1: What happened to the A-Team? The A-Team was forced to disband because from the very first tasking, there was conflict between the group members. The group never actually came together to complete their first tasking of defining roles. The arguments between the group members got so bad that one of their team members walked out for the group and threatened to quit the program. Why did the group process break down?
The group process broke down because there was never a group. This group began with a group of five individuals who had strong opinionated views as of the relevancy of their professions and experience. Instead of getting together as a group and mutually deciding how the tasking’s should be assigned to the group members. Instead of finding ways to relate their experience to a tasking that would promote group success, each member found ways to put down or argue the experience of the other members. There was poor structural integration, differences in social identity, and stereotyping. What dimensions of diversity were responsible for the conflict? The dimensions of diversity that were responsible for the conflict included gender, ethnicity, experience, and age.
2: Describe which barriers to effectively managing diversity were present in this situation? Discrimination: Rebecca seems to feel that the “girls” are being treated unfairly by Aran because they are women. They feel that Aran didn’t give them a “real” job. Stereotyping: The women feel that Aran is extremely sexist because he didn’t give them “real” jobs. While not specifically mentioned they might assume he is sexist as well due to his Arab descent. Social Identity: Being of Arab descent in a group of predominately American Aran felt that his social identity put him at a disadvantage.
This probably forced Aran to find a way to put him in a position of power over the others in an attempt to avoid being the outcast. He used his experience as an attempt to justify him being the leader. Ultimately his social identity hurts him when Rebecca makes the “Western way of doing business.” The same could be said for Pranarisha however the opportunity never arose for her to set herself apart from the others but I’m sure that due to her Thai background and her inability to communicate played a toll on her and her decision to get up and walk away from the group. Katie didn’t even recognize Pranarisha as a Thai and just assumes her being Vietnamese.
Power Differentials: Aran felt that he should be the leader of the group because he has the most experience in the group. He also feels that the rest of the group is young and inexperienced therefore have no business being the leader. Katie feels that she has more experience in finance than Aran therefore the rest of the group feels that experience doesn’t necessarily relate to leadership. Communication Problems: It seems that all members of the group had willingness to openly disagree with each other. The women felt they needed to maintain “face” to the men in the group. There was no amount of time devoted to establishing personal relationships.
This can be seen by Katie not knowing that Pranarisha was of Thai descent and barely even knew her name. All members spoke assertively, especially with Rebecca who immediately assumed Aran was stereotyping and discriminating against women. Pranarisha didn’t speak English but her walking away from the group probably spoke the largest volume of all the group members.
3. What could have been done to manage the group process better? First thing that could have been done was to have a meet and greet session where each learned their personal and professional backgrounds better. They could have discussed their strengths and weaknesses in areas of business. The next step would to use these strengths and weaknesses to determine what type of project the group as going to do.
Based on the scope of the project, the group could have then assigned roles and tasking’s based on the scope and strengths of the group’s skills. While a group tends to have a leader, the importance of team should be stressed that has each person doing something of importance to support the groups objective. Because there is a language barrier between the group and one of the members who does not speak English, perhaps a translator app that will help understand the dialogue between team members can be understood by all. This will help everybody support ideas and recommendations to the project without feeling left out.
