SLC 300 (601) Fall 2024 Leading with an Ethical Perspective

The reading on Moodle titled “How to link personal values with team values” is the reading I felt best related to my personal life experiences. So what does the word value mean? According to the reading it says, “A principle, standard, or quality considered inherently worthwhile or desirable.” Everyone has many desires, beliefs and values! Not everyone is going to have the same set of values, beliefs, or desires as you and that is not a bad thing! Diversity is good and can promote action in a team setting. I believe it also allows people to grow to learn how to accept other values and maybe even adopt some of them as their own. The reading says, “But in most teams, there’s a diversity of value and beliefs. To work better as a team and make decisions that lead to commitment and action, it’s necessary to recognize the range of values that can influence decision making and to agree on their priority.” This shows the importance of diversity of values within a team dynamic and how it doesn’t have to lead to negative results. 

In my own personal life, I have experienced an environment with a variety of values within the team setting. At work we have a small team of 3 people that world to produce social media content. This source has reminded me of the experience I had trying to adjust to the differences we had and recognize that we just had different values that produced different behaviors when it came to collaborating and working together as a team to successfully complete tasks at hand. I can relate to the points made in this because after learning how to work together through our differences, we have been able to see from new perspectives and create quality work. Aside from my work environment, it makes me think of some of my friendships and how I do certain activities with certain friends. This is because our values are different and produce different behaviors!

In the article “40 Years of Storming: A Historical Review of Tuckman’s Model of Small Group Development,” Bonebright highlights several key aspects: the historical evolution and development of Tuckman’s model from its inception, the core stages of the model, and its practical applications. Initially, there were four stages of group development. These four stages include Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. Bonebright is very passionate when writing about the model’s evolution over nearly four decades and describing its impact in several atmospheres such as workplace behavior and team interactions. I find Tuckman’s model relevant to my experiences with team interactions throughout not only college but high school as well. In the past, I have often worried about group projects due to concerns about unequal credit for different group members’ contributions. However, in recent projects, I will have my team adopt an agreement form where everyone documents their contributions and signs off on them. This approach helps address the challenges described in the ‘Storming’ phase of Tuckman’s model, where conflicts over roles and contributions often arise. By formalizing our agreements, we can navigate these conflicts more effectively and ensure everyone receives appropriate recognition for their work.
On a related note, Tuckman’s model proves relevant in real-world contexts like organizational group development and project oversight. The phases of the model frequently correspond with typical patterns observed in workplace teams, where early disagreements eventually lead to smoother and more cohesive teamwork in the end. However, it is important to acknowledge the model’s limits. ​​The model lacks sufficient coverage of the external influences that form group dynamics and this tends to present a simplified, linear view of team interactions. For instance, the model does not fully account for how cultural differences and organizational changes in global teams can introduce complexities that significantly influence group development, highlighting limitations in its applicability to diverse and evolving team contexts.

Source: https://moodle-courses2425.wolfware.ncsu.edu/pluginfile.php/654178/mod_resource/content/2/40%20Years%20of%20Storming%20Tuckman.pdf

In the article “40 years of storming: a historical review of Tuckman’s model of small group development,” Denise A. Bonebright comprehensively covers both the importance and the shortcomings of Bruce W. Tuckman’s model. His model outlines the stages of small group development. Initially, the model consisted of four stages main stages (Bonebright). There’s nothing like Tuckman’s model, considering my own experiences with the trend of group projects both at higher institutions and professional settings. For example, in college, multiple of my group projects went through what is undoubtedly the storming phase, where there were conflicting opinions resulting in debates. It agrees with what was described by Tuckman as conflict and resistance during the storming phase. Now that I understand the stages, I can deal better with such conflicts and come out with a more productive outcome.

On a larger scale, Tuckman’s model can be traced in most real-life situations, be it the development of organizational teams or the management of projects. The stages of this model reflect common experiences in work teams where initial conflicts give way to united and productive work. However, this model is relatively limited because it does not explain phenomena brought about by external influences, and the model is rather linear in relation to group dynamics, which are much more complex and iterative. For example, in global teams, cultural differences and changes in organizations are external influences that impact group development in ways hardly explained by Tuckman’s model.

The article by Jaffe and Scott highlights how companies such as Levi Strauss, AT&T, and Nordstrom define conflicts between personal and organizational values through different structured values.

For example, at Levis Strauss, top managers would use the “value cards” exercise in order to rank their own values. This was done so that their personal values and organizational goals could be aligned in order to improve overall performance. I can relate to this as I have used this strategy before in a group project for a critical thinking assignment. I am a strong believer that people’s values have everything to do with how they work and the workplace they choose to be in everyday.  

As I read this article, I read about AT&T managers and how they engaged in a workshop where they defined their personal values and discussed how their values should direct their actions. This workshop resulted in enhanced team unity and had a positive effect on problem solving.

Continuing, Nordstrom emphasized to their employees how important it was to have a shared value of customer satisfaction, which allowed for personal discretion in how this value was applied. 

“The survey shows that when people’s personal values are seen as congruent with their company’s values, their personal lives are better and they feel more optimistic about their jobs.” This quote specifically stood out to me when reading the article because I have always been told about jobs in the real world that “it is not a job if you love doing it”. This makes perfect sense because when people are going to work and actually enjoying what they are doing and who they are working with they don’t have a negative work life to bring into their personal lives all of the time. 

After reading this article, I can conclude that obtaining organizational values can enhance personal engagement and resolve bumps in the road with not only your workplace but your personal life as well.

Source: https://moodle-courses2425.wolfware.ncsu.edu/pluginfile.php/654176/mod_resource/content/3/Jaffe_Link_Personal_Values_Team_Values.pdf

The article title is ‘How to link personal Values with team values.’

By: Maggie Pohl
This article reminded me of how I view the corporate workplace in today’s society. I have worked in a couple of different environments and the one that affected me the most was a lab space in which ethical leadership was not a top priority. Open-door policy was not followed, and higher up management wasn’t on site at all in my 4 months of working there.
This article brings up a lot of points that I am sure many people have been apart of within the workspace. For me personally I think that making ethical behavior apart of conversations within meetings is important to allow for ethical considerations to be met.
This story does remind me of things that have happened within my own life. My mentor within this workplace was pretty much the sole minority within the company. In meetings he would speak up and give his opinion on policies and decisions that were being made that raised questions of ethics, and time and time again was ignored. Seeing the disappointment on his face after every meeting for over 4 months was enough for me to realize that having an environment in which you can speak about ethical practices and leaders who will use that input to improve the company is so important.

The other article I chose is “Why Unethical People Make Unethical Choices” and I chose this because I just think it would hopefully make me understand. A couple things I found interesting was that Carucci points out that it’s psychologically unsafe to speak up. To me, most CEOs or bosses says you can stop by if you need anything or if you have any ideas my door is open when it’s really not in most cases. In this article, Morrison states that people are just afraid of the consequences if they do say something or they think their boss won’t listen to them.

Another big thing as to why unethical people make unethical choices is because positive example aren’t being set. Carruci says, “Leaders must accept they are held to higher standards than others. They must be extra vigilant about not just their intentions, but how it is others might interpret their behavior. While they can’t control every possible misinterpretation, leaders who know their people well make careful choices in how they react to stressful situations, confront poor performance, how politic they are in the face of controversy, and how receptive they are to bad news.” According to this, this is why you have to get to know your employees and be able to approach them the right way. Also, hypocrisy is mentioned which I think is huge when you’re in a leadership role. For example, you can’t tell me to do something or whatever the case may be and you aren’t doing that as well.

The article I will be using is “Top 10 qualities that make a good leader”, and I found it interesting to read because being grad senior and a veteran on my basketball team here at State, it’s very important to be a leader on and off the floor. The 10 qualities that Forbes talks about is honesty, delegate, communication, confidence, commitment, positive attitude, creativity, intuition, inspire and approach. I think that all of these qualities are significant to being a good maybe even a great leader in the future, but I’ll talk about the two qualities that really stick with me which is delegate and approach.

Forbes says you have to be able to trust your team and be able to delegate ideas. He also says,” The key to delegation is identifying the strengths of your team, and capitalizing on them. Find out what each team member enjoys doing most. Chances are if they find that task more enjoyable, they will likely put more thought and effort behind it.” Which in this quote, I can connect it to basketball by saying if a person knows the plays and wants to be the floor general then the’ll be the point guard, if they love to shoot then they’ll be the shooting guard and so on and so forth.

Being able to approach someone that is obviously not the same as you is fairly a good thing. In a business you have to be able to approach them the right way. You might have cultural differences, speak different languages, different beliefs, etc. but that shouldn’t stop you on how to approach someone the right way and to be able to know how to do that, you have to get to know them. Like I can respond to tough love and criticism very well and some might not be able to do that. Your approach will be different for every person.

Reading Anne Loehr’s article on values and leadership really got me thinking about my own path as a finance student about to start a career. Loehr talks about how important it is to know your values and stick to them when making decisions (Loehr). This really hits home for me because in finance, being trustworthy and honest is a big deal. As I get ready to work in this field, I realize how important it is to have strong values guiding my choices.

Loehr’s points also made me think about the Wells Fargo scandal, where things went really wrong because the company’s leaders didn’t stick to good values. They were so focused on hitting sales targets that they ended up doing some really unethical things, like creating fake accounts. This whole mess shows just how important it is to have strong values in finance, just like Loehr says. When companies ignore their values, it can lead to serious problems, not just for them, but for the entire industry.

Looking at these examples, I’m more determined than ever to make sure my future job in finance is guided by strong ethics. By staying true to my values, I hope to make a positive impact in the industry and avoid the kind of trouble Wells Fargo got into.

During this week we covered three different articles and had a group activity.

I had a text-to-self connection with the hot topic article this week named: “North Carolina Teen Detained at Airport for Using Travel Hack to Cut Costs, Dad Says”. This source reminded me of when I was booking a plane ticket to Prague in the Czech Republic and realized how expensive these flights really were. I can relate to the parents wanting to save money by using travel hacks such as getting off before your next connecting flight.

I had a text-to-text connection connection with the article “Top 10 Qualities that Make a Great Leader”. As I read an article called “How to Define Your Purpose as a Leader ” in my SLC 450 class. Which went over some of the same qualities as the reading we had this week such as honesty, communication, etc… This text is different from other similar text I have read though as it gave examples of how each of these qualities can represent a strong leader.

Finally I had a text-to-world connection in the article called “How to Live With Purpose, Identify Your Values and Improve Your Leadership”. This article made me evaluate my values and evaluate the values of leaders I know such as my boss Woody last summer. I think this is a text to world example for me though because it has a great point of reminding you to check your values frequently and often. I feel this does not happen in the real world with every decision you make and is unrealistic to say you can do so.