Please respond to the two discussion responses below using in-text citation and using a reference list. Keep each response separate. I have included the initial discussion question for you. Please be in-depth with the responses.

Initial Discussion Question

Difficult Conversations

Scenario: The performance of your top employee has recently slipped. You had a conversation with the employee to address it. The employee improved for a period of time, but slipped again. Now, your boss has noticed, which questions your leadership. You do not want to terminate this employee because you know the value of this person and their work, and you trust and respect this employee. However, you are starting to look bad.

It is time to take action, so you schedule a meeting with the employee.

Part One: Considering the course materials for this week, discuss your strategy for the meeting, including:

Part Two: Write a brief dialogue recording the conversation between you and this employee that demonstrates your use of the strategies outlined above. Include at least 4 interchanges between you and them.

Response 1

Mika Beckley

Part One:

Pulling a subordinate aside can sometimes be an intimidating task for some, especially if he/she is one of your top performers. Those motivated self-starters of your team need minimal supervision. I believe it has to be remembered though, that they are human and no one can run at 110% all day, every day. If it is not common to see this individual, it’s important to get them into a comfortable, private setting. Establish rapport and be clear and concise about why you are having a one-on-one with them. Woods stated, “The individual tends to ramble, unable to focus on the main point of the conversation.” (1). It is vital to get to the point and ensure it is clearly understood by the receiving party. Allow them to ask questions or repeat in their own words what was just conveyed to them. Once they are aware of their performance, empathy should be injected deeper into this conversation. This is because if it is not normal behavior, it is possible there may be something occurring in their personal life that is affecting them.

I’ve had situations where my top performers had fallen below standard and because I had built a trusting relationship with them, they were comfortable opening up to me as to why their work quality was suffering. One specific example was one of my Airmen who was an award winner, top performer, live and bubbly individual who started showing up to work late, not being present at work meetings, looking exhausted, and just not himself. After pulling him to the side in a private setting, he divulged his wife was in the process of divorcing him and the result was his sleepless nights and now stressful life of a broken household with two small children. I always say, be kind because you never know what someone is going through or what inside battles they are fighting. The majority of the time, they just need to be heard. Week 2 Lecture Notes stated, “Properly listening to someone requires more than the mere acknowledgment and it takes practice. You should absorb what they say, while gleaning new information and finding ways to relate to them.” (2) While it is important to relate to them, removing your emotions from the situation is important so that any advice given is given from a subjective standpoint instead of an emotional one. While I agree, that being able to relate in some form or manner can humanize the experience and cause your subordinate to gain deeper trust in you, the point of the conversation is to not only guide them back to the right path but most importantly receive the help they need to do so.

Techniques that I will employ to build effective relationships are to listen more and talk less. Ross stated, “Presence can be somewhat passive, but empathy requires you to actively listen and hear what is going on for someone else.” I’ve learned that true leadership involves listening and truly knowing your people. It will be easier to tell when they have off days and can get ahead of situations like the example I stated earlier. It’s easier to lead when you can look at a person and know that they aren’t themselves and sometimes it’s a simple venting session that can steer them back on the right track. Being in the military is a 24/7 job, so it is important my subordinate’s quality of life is taken into account. A person cannot be fully present at work to complete their mission if their mind is stressed elsewhere. Johnson stated, “Show that you are an approachable and pleasant person to interact with by smiling honestly and with your whole face, not just your mouth.” (4)

Part Two:

Me: Hey John, how are you doing today? (Uses inviting warm (not creepy) smile). How has your family been doing? How’s work today? I’d like to talk to you for a bit if you wouldn’t mind following me to my office.

John/Employee: Hey boss. I’m okay today. I found out my grandma is sick and has been battling it for a while now. There is a possibility to fly home before things get really bad or to say my last goodbyes. I feel like I haven’t been able to focus at work because of it. I’m really close to her and I’ve been losing sleep and my appetite.

Me: John, I’m really sorry to hear about your grandmother. I pulled you aside because it’s been noticed that the quality of your work has been suffering lately. I had talked to you about it previously and you were doing okay for a little and then reverted back. You are usually a top performer so I can see why you are struggling. I can understand that losing a family member can be devastating and I will ensure that you get the time off you need to get through this. There is no point in being here if you aren’t present and your mental health is the I’d like to let you know that I am here for you if you need to talk and I ask that you, please come to me if you experiencing a life stressor that will not only cause your work to suffer but also that is affecting your mental health. We have resources that can assist you. Is there anything else going on that I need to be aware of to better help you? What are your plans to get home?

John: Thank you for being supportive. I plan on getting with my family to find the best time to fly out and I will let you know the details. I have nothing else significantly affecting my life but my grandmother’s deteriorating health has been weighing on me so it’s nice to be seen and heard. I will ensure to keep you in the loop of anything in the future. Thank you for being there.

Response 2

Catherine McGuire

This week‘s discussion prompt and related hypothetical scenario affords us multiple opportunities for expressing our acquired knowledge of leadership, interpersonal relations, the value of empathy, and applying constructive, motivating pressure. We are also challenged to demonstrate the specifics of this week’s lessons by incorporating them into our responses. In my opinion, this is no small task, but as JWMI students, we should be ready.

Empathy is a vital component of leadership, so much so that to be without it diminishes one’s ability to properly function as the decision-making motivator of an organizational body or team. Serving as the elemental fabric which connects both personal and professional relationships, empathy and social skills are social intelligence, which comprises the interpersonal portion of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1). Placing this in motion, manifesting empathy looks like listening more and talking less, the intentional practice of mindfulness and focus upon others, and active curiosity (Ross, 2). Empathy can be learned and perfected over time, increasing one’s leadership skills.

Jack Welch’s 4th Rule for Leadership guides us to establish trusting relationships with others by being candid, transparent, keeping promises, and giving full credit to others for their accomplishments (Welch, 3). Trusting, candid relationships serve as a platform for spring boarding action towards a mission. Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia, testifies that empathy has allowed him to build a culture of trust which supersedes the politics and fears which run rampant within a business environment and ushers in speed, which delivers results (JWI505, 4). These strategies directly relate to the manner in which we successfully conduct integral interpersonal discussions, most importantly, difficult conversations.

Our discussion prompt asks us to discuss our strategy for a meeting with a valuable employee who has exhibited a patterned instability and decline in their performance at work. In a conversation to address their behavior, we must address the following points:

I’ve previously addressed the value of candor in forging trusting relationships, the likes of which every leader should endeavor to build. Empathy greases the works into a team member or employee’s favor, paving the way for taking the edge off of tense discussions. If a leader has competently established a healthy relationship with the team member in question using these foundational elements, then subtracting personal emotion from a conversation will not feel like a cold, robotic encounter from the employee’s perspective. Regarding the hypothetical scenario, the leader should:

A brief dialogue recording the conversation between myself, the leader, and my employee who has exhibited patterned instability and a decline in their work performance

Me: Hi, Jim. I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to reflect upon and redirect your priorities here at ACME Inc. It’s been a while since we’ve had a candid, informal review, and there are a few issues at hand which compel me to sit down with you.

Jim: Hi, Catherine. Ok. Are we going to talk now?

Me: Now’s a good time as any. I certainly don’t want the dam to break with accumulation; I know I’m being somewhat nebulous, but first, I wanted to ask how you’re doing.

Jim: Great.

Me: Well, great.

Jim: ……

Me: *chuckling* Look, I don’t want to have a deer-in-the-headlights conversation with you. I don’t want to talk at you, I want to talk to you. I have you on my team because I’ve seen what you can do, and, frankly, I’ve never seen anyone add the flair and personality to their work the way you do. My bosses, however, don’t see it that way. They afford me the autonomy to occupy a position on my team with anyone I choose, as long as that employee remains productive according to their standards. So really, now, it’s just you and me chatting. Tell me, what’s going on at home?

Jim: My son is growing up too soon! He’s in the third grade already and keeps me busy as his chauffeur to karate and basketball practice. Sandy has her hands full with the baby and claims to want to lose the baby weight, but she’s breastfeeding, so she says she’s not hungry during the day but always sends me out for a late-night sandwich or Chinese food because she’s hungry but doesn’t want to pay $15 extra for DoorDash. And I’m really trying to keep my MBA on track, so instead of painting the garage on my days off, I’m glued to the computer; I’d really rather be going to the gym for a quality workout instead of doing either of those things, but somehow, at the end of the day, I’m content. I guess this is where my ADD comes in handy because I’m doing a little bit of everything on the daily.

Me: I would agree, except that I need to be sure that the quality of your work doesn’t suffer from it. Did you know that people with ADD tend to be more creative and humorous?

Jim: Really?

Me: Yes, really. And a plethora of other endearing things. Let me tell you what I need from you; I need you to log the inventory after every shift without error.

Jim: That’s always been my duty, and I’m sorry if I haven’t been diligent in doing it every day.

Me: So you see what I’m referring to? That’s a relief; it saves me from having to retrain you to do your job. I get the feeling that you know most of what I need to say to you about your recent job performance, because I know that you know how to do your job. Jim, can I ask you a question?

Jim: Uh, yeah. Yes.

Me: Do you think that your full plate, so to speak, is preventing you from doing your job to your best ability? Do you think you’re spread too thin? I ask this because I want you to help me reach a mutually beneficial solution.

Jim: Well, in all honesty, I am spread thin, but the baby is sleeping through the night now, and I’ve decided to take the next semester off so that life won’t be as intense for a while.

Me: Great. Here’s what I’m thinking, I can either write down a list of necessary processes which you’ll complete by the end of every shift and text me when they’re done – I’ll handle the accountability texts with discretion, because I’m not aiming to micromanage you in front of other team members – or you can consider reducing your workload to 30 hours per week. I’ll hire a part-time entry-level employee or two and pay them roughly half of your hourly wage. I want you to take some time to consider these options, and I want you to feel that you have a say in how things are changing at ACME Inc. I want you to sleep on it, so I’ll be checking in with you tomorrow morning so that you can voice your decision. Does that sound fair?

Jim: I think so. I definitely have a lot of thinking to do.

Me: Yes, think about it, and if you have any questions in the morning, we’ll discuss those details. For now, I want to go home with the task of steering your role within this company in the right direction. There’s nothing else that I need to know for now. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Jim: No, Catherine, I’m good.

Me: Great. Say “hi” to Sandy and the kids for me. Goodnight.

Integrate the core values of Saint Leo University that you believe should apply to this issue.

Case Studies guidelines: Each case study will include issues/questions to address. The cases are intended for students to take a comprehensive look at the current event topics as related to business and society. Students should explore the issue using the text as well as personal, intellectual, academic references, and/or experiences, thus applying their knowledge to these cases. Where sources are used, proper notation must be included. Responses to each assigned question in all assigned case studies should be in paragraph form, be double-spaced, and be between 250-300 words in.

St Leo Core Values: Core Values: The SLU core values of responsible stewardship, excellence, and integrity will be emphasized in this course. Responsible Stewardship: Our Creator blesses us with an abundance of resources. We foster a spirit of service to employ our resources to university and community development. We must be resourceful. We must optimize and apply all of the resources of our community to fulfill Saint Leo University’s mission and goals. Excellence: Saint Leo University is an educational enterprise. All of us, individually and collectively, work hard to ensure that our students develop the character, learn the skills, and assimilate the knowledge essential to become morally responsible leaders. The success of our University depends upon a conscientious commitment to our mission, vision, and goals. Integrity: The commitment of Saint Leo University to excellence demands that its members live its mission and deliver on its promise. The faculty, staff, and students pledge to be honest, just, and consistent in word and deed.

CASE- Google and the Right to Be Forgotten

In 2009, Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a self-employed attorney living in a small town outside Madrid, Spain, casually “googled” himself and was startled by what came up on his computer screen. Prominently displayed in the search results was a brief legal notice that had appeared more than a decade earlier in a local newspaper, La Vanguardia, which listed property seized and being auctioned by a government agency for nonpayments of debts. Among the properties was a home jointly owned by Costeja and his wife.

Costeja immediately realized that this information could damage his reputation as an attorney. Equally troubling, the information was no longer factual. He had paid his debt nearly a decade earlier. Abanlex, Costeja’s small law firm, depended on the Internet to gain much of its new business, which was often generated by a Google search. Potential clients might choose not to hire him, based on the old auction notice, he reflected. His mind then turned to the possible effects of this kind of information on other people’s livelihoods. “There are people who cannot get a job because of content that is irrelevant,” he thought.1 “I support freedom of expression and I do not defend censorship. [However, I decided] to fight for the right to request the deletion of data that violates the honor, dignity and reputation of individuals.”2

The next week, Costeja wrote to La Vanguardia and requested that it remove the article about his debt notice, because it had had been fully resolved a number of years earlier and reference to it now was therefore entirely irrelevant.3 In doing so, he was making use of his rights under Spain’s strong data protection policies, which recognized the protection and integrity of personal data as a constitutional right under Section 18 of the nation’s Data Protection Act.4 In response, the newspaper informed him that it had recently uploaded to the Internet all its past archives, dating back to 1881, to allow them to be searched by the public. It also noted that the auction notice had originally been publicly posted in order to secure as many bidders as possible. The newspaper refused Costeja’s request, stating that the information was obtained from public records and had thus been published lawfully.5

To be sure, the real problem for Costeja was not that the notice had appeared in La Vanguardia’s digital library, but that it had shown up in the results of the most widely used search engine in the world, Google, where potential clients might use it to judge his character.6 Following this reasoning, Costeja then wrote to Google Spain, the firm’s Spanish affiliate, only to be told that the parent company, Google Inc., was the entity responsible for the development of search results.7 Costeja was taken aback by this development. “The resources Google has at their disposal aren’t like those of any other citizens,” he reflected.8 Costeja felt he would be at a disadvantage in a lawsuit against an industry giant like Google.

In March 2010, after his unsuccessful attempts with the newspaper and Google Spain, Costeja turned to Spain’s Data Protection Agency (SDPA), the government agency responsible for enforcing the Data Protection Act. “Google in Spain asked me to address myself to its headquarters in the U.S., but I found it too far and difficult to launch a complaint in the U.S., so I went to the agency in Spain to ask for their assistance. They said I was right, and the case went to court,” he explained.9 In a legal filing, Costeja requested, first, that the agency issue an administrative order requiring La Vanguardia either to remove or alter the pages in question (so that his personal data no longer appeared) or to use certain tools made available by search engines in order to shield the data from view. Second, he requested that the agency require that Google Spain or Google Inc. remove or conceal his personal data so that it no longer appeared in the search results and in the links to La Vanguardia. Costeja stated that his debt had been fully resolved.10

With these steps, a small-town Spanish lawyer had drawn one of the world’s richest and best-known companies, Google, into a debate over the right to be forgotten.

Google, Inc.

Google Inc. was a technology company that built products and provides services to organize information. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Google’s mission was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It employed more than 55,000 people and had revenues of $45 billion. The company also had 70 offices in more than 40 countries.

The company’s main product, Google Search, provided information online in response to a user’s search. Google’s other well-known products provided additional services. For example, Google Now provided information to users when they needed it, and its Product Listing Ads offered product image, price, and merchant information. The company also provided AdWords, an auction-based advertising program and AdSense, which enabled websites that were part of the Google network to deliver ads. Google Display was a display advertising network; DoubleClick Ad Exchange was a marketplace for the trading display ad space; and YouTube offered video, interactive, and other ad formats.

Search Technology

In its core business, Google conducted searches in three stages: crawling and indexing, applying algorithms, and fighting spam.

Crawlers, programs that browsed the web to create an index of data, looked at web pages and followed links on those pages. They then moved from link to link and brought data about those web pages back to Google’s servers. Google would then use this information to create an index to know exactly how to retrieve information for its users. Algorithms were the computer processes and formulas that took users’ questions and turned them into answers. At the most basic level, Google’s algorithms looked up the user’s search terms in the index to find the most appropriate pages. For a typical query, thousands, if not millions, of web pages might have helpful information. Google’s algorithms relied on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that made it possible to guess what an individual was really looking for. These signals included the terms on websites, the freshness of content, the region, and the page rank of the web page.11 Lastly, the company fought spam through a combination of computer algorithms and manual review. Spam sites attempted to game their way to the top of search results by repeating keywords, buying links that passed Google’s Page Rank process, or putting invisible text on the screen. Google scouted out and removed spam because it could make legitimate websites harder to find. While much of this process was automated, Google did maintain teams whose job was to review sites manually.

Policy on Information Removal

Google’s policy on the general removal of information was the following:

Upon request, we’ll remove personal information from search results if we believe it could make you susceptible to specific harm, such as identity theft or financial fraud. This includes sensitive government ID numbers like U.S. Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and images of signatures. We generally don’t process removals of national ID numbers from official government websites because in those cases we consider the information to be public. We sometimes refuse requests if we believe someone is attempting to abuse these policies to remove other information from our results.1

Apart from this general policy, Google Inc. also removed content or features from its search results for legal reasons. For example, in the United States, the company would remove content with valid notification from the copyright holder under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was administered by the U.S. Copyright Office. The DCMA provided recourse for owners of copyrighted materials who believed that their rights under copyright law had been infringed upon on the Internet.14 Under the notice and takedown procedure of the law, a copyright owner could notify the service provider, such as Google, requesting that a website or portion of a website be removed or blocked. If, upon receiving proper notification, the service provider promptly did so, it would be exempt from monetary liability.

Google regularly received such requests from copyright holders and those that represented them, such as the Walt Disney Company and the Recording Industry Association page 483of America. Google produced and made public a list of the domain portions of URLs that had been the subject of a request for removal, and noted which ones had been removed. As of July 2015, it had removed more than 600,000 URLs out of more than 2.4 million requests.

Likewise, content on local versions of Google was also removed when required by national laws. For example, content that glorified the Nazi party was illegal in Germany, and content that insulted religion was illegal in India.16 The respective governments, via a court order or a routine request as described above, typically made these requests. Google reviewed these requests to determine if any content should be removed because it violated a specific country’s law.

When Google removed content from search results for legal reasons, it first displayed a notification that the content had been removed and then reported the removal to www.chillingeffects.org, a website established by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law schools. This website, which later changed its name to lumendatabase.org, collected and analyzed legal complaints and requests for removal of a broad set of online materials. It was designed to help Internet users know their rights and understand the law. Researchers could use the data to study the prevalence of legal threats and the source of content removals. This database also allowed the public to search for specific takedown notifications.17

Google removed content quickly. Its average processing time across all copyright infringement removal requests submitted via its website was approximately 6 hours. Different factors influenced the processing time, including the method of delivery, language, and completeness of the information submitted.

The Right to Be Forgotten

The right to be forgotten can be understood as peoples’ right to request that information be removed from the Internet or other repositories because it violated their privacy or was no longer relevant. This right assumed greater prominence in the digital era, when people began finding it increasingly difficult to escape information that had accumulated over many years, resulting in expressions such as “the net never forgets,” “everything is in the cloud,” “reputation bankruptcy,” and “online reputation.”18 According to Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at George Washington University, the intellectual roots of the right to be forgotten could be found in French law, “which recognizes le droit à l’oubli—or the ‘right of oblivion’—a right that allows a convicted criminal who has served his time and been rehabilitated to object to the publication of the facts of his conviction and incarceration.”19

Although the right to be forgotten was rooted in expunging criminal records, the rise of the Internet had given the concept a new, more complex meaning. Search engines enabled users to access information on just about any topic with considerable ease. The ease with which information could be shared, stored, and retrieved through online search raised issues of both privacy and freedom of expression. On the one hand, when opening a bank account, joining a social networking website, or booking a flight online, a consumer would voluntarily disclose vital personal information such as name, address, and credit card numbers. Consumers were often unsure of what happened to their data and were concerned that it might fall into the wrong hands—that is, that their privacy would be violated.

On the other hand, by facilitating the retrieval of information, search engines enhanced individuals’ freedom to receive and impart information. Any interference with search engine activities could therefore pose a threat to the effective enjoyment of these rights.20 As Van Alsenoy, a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Law and Information Communication Technology, argued, “In a world where search engines are used as the main tool to find relevant content online, any governmental interference in the provisioning of these services presents a substantial risk that requires close scrutiny.

Europe

Since the 1990s, both the European Union and its member states (such as Spain) had enacted laws that addressed the right to privacy and, by extension, the right to be forgotten.

A fundamental right of individuals to protect their data was introduced in the EU’s original data protection law, passed in 1995. Specifically, the European Data Protection Directive 95/46 defined the appropriate scope of national laws relating to personal data and the processing of those data. According to Article 3(1), Directive 95/46 applied “to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automatic means, and to the processing otherwise than by automatic means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system.”22 Article 2(b) of the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46 defined the processing of personal data as

any operation or set of operations which is performed upon personal data, whether or not by automatic means, such as collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure or destruction.

Individual countries within the European Union also enacted their own laws, which were sometimes stronger than those of the EU. For example, in Spain, the protection of data was a constitutional right. The Spanish Constitution recognized the right to personal privacy, secrecy of communications, and the protection of personal data. These rights were protected through the Data Protection Act (the “Act”), passed in 1999, which incorporated the 1995 European Directive on data protection, and was enforced by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (SDPA). Created in 1993, this agency was relatively inactive until the passing of the Act, which gave it more powers and a mandate to enforce privacy rules in a wide range of situations.23

The Spanish agency exercised its powers broadly. For example, in 2013, it fined telecom firm Telefonica SA €20,000 for twice listing an individual’s phone number in local phone books without the individual’s prior consent. In 2008, the agency fined a marketing company €600 for using “recommend this to a friend” icons on websites, saying that senders of recommendation e-mails had to first request the recipient’s permission. The agency had also successfully required anyone using security cameras to clearly mark their presence with a recognizable icon. Supporters of this move have highlighted the importance of transparency in protecting one’s privacy.24

Over time, however, differences in the way that each EU country interpreted privacy rights led to an uneven level of protection for personal data, depending on where an page 485individual lived or bought goods and services. This led the European high court to take a second look, in 2013, at the original law.25 A European Commission memo at that time noted that the right “is about empowering individuals, not about erasing past events or restricting freedom of the press.”26 The changes were intended to give citizens more control over their personal data, making it easier to access and improve the quality of information they received about what happened to their data once they decided to share it. An unanswered question, however, was the latitude given to national courts and regulators across Europe to set the parameters by which these requests could be made.

The United States

U.S. courts had taken a very different approach to privacy and to the right to be forgotten. A few U.S. laws recognized the right to be forgotten; the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, for example, gave individuals the right to delete certain negative information about their credit—such as late payments, tax liens, or judgments—seven years from the date of the delinquency. But, for the most part, fundamental differences in legal philosophy made this right less likely to become widely supported in the United States. In an article published in the Atlantic in May 2014, Matt Ford suggested that in the U.S. context, one person’s right to be forgotten logically imposed a responsibility to forget upon someone else, a notion that was alien to American law. The First Amendment to the Constitution barred the government from interfering with free speech. Law professor Rosen argued that the First Amendment would make a right to be forgotten virtually impossible, not only to create but to enforce. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that penalizing a newspaper for publishing truthful, lawfully obtained information from the public record was unconstitutional

The Lawsuit and Court Decision

The main focus of Costeja’s complaint before Spanish Data Protection Agency (SDPA) was his request that La Vanguardia remove the debt notice from its archives. In doing so, he was claiming his constitutional right to protect the integrity of his personal data. Costeja’s request had two parts: that (1) La Vanguardia be required either to remove or alter the pages in question or to use certain tools made available by search engines in order to protect the data and (2) that Google Spain or Google Inc. be required to remove or conceal the personal data relating to him so that the data no longer appeared in search results.

In July 2010, two months after Costeja’s original request, the SDPA ordered Google Spain and Google Inc. to take “all reasonable steps to remove the disputed personal data from its index and preclude further access,” upholding that part of the complaint.29 However, the SDPA rejected Costeja’s complaint as it related to La Vanguardia, because it considered that the publication by it of the information in question was legally justified.

A year later, Google filed an appeal against the decision by the SDPA before the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, Spain’s highest national court. In March 2012, this court referred the case to the European Court of Justice, the EU’s high court, for a preliminary ruling.31

In their briefs, Google Spain and Google Inc.’s argument hinged on the meaning of “personal data” and “crawling.” Crawling, as noted above, was the use of software programs to find multiple websites that responded to requests for information online.32 These programs were configured to look for information on the Internet, according to a set of criteria that told them where to go and when.33 Once the relevant web pages had been copied and collected, their content was analyzed and indexed.34 Google compared its search engine index to an index at the back of a textbook, in that it included information about words and their locations.35

Specifically, Google argued before the European Court of Justice that because it crawled and indexed websites “indiscriminately” (that is, without a deliberate intent to process personal data as such), no processing of personal data within the meaning of Article 2 (b) of the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46 actually took place. This absence of intent, the company argued, clearly distinguished Google’s activities as a search engine provider from the processing of personal data as interpreted by the Court.

Google’s other main argument was that the publisher of the information should be the sole controller of data, not the search engine. After all, its attorneys argued, Google’s intervention was purely accessory in nature; it was merely making information published by others more readily accessible. If a publisher, for whatever reason, decided to remove certain information from its website, this information would (eventually) be removed from Google’s index and would no longer appear in its search results. As a result, Google’s counsel argued, the role of a search engine should be thought of as an “intermediary.”

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled against Google. The court found the Internet search provider was responsible for the processing of personal data that appeared on web pages published by third parties. It further required Google to remove links returned in search results based on an individual’s name when those results were deemed to be “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive.” At the heart of the court’s logic was the process that Google used to produce its search results. The official ruling explained the court’s rationale:

The Court points out in this context that processing of personal data carried out by such an operator enables any Internet user, when he makes a search on the basis of an individual’s name, to obtain, through the list of results, a structured overview of the information relating to that individual on the internet. The Court observes, furthermore, that this information potentially concerns a vast number of aspects of his private life and that, without the search engine, the information could not have been interconnected or could have been only with great difficulty.

In essence, the Court ruled that an activity, “whether or not by automatic means” could be considered to be the “processing of personal data” within the meaning of Article 2(b), even page 487if no intention to process such data existed.37 The court’s ruling applied to any search engine operators that had a branch or a subsidiary in any of the 28 member states of the EU.

Costeja’s lawyer, Joaquín Muñoz, was pleased with the ruling. “When you search for something in Google, they don’t scour the entire Internet for you and then give you a result. They’ve stored links, organized them, and they show them based on a criteria they’ve decided upon.”39 As for Costeja, he expressed satisfaction with the result of his four-year legal crusade. Speaking of the court’s decision, he said, “I think this is the correct move. You have to provide a path for communication between the user and the search engine. Now that communication can take place.

Google’s Application of the Ruling

For its part, Google—although disappointed with the ruling—set about complying with it. Soon after the court decision, it removed Costeja’s disputed information from its search results. But, the company also took mre general action.

The Court’s decision recognized Google as a data controller, or the operator of the search engine and the party responsible for its data. As such, the court said, Google was required to police its links and put into place a mechanism to address individual concerns. Accordingly, shortly after the ruling was announced, Google set up an online form for users (from the European Union only) to request the right to be forgotten. The company website stated that each request would be evaluated individually and that Google would attempt to “balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s interest to know and the right to distribute information.”41 Once an individual had filled out the form, he or she received a confirmation. Each request was assessed on a case-by-case basis. Occasionally, Google would ask for more information from the individual. Once Google had made its decision, it notified the individual by e-mail, providing a brief explanation if the decision was against removal. If so, the individual could request that a local data protection authority review Google’s decision.

In evaluating a request, Google looked at whether the results included outdated or inaccurate information about the individual. It also weighed whether or not the information was of public interest. For example, Google generally retained the information if it related to financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or a government official’s public conduct.42

At the same time, Google invited eight independent experts to form an advisory council expressly to “advise it on performing the balancing act between an individual’s right to privacy and the public’s interest in access to information.”43 The committee included three professors (two of law and one of ethics), a newspaper editorial director, a former government page 488official, and three privacy and freedom of speech experts (including one from the United Nations). Google’s CEO and chief legal officer served as conveners. The committee’s job was to provide recommendations to Google on how to best implement the EU court’s ruling.

The majority recommendation of the advisory council, published on February 6, 2015, was that the right to be forgotten ruling should apply only within the 28 countries in the European Union.44 As a practical matter, this meant that Google was only required to apply removals to European domains, such as Google.fr or Google.co.uk, but not Google.com, even when accessed in Europe. Although over 95 percent of all queries originating in Europe used European domains, users could still access information that had been removed via the Google.com site.

The report also explained that once the information was removed, it was still available at the source site (e.g., the newspaper article about Costeja in La Vanguardia). Removal meant merely that its accessibility to the general public was reduced because searches for that information would not return a link to the source site. A person could still find the information, since only the link to the information had been removed, not the information itself.

The advisory council also recommended a set of criteria Google should use in assessing requests by individuals to “delist” their information (that is, to remove certain links in search results based on queries for that individual’s name). How should the operator of the search engine best balance the privacy and data protection rights of the subject with the interest of the general public in having access to the information? The authors of the report felt that whether the data subject experienced harm from such accessibility to the information was relevant to this balancing test. Following this reasoning, they identified four primary criteria for evaluating delisting requests:

• First, what was the data subject’s role in public life? Did the individuals have a clear role in public life (CEOs, politicians, sports stars)? If so, this would weigh against delisting.
• Second, what type of information was involved? Information that would normally be considered private (such as financial information, details of a person’s sex life, or identification numbers) would weigh toward delisting. Information that would normally be considered to be in the public interest (such as data relevant to political discourse, citizen engagement, or governance) would normally weigh against delisting.
• Third, what was the source of the information? Here, the report suggested that journalistic writing or government publications would normally not be delisted.
• Finally, the report considered the effect of time, given that as circumstances change, the relevance of information might fade. Thus, the passage of time might favor delisting.

The advisory council also considered procedures and recommended that Google adopt an easily accessible and easy-to-understand form for data subjects to use in submitting their requests.

The recommendations of the advisory council were not unanimous. Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia and one of the eight group members, appended a dissenting comment to the report. “I completely oppose the legal situation in which a commercial company is forced to become the judge of our most fundamental rights of expression and privacy, without allowing any appropriate procedure for appeal by publishers whose work in being suppressed,” Mr. Wales wrote. “The recommendations to Google contained in this report are deeply flawed due to the law itself being deeply flawed.

You are required to write 2 separate substantive replies to the 2 discussion threads below. Each reply must be a minimum of 300 words and include at least 4 scholarly resources.

Acceptable sources include the textbook, the Bible, outside scholarly articles, etc.

Substantive replies, in contrast to perfunctory replies, add value to the discussion, enhance learning, and contain references to any new concepts or ideas presented.

The following suggestions will aid you in successfully composing substantive responses:
– Compare/contrast the findings of others with your research.
– Compare how the findings of others relate/add to the concepts learned in the required
readings.
– Share additional knowledge regarding the key topic that relates to the thread

– All citations and references must be in current 7th edition APA format (see attached)

DISCUSSION THREAD 1 (JD)

Discussion Board: Balanced Scorecard

Key Concept Explanation

Robert Kaplan and David Norton first introduced the concept of the balanced scorecard in 1992. They conducted a year-long research project with 12 companies to develop the balanced scorecard, which gives managers a balanced presentation of both financial and operational measures of success (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The balanced scorecard considers four perspectives on success. The perspectives are an internal business perspective, an innovation and learning perspective, a customer perspective, and a financial perspective. In my position in the military, I am not setting out to achieve financial goals. I oversee 5 other people with a specific operational function. Therefore, I chose to research the balanced scorecard in order to learn more about operational measures of success versus purely financial objectives.

Comparison

The balanced scorecard uses operational measures of success instead of antiquated methods that only measured financial objectives. It has been used as a tool to help organizations transform their business strategy into applicable performance measures to monitor business success (Meredith & Shafer, 2019). One of the keys to developing the balanced scorecard is creating a strategy map linking the causes and effects of strategy actions. There has been some debate over the years if those cause-and-effect relationships actually exist between the operational measures of the balanced scorecard method. In their research, Kober and Northcott (2020) established statistical evidence that cause-and-effect relationships do, in fact, exist in the balanced scorecard in the public sector.

The balanced scorecard tool has been widely adopted across businesses, industry, government, and non-profit organizations around the world. Some organizations have applied a balanced scorecard approach and expanded it to include a corporate social responsibility aspect (Hansen & Schaltegger, 2016). The balanced scorecard specializes in translating organizational strategy into actions that can be measured with key performance indicators (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2020). The balanced scorecard uses a diversified set of indicators to reflect the strategy of the organization. Clearly defining a balanced set of objectives helps the business to meet the needs and expectations of the relevant stakeholders (Quesado et al, 2018). Some organizations have used cascading balanced scorecards to refine the organization-level scorecard for use at the team and even individual level (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2020).

Article Summary

Robert Kaplan and David Norton wrote the definitive work that introduced the balanced scorecard in the 1992, and later revised it in 1996, in their article “The Balanced Scorecard-Measures That Drive Performance.” Kaplan and Norton assert that simply tracking financial accounting measures can be misleading when pursuing continuous improvement and innovation. In today’s modern business environment, businesses must track operational objectives as well in order to maintain a competitive edge in the market. Instead of just tracking return on investment or earnings per share, companies should track things like cycle times and defect rates. The balanced scorecard incorporates a financial perspective, as well as an internal business perspective, and innovation and learning perspective, and a customer perspective. This balanced scorecard can give management a succinct, overview of the organization’s total performance by focusing on a small group of the most critical metrics. Another advantage of the balanced scorecard method is that it prevents information overload by focusing on a small set of critical metrics. At the same time, the balanced scorecard causes top management executives to view the success of the business through various operational measures beyond just finances. Considering the customer perspective causes the organization to have to think about what kinds of metrics the customer cares about. The internal business perspective causes the organization to consider what they must excel at to meet customer expectations (Kaplan & Norton, 1992).

Biblical Integration

1st Peter 5:8 says to “be sober minded; be watchful” (New International Version, 2011). And that is the goal of the balanced scorecard: to be watchful over the success of an organization. Being sober minded is to think clearly about the objectives of the organization and a balanced scorecard is one tool that can help with that.

Proverbs 25:11 tells us, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (New International Version, 2011). This verse is about clear communication, and the balanced scorecard clarifies and communicates the goals of the organization by translating the mission into actions.

“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans” Proverbs 16:3 (New International Version, 2011). Whatever business endeavor one undertakes, it should be committed to the Lord and one should work as if working for the Lord and not for men.

Application

The balanced scorecard is more applicable than ever before. It arose out of a need for a better way to measure organizational success beyond financial measures as stakeholder needs became more diversified and customers became more informed than ever before. According to a recent global study, the balanced scorecard was ranked 5th of the top ten most widely used management tools in the world (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2020). It is used by more than half of all major companies in the U.S. Europe and Asia. The balanced scorecard tool is growing in other areas such as Africa and the middle east as well.

DISCUSSION THREAD 2 (JB)

Discussion Board: Project Life Cycle

Key Concept

There are many types of projects that can be undertaken in business. These projects have many different forms and scales. In order to better study project life cycles, it is easier to break them into a few common categories. Meredith and Shafer (2019) describe the stretched S and exponential project life cycles. The stretched S model is very common and shows a slow start during planning, which slowly picks up speed and then tapers off at the end as resources begin to be directed elsewhere. The exponential form, however, sees basically no return until the project is completed. It is critical to understand where in the project lifecycle output will be produced so as not to misunderstand performance compared to resources invested.

Comparison

There are many things to consider when studying the life cycle of a project. Measham et al. (2019) focus on the impact that supply chain can have on managing the project life cycle. A delay in the delivery of one component could delay the project output. That could make it appear that the project is no longer successful. It is important to remember, however, that the relationship between the percentage of inputs used and the percentage of output created is rarely linear. If one input component is missing for a time, other parts of production could still be continuing, allowing a sharp increase in production when that final input is received. Of course, this type of flexibility is dependent on the project at hand. This is why it is important for managers to understand their project life cycle, so they can tell the difference between a shuffling of steps and an actual impact to production. Galli (2020) describes just how important this understanding can be by pointing out that these projects are one of the key driving factors of the world economy. Conversely, the economic environment can impact the project as costs of supplies vary as does the demand for the product. It is critical, therefore, for managers to forecast these changes and time their projects accordingly. This type of planning can be quite involved. Zheng et al. (2021) lay out some of the many variables that can impact managing a project life cycle and it is a very complex issue.

Article Summary

Cha and Maytorena-Sanchez (2019) raise some very good points about the effective management of project life cycles. In the stretched S model, it is likely that managerial inputs will be mor necessary during the project initiation and project termination phases. These are the times when plans are being drawn up and decisions are being made about where resources should be allocated. Compare this with the project implementation phase, which hopefully can just be monitored and not require as much hands-on management. An effective manager will realize this difference in demand for attention during the project life cycle. This is important because many managers will have multiple projects at one time. It is important to prioritize and deconflict these projects so that each can be given the attention that it requires. This concept applies not only to managerial attention, but to other resources as well. For exponential projects, it may be more difficult for a manager to oversee multiple projects. This is because exponential projects require a more constant level of attention throughout the process. Furthermore, Cha and Maytorena-Sanchez (2019) define project management competences that can help to identify what type of oversight is required during which phase of the lifecycle. For some companies, it may be beneficial to have different leadership on projects during different life cycle phases according to what that leader’s strengths are.

Biblical Integration

Life cycle management is all about planning and understanding deviations from that plan. Proverbs 21:5 teaches, “The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty” (English Standard Version). Luke 14:28 says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it” (ESV). It is also important to realize that, no matter how much planning and preparation is done, it is still important to trust in the Lord. Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (ESV).

Application

Planning a life cycle of a project has many benefits. One of the main things is to understand the relationship between resources used and output produced. I have spent a great deal of time and money working on my MBA, and yet I have nothing tangible to show for it. If I expected to have eighty percent of the benefit because I have put in eighty percent of the time and effort, this endeavor would be deemed a failure and I would have to quit. Instead, I recognize that grad school is an exponential life cycle and only after completing one hundred percent of the work will the benefit of a degree be realized.

Please respond to each student 200-300 words use references

First one is responding to teacher

This is what the teacher asked me

Time Management can definitely impact the WBS. For example, if the estimated time of activity A was 10 days yet it took 15 days you would need to update the WBS to show the overall impact to the project. Can you give an example of how cost management might impact the WBS?

Student 1 is Belinda

After reading and watching this week’s material, engage in an active discussion regarding how cost and time management impact the WBS. Review the following information and answer the following questions:Cost and time management can impact many aspects of the project. One of the major deliverables that cost, and time can impact is the WBS. In this week’s teamwork, your team will be reviewing the current cost and time estimates and updating the WBS with more realistic information based on feedback and comments from the professor and the other various team members. Discuss the potential items to review and if you think there are any major updates to the WBS after reviewing the time and cost management chapters. Do your thoughts differ from your teammates? Why and what will you do to resolve?

A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a description of the work that will be completed for a project. It is a hierarchy of tasks that represents the project team’s understanding of the composition of work, and of the size, cost, and duration of each component or task. A WBS has three major purposes:

• Describe the breakdown or composition of work in tasks.
• Schedule the project work.
• Estimate the cost of each task (Yowelle et al, 2022).

The items to review to establish if there are any needed changes on the current WBS are your cost and time management estimates. There are several methods to cost estimation and we chose to use the bottom-up approach. More specifically we will use parametric estimation which compares past projects costs and times with our current project. After reviewing estimates of each it is important to realize if you choose to change the WBS in any way it can change the scope of the project. There are other considerations such as resource allocation, budgeting, and risk management all ride on a properly broken-down project. If you change something, no matter how small it seems, you could wind up creating greater costs, needing a different resource, or worse—project failure due to a risk associated with the change (Mathis, 2019). The last reason to be cautious when changing the WBS is that it serves as a part of your change control and changes may cause the deliverables that follow to fail and cause scope creep. When considering changing the WBS the Project team needs to consider the scope, schedule and budget. If it is determined that there needs to be a change in the WBS it needs to go through the formal approval process. If the change is going to cause problems with any of the three considerations, then the request should be denied.

Fortunately, all team members are on the same page for the WBS update. Our project’s estimates for the time and cost management are on point and we feel there are no needed changes.

Mathis, Micah. (2019). Work breakdown structure (WBS) purpose, process, and pitfalls. Retrieved April 20,2022 from https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/work-breakdown-stru…

Yowelle et al., (04/13/2022) Work breakdown structures overview, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/proje…

Student 2 is Will

Hello,

After considering the impacts costs and time management has on the WBS, my team felt it was important that we reviewed the project’s schedule, critical and non-critical paths, and the budget. Every project has its own unique attributes. These attributes create variances in projects that are similar to one another. “Project teams can also factor in the time and cost of project management processes. Processes that are not tailored may add little value to the project or its outcomes while increasing cost and lengthening schedule. Tailoring their approach along with appropriate processes, methods, and artifacts can help project teams make decisions about process related costs and the related value contribution to project outcomes.” (Project Management Institute, 2021, p. 45) Time and cost management is the act of planning for the variables that feed these variances and budgeting both time and money so that the project meets it required goals. With this information in mind, our team discussed how scheduling work to be completed during weekends and holidays would impact the schedule and the budget. To do this we needed to modify our WBS to act as both a WBS and a project calendar. This allowed us to identify what days and shift were available for scheduled activities.

After identifying the weekends and holidays over the course of our project, we accepted the fact that working holidays and weekends would increase costs. This trade off seemed to be acceptable to many members of our team because it ensured that we would meet the project deadline, while also remaining on budget. PMBOK describes the project schedule as, “An output of a schedule model that present linked activities with planned dates, durations, milestones, and resources.” (Project Management Institute, 2021, p. 246) This schedule is vital to project management because it allows the project manager to control the project schedule and predict the expenditure of funds.

A group of students at Franklin University found that by applying project management time and cost principles they were able to improve the value of course instruction. “In many cases, we also used a course manuscript…that provides consistency among all courses. Essentially, the template provides a structure for all instructional designers…By implementing the manuscript, the content editors were able to significantly decrease their build time, which decreases the overall budget for the project.” (Gardner, Bennett, Hyatt, & Stoker, 2017) Failure to meet a project’s deployment date can result in significant revenue loss and costs related to the extension of the project. At the start of every project, management must conduct a critical analysis of all activities to identify their associated risks. From there management can use a decision tree analysis to determine whether the schedule or the budget is of a higher value/importance to the success of the project. Knowing this helps the project team build the WBS and shapes actions at decision points. This shaping helps project managers to establish contingency reserves for both time and money.

Student 3 Marjan

Marjan Kia

Department of Business, Park university

PM691DLS2P2022 Time and Cost Management

Professor Lashawn Johnson

Apr 20, 2022

Week 6 Discussion

WBS provides a framework as a basis for other planning processes, including the process of defining activities in the field of scheduling management knowledge, the process of estimating costs in the field of project cost management knowledge, the process of estimating resources in the field of resource management knowledge? The risk identification process should be in the field of project risk knowledge. The last level of the work breakdown structure is called work packages, in which a work package can be timed, cost, and monitored. If you cannot define the scope of the project, then you will certainly not be able to define the schedule, resource planning, or budgeting for your project. WBS first helps you define the scope of the project and then acts as a framework for defining project details in planning, scheduling, estimating, budgeting, outsourcing, cost aggregation, and more. This framework is developed by the project manager and team in the operations necessary to achieve the project objectives. Allows the project manager to interpret the project plan.

Cost estimation is an approximate estimate of the financial resources needed to complete project activities based on available information and assumptions at a point in time. Usually, the accuracy of estimates at the beginning of the project is not good during the project implementation because more detailed information will be available during the project implementation, so in many projects, re-estimation is inevitable.

If the general deviation from the budget is clear, the detail of this issue means what parts of the project the deviation from the budget is related to and what are the reasons for this deviation, and therefore it is not possible for the managers of the organization and the project to make correct and effective decisions. More accurate results in the project can be achieved with precise cost and time control and using WBS. Team-building techniques are interesting and special. Just as building a sports or art team requires practice, we must use the normal activities of the project as team-building events. Our team did well in creating the WBS structure. People who do the work are allowed to do the job definition work. This is a great opportunity to build trust and relationships through teamwork.

Our team took the time to review the WBS again. We reviewed it again and made sure it made sense. We asked team members to submit their scenarios to the rest of the team for review and discussion. In this way, we were able to understand the whole effort of the team. We worked on re-examining the time and correcting it. We re-examined the costs according to our budget and tried to eliminate the extra costs. There is no disagreement in our team. We review the cost, time, quality, and scope of the project together and finally make a summary of each other’s opinions and continue the project. I think if my teammates’ thoughts were different, we would still be able to continue our work by talking in business meetings and getting ideas from each other, and using it as a challenge.

References

Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2021). Project Management: The Managerial Process. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures (2001). Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute Inc.

Globerson, Shlomo, Cohen, Izack, Vardi, Sivan. (2016). Identifying the Criteria Used for ESTABLISHING WORK PACKAGE SIZE FOR PROJECT WBS. (Park University).

Buchtik, Liliana. (2013). Secrets to Mastering the WBS. (Park University).

Here is the original directions for reference you DO NOT have to do this it is to help you.

Directions

After reading and watching this week’s material, engage in an active discussion regarding how cost and time management impact the WBS. Review the following information and answer the following questions:

Cost and time management can impact many aspects of the project. One of the major deliverables that cost and time can impact is the WBS. In this week’s team work, your team will be reviewing the current cost and time estimates and updating the WBS with more realistic information based on feedback and comments from the professor and the other various team members. Discuss the potential items to review and if you think there are any major updates to the WBS after reviewing the time and cost management chapters. Do your thoughts differ from your teammates? Why and what will you do to resolve?

Please find an additional reference source and cite the source in your discussion post. Sources must be used to enhance the learning experience. By finding a referenced source, you are enhancing the learning experience by searching for another source of information on the topic. Also, please ensure you are using a source that is peer reviewed to ensure accuracy of information (select peer-reviewed journal articles in the Park Library search engine)

Your original post should be in the format of an executive summary (must contain verbiage and bullet points to name the key points). Use APA formatting.

Q1-Think of a job that requires very high levels of certain cognitive abilities. Can you think of a way to redesign that job so that people who lack those abilities could still perform the job effectively? Now respond to the same question with regard to emotional and physical abilities.

Q2- Consider the personality dimensions included in the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and the RIASEC model. If you had to “slot” those dimensions into the Big Five, would you be able to do so? Which dimensions don’t seem to fit?

Q3-Think about a highly successful team with which you are familiar. What types of task, goal, and outcome interdependence does this team have? Describe how changes in task, goal, and outcome interdependence might have a negative impact on this team.

Q4-Think of a team you’ve worked in that performed poorly. Were any of the causes of the poor performance related to the forces that tend to create process loss? If so, which force was most problematic? What steps, if any, did your team take to deal with the problem?

Q5- Who is the most influential leader you have come in contact with personally? What forms of power did they have, and which types of influence did they use to accomplish objectives?

Q6-You are required to reply to at least two peer discussion question post answers to this weekly discussion question and/ These post replies need to be substantial and constructive in nature.

1- My first colleague’s post:

1- There is no human being in the world that has all the abilities i.e. cognitive, physical and emotional abilities. People with different abilities can achieve the goals of an organization.

Let us take the example of car manufacturing. People who have higher cognitive ability design the parts of the car and the assembly plan. People who have physical ability assemble a car using machines and psycho-motor skills. People who have emotional abilities organize the people in the factory floor and administer sales of cars. Every organization requires human abilities to achieve its goals; it is impractical to replace human abilities with their systems, which includes job redesign.

2- Personality assessments tools helps to understand people based on their personality make up.

Though these tools attempt to understand personality of a person, they are based on distinct theoretical model and empirical research. The context of development and the theoretical basis of each assessment tool is different.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Big five Personality factors and Holland’s RIASEC model are taxonomies of personality characteristics. Each of these is developed based on distinct theoretical foundations and empirical research. Though some factors appear to be similar in all taxonomies, many are unique for interpretation. It would be ideal to use the tools independently rather than comparing their commonality.

3- A team is a group of individuals who are interacting, influencing and are interdependent on each other with the target and commitment of achieving the common goals of the organization as whole.

The example of a successful football team can be where all the players are interdependent Interdependence removes the redundancies of work efforts and is therefore very efficient. The team has a task interdependency of scoring a goal against the opposition to achieve an outcome interdependence of winning the match. Therefore, their task is a collective interdependence, and the effort is a collective one with constant interaction.

If any change in the interdependence occurs, each individual player would think about personal achievements and therefore only play for himself. But working in teams require proper coordination and cooperation among the members, which makes teamwork challenging. The outcome interdependence will change and even if the player scores high number of goals, still there is a little probability the team would succeed.

4- Researchers have identified two kinds of team processes i.e. one that enhances the outcomes of the teamwork and the other one which diminishes the outcomes of team work. The scholar calls the former outcome as ‘process gain’ and the latter is called ‘process loss.

The student had the experience of working in a team whose teamwork process lead to a process loss. The team was a community volunteering group, and it had the following characteristics:

other as rivals

about rival members

meetings

The team leaders should have taken the following steps to avoid the process loss:

Suggestions Teamwork process has moderate contribution to outcome but has tremendous effect on the commitment of team members.

5- True leaders enjoy the art of persuading and motivating other individuals and controlling their thought process through consultation, appeals, and various tactics of ingratiation, coalition pressure and exchange and therefore leading and guiding them to achieve the common goal.

The immediate reporting manager of the current organization is a perfect example of the most influential leader who inveigled her subordinates to identify their potentials. Being the manager,

she promotes basic individual rights and freedom of speech, privacy and thought processes through the legitimate power and even foster integrity and fair treatment to every individual by being just, honest, and reasonable by exerting the required coercive power. The power tactics complementing the legitimate power to meet the deadlines on time is through legitimating and imposing pressure tactics by using the authoritative power or even coercive power. At times exchange tactics are used to motivate the employees to enhance their productivity through reward power.

Having an insatiable learning agility can leverage her analyzing skills, decision making abilities, thereby nurturing her expert power. Even being an avid learner by approaching and learning from those who already possess the knowledge even if they are subordinates is the best way to gain expert power as per her ideology. She has a modern and positive outlook towards the employees. She believes in democratic leadership rather than autocratic one.

Confidence is one of her important traits and has adequate zeal and conviction on herself. By being an effective communicator, she exchanges ideas and suggestions with every level of subordinate of the organization but acts strategically applying personal intellect. She is demanding but at the same time maintains sociability. She is a true enthusiast towards her job and maintains integrity, loyalty, and competency and has the best decisiveness.

My second colleague’s post: