1. Provide a one-paragraph summary of the key issues as you see them in this case.
The most struggle thing to Rinaldi is the relationship conflict, since she had a hard time to communicate with Jamie and Follet. After Rinaldi join Potomac water, she had a hard time to getting along with her colleague Jamie Vaughan, the associate PM. She found it is hard to communicate with Jamie since the first meet that he shows unfriendly greetings. Her direct boss Natalie Follet, treating her not fair, and rarely support any help or question answered for her. On the communication aspect, the downward communication didn't goes well, because Follet assign tasks and goals, without providing job instructions and no feedbacks on her performance.During the work, she was hardly to receive valued tasks, she normally was assigned insignificant tasks, like copy documents. She also did impressive jobs when she got important works, however she did not even received a formal praise from Jamie or Follet. She even got blamed about helping Fher colleague doing works. That about the group Norms, the company didn't make it clear about should employees help each when they ask helps. If the company made organization norm, then Rinaldi was not able to get access to the norms.At the end of the year, when everyone getting busy to deal with the works, Jamie even assigned her overwhelming works.Rinaldi feel Jamie and Follet have unusual relationship, but she confirmed it by the grapevine. The communication between Rinaldi and Follet was considered awful, by looking at the nonverbal communication, Follet shows no respect when Rinaldi come for questions. Before she join in Potomac Water, the most she expected was to get outstanding training and improvement on marketing skills. But all she got here is insubstantial training. All of those would eventually made Rinaldi's de-motivation, and that is why Bautista, the VP of marketing asked why she turned quiet later.
2. How would you describe Rinaldi's influence style? Cite at least two concepts from the course text or other literature used in this course to justify your response, and relate them to her behavior.
Back to when Rinaldi was working in Deep Dive Pizza, she had lots of opportunities to show her abilities, and one of her influence style there wasrational persuasion. According to the article, it mentioned that Rinaldi made a persuasive presentation to Deep Dive Pizza about potential major investment in computerized information system, based on her computer science major background, her proposal was impressive and persuasive to Deep Dive Pizza's managers, and that's why she has rational persuasion influence style. (Chapter 13 page 216)
Another influence style will be personal appeals. After Rinaldi came to Potomac Water, she was happy to help, even though she got a bad "warning" from the managers. The "war" between Jamie and Rinaldi became more and more serious, Rinaldi actually got more allies, at least most of her co-workers emotionally supporting her. And that is how she gained personal appeals influences. (Chapter 13 page 216)
3. What are Rinaldi's sources of power? Cite at least one concept from the course text or other literature used in this course to justify your response.
Rinaldi has her personal power, which includes expert power and referent power. She graduate from a top 10 business school with MBA degree, and she also got significant working experience in Deep Dive Pizza. Her working and learning history gave her expert power in the work. Also she shows her ability and talent when she was assigned works, and her work was impressive. Some of her colleague know Jamie and Rinaldi did not communicate well, but most of them rallied to support Rinaldi, at least emotionally. Because they all know Jamie is a hard communicating person, and Rinaldi did what she supposed to do and trying her best in her position. (Chapter 13, page 215)
4. What conflict management style is Rinaldi using? Is it working for her? Cite at least two concepts from the course text or other literature used in this course to justify your response, and relate them to her behavior.
Rinaldi belong to production-oriented leader, she is not that good at dealing with all kinds of employees, but she did pretty well on every job that assigned to her. When the first time Rinaldi got an important task, she did impressive job at that time, but there was no reward or any appreciation from Follet. After that, she might get a little disappointed, she was still doing jobs cautious and conscientious. Thus she was kind of production-oriented leader. (chapter 12 page 193)
It does not work well for her, if she can make her more employee oriented style, and try to balance it with production oriented style, that would help her to learn how to deal with difficult and different co-workers. If she only focuses on production oriented leadership style, even though she can finish the jobs perfectly, she would still struggling with her managers. (Chapter 12 page 193)
A smart leader should not only have advantages on working skills, but also need relationship dealing skills.
5. Should Rinaldi try to salvage her situation, or decide to leave Potomac Waters? Why? Justify your response with at least two citations from the course text or other literature used in this course.
I would recommend Rinaldi leave Potomac water for a better working environment at Deep Dive Pizza. Based on job satisfactiondegree (chapter 3 page 44), Rinaldi did not get the significant training by her supervisor; besides, she did get respect from Jamie or Follet. Both things could lead to negative attitude toward Follet or even her job. Based on the study on job satisfaction, it suggested that job satisfaction and job performance have strong correlation. Rinaldi is not qualified to be a happy worker in Potomac Water, thus if situation keeps what it looks right now, she would eventually demotivated in this organization. Rinaldi is new in Potomac Water, Jamie and Follet are different generation with her, and they both hold bias on young MBAs. Rinaldi faces relationship conflict in Potomac, and this kind of conflict always considered dysfunctional. Relationship conflict usually exhausting people in the psychological way (Chapter 14, page 233). Rinaldi can either change the managerial system or change the personality of her co-workers. Even though leaving Potomac without any success is considered as a "failure", she would continue suffer the same situation if staying there. She is not fit in Potomac's organizational culture well, but she does fit Deep Dive Pizza. Even though Rinaldi is not sure what the relationship will be between the VP at Deep Dive Pizza and she, a good performance history and the highly attention by the CEO of the previous company make it is still a better choice for her in this case.
6. If she decides to stay, what should her next steps be? Provide at least three actions she should take and justify them with at least one concept each from the course text or other literature used in this course.
If she wants to stay, the first step is to work on the relationship conflict between Jamie and herself. Experiencing relationship conflict is always make things dysfunctional. Because fail to maintenance relationship with others would increase personality clashes, and it even cause employees to put the organizational goal or tasks behind. Rinaldi need to commutate more with Jamie, since there is a hard chance for her to communicate with Follet. Because a potential conflict could happen if there is too little communication between employees. (Chapter 14)
About the second step, Rinaldi need to improve her informal communication skill, Jamie is hard person to deal with, but during their private conversation, he explained he did all of these because of his fail to promotion. Except the formal communication between co-workers, there is still unformal style. Rinaldi should try to treat Jamie as her friend, for example, buying a coffee someday for him, or share him more personal stories when they have relax time, to see if there would be any differences.
The Third step, she need to increase the awareness of her position. If she only expect to do important tasks, she will always be considered as "know it all" MBAs. She really need to learn how to deal with seniors, be respect and unassertive during the work. To wait whether Follet would assign her important tasks.
The last step, if she followed all the above steps, but there is no change about how Jamie and Follet treat her, then she need to ask Bautista for a departmenttransfer.
7. What is Rinaldi's most important lesson from this experience? Cite at least one concept from the course materials and provide sufficient analysis and detail to justify your response.
The most important lesson Rinaldi for Rinaldi is communicate with co-workers is significant relate to working performance. Rinaldi came to Potomac with high expectation on the job tasks, she carried the same attitudes and mindset as she was in Deep Dive Pizza. Plus Jamie and Follet both hold bias on young MBAs, it considered a barrier to effective communication between them and Rinaldi. Follet also has selective perception on receiving Rinaldi's question or conversation. Jamie failed his promotion and that is why he has negative emotion on communicating with Rinaldi. When people hold negative moods, then the emotion actually turn to hinder effective communication. All in all, communication is important, and Rinaldi need to figure out how to communicate with hard people, and she need to learn how to deal with people in different personalities. (Chapter 11)