in India and never makes any in-person appearances. Rita defends Nimish’s contributions and uses the opportunity as a teachable moment to explain the importance of diversity in the workplace to her team, citing the value of Nimish’s unique perspective.

Nimish tries to address the team’s concerns by reaching out to every member to figure out how to best accommodate their various tech needs and comfort levels with preferred methods of communication. He introduces the team to a new instant-messaging application that makes it easier to keep in contact and share quick ideas.

1. Nimish’s Status

2. Nimish’s Role

3. How did Nimish’s status or role impact how he engaged and collaborated with others to complete the project?

4. Which type of relationship-building strategy did Nimish demonstrate?

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: DAVE

Dave is a graduate student in marketing at a local university and has been working on this project as an unpaid intern. He hopes the internship will lead to a full-time job offer.

Dave assists with market research, prepares proposals and presentations, and provides administrative support to the marketing department. This is Dave’s first office job. Though he sometimes makes mistakes, he is always quick to apologize for them.

Dave leads a weekly meeting to share new marketing ideas. He respects everyone’s contributions and is mindful to keep his emotions in check, especially when Rita rejects his pitches. In one of these meetings, Dave pitched an idea to Rita and her bosses that was well-received and later implemented by the company. He made certain the whole team received credit for their contributions to his presentation.

1. Dave’s Status

2. Dave’s Role

3. How did Dave’s status or role impact how he engaged and collaborated with others to complete the project?

4. Which type of relationship-building strategy did Dave demonstrate?

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: ERNESTO

Ernesto is a retired expert in the greeting-card industry and has been called in to serve as a consultant on this project. He’s worked for a number of firms over the course of his career, but never for Spruce Paper Company.

Ernesto works closely with Rita and helps provide direction on the project. He’s also taken an interest in mentoring Dave, giving him goals to work toward and deadlines to meet.

Ernesto has been retired for six years and is in need of a refresher on current trends. For this reason, team members in the field find it frustrating to work with Ernesto. Ernesto is open to hearing their feedback, and even encourages them to voice their complaints so that he can avoid future conflict.

Ernesto offers skills and knowledge that are very valuable to the project. His key contributions have been summarizing each department’s obstacles and mitigating tension in meetings by moderating differences of opinion.

1. Ernesto’s Status

2. Ernesto’s Role

3. How did Ernesto’s status or role impact how he engaged and collaborated with others to complete the project?

4. Which type of relationship-building strategy did Ernesto demonstrate?

5. Identify two collaboration strategies that the team members at Spruce Paper Company used to complete their project. Be sure to use evidence to illustrate how they used those strategies.

Remember, if you use any exact wording or information from this webtext or another source, be sure to add an in-text citation in SWS style.

Collaboration Strategy How did the team use that strategy? Provide evidence.

6. In 2–3 sentences, explain why relationship building and collaboration are important both personally and professionally.

Remember, if you use any exact wording or information from this webtext or another source, be sure to add an in-text citation in SWS style.

ADD YOUR SOURCE LIST

If you used information or ideas from the webtext in your responses on this page, you should have added SWS-style in-text citations to those responses. Now you need to add corresponding entries to your source list.

Remember, there are two different ways to cite this webtext. Soomo Learning is the author of all the Assignment pages, and Steven Barkan is the author of all the other webtext pages. So your source list should look something like this:

1. Steven Barkan. 2020. Sociology: The Story of Us. p. 6.11. https://www.webtexts.com

2. Soomo Learning. 2020. Sociology: The Story of Us. p. 6.19. https://www.webtexts.com