Reply to JOFI 2 The fact that my team is being internally recruited is an advantage, as everyone, but particularly those from more collectivist cultures needs time to develop a real relationship with the other members of the team in order to communicate and cooperate effectively. The first thing I would do in forming my team would be to find people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (Organizational Behavior, Ch. 9 p.32) needed for each function on the new team. I would then run the list of names by someone from HR and verify that there wasn’t anyone who was a EEO incident waiting to happen, such as someone who had already received a warning for discriminating someone else from a different culture or national origin. Assuming a team size of 6 people, I would ideally try to find overlapping commonality throughout the range of their demographic factors, to prevent anyone from perceiving that he or she were being singled out based on any particular factor. . For example, If there were a Brazilian woman from the baby boomer generation and a male German Millenial, it would be helpful to have a male Baby Boomer from the US, to prevent the Brazilian from feeling like part of an out-group due to her age, or the German man from being the only man in the group. At the earliest possible opportunity, I would also meet with the team in person (or at the very least via VTC) and lay out the objectives and roles very clearly, including rules of respect, and what to do in the event of a conflict with another team member. At this meeting, I would try to start to set a tone that struck a happy medium between the formal “let’s go around the table and call on each person for input” preferred by the Baby Boomer Generation, and the anarchic “let’s put our feet on the table and look at our phones throughout the meeting” of Gen Y. (Goudreau, 2013) Starting out, during the “storming” phase, it will be important to prevent any particular individual from dominating the conversation, and likewise, to prevent people with good ideas, with exaggerated perception of rank/power, from keeping quiet. As everyone gets to know each other, and the group starts to take on an identity, the things that require deliberate attention would start to happen automatically. Ideally, anyway. Reply to JUFU 2 Since the instructions do not specifically state a region, I will be operating off of the assumption that this particular office will be dealing with a mix nationalities, but will focus on the fact that currently Middle Eastern, and South American immigrants are in the most need of relocation services. My first priority in forming this team will be to determine what attributes are the most important, find those individuals, and form the team around them. For example, language is the most significant barrier to communication followed by cultural interacting differences. So right off the bat I know my team must consist of Arabic speakers preferably with working knowledge of various ...

1. Reply to JOFI 2
The fact that my team is being internally recruited is an
advantage, as everyone, but particularly those from more
collectivist cultures needs time to develop a real relationship
with the other members of the team in order to communicate
and cooperate effectively.
The first thing I would do in forming my team would be to find
people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (Organizational
Behavior, Ch. 9 p.32) needed for each function on the new
team. I would then run the list of names by someone from HR
and verify that there wasn’t anyone who was a EEO incident
waiting to happen, such as someone who had already received a
warning for discriminating someone else from a different
culture or national origin.
Assuming a team size of 6 people, I would ideally try to find
overlapping commonality throughout the range of their
demographic factors, to prevent anyone from perceiving that he
or she were being singled out based on any particular factor. .
For example, If there were a Brazilian woman from the baby
boomer generation and a male German Millenial, it would be
helpful to have a male Baby Boomer from the US, to prevent the
Brazilian from feeling like part of an out-group due to her age,
or the German man from being the only man in the group.
At the earliest possible opportunity, I would also meet with the
team in person (or at the very least via VTC) and lay out the
objectives and roles very clearly, including rules of respect, and
what to do in the event of a conflict with another team member.
At this meeting, I would try to start to set a tone that struck a
happy medium between the formal “let’s go around the table
and call on each person for input” preferred by the Baby
Boomer Generation, and the anarchic “let’s put our feet on the
table and look at our phones throughout the meeting” of Gen Y.
(Goudreau, 2013)
Starting out, during the “storming” phase, it will be important

2. to prevent any particular individual from dominating the
conversation, and likewise, to prevent people with good ideas,
with exaggerated perception of rank/power, from keeping quiet.
As everyone gets to know each other, and the group starts to
take on an identity, the things that require deliberate attention
would start to happen automatically. Ideally, anyway.
Reply to JUFU 2
Since the instructions do not specifically state a region, I will
be operating off of the assumption that this particular office
will be dealing with a mix nationalities, but will focus on the
fact that currently Middle Eastern, and South American
immigrants are in the most need of relocation services. My first
priority in forming this team will be to determine what
attributes are the most important, find those individuals, and
form the team around them. For example, language is the most
significant barrier to communication followed by cultural
interacting differences. So right off the bat I know my team
must consist of Arabic speakers preferably with working
knowledge of various dialects, and a Spanish speakers. The
main reason for this is the significant role the culture, language,
and non-verbal communication play in successful cross-cultural
communications (Organizational Behavior, 2014, ch.8, pp.50-
52). The fact that dialects and variants of Arabic and Latin
language is understood and unavoidable without a very large
pool.
Second, it would be preferable if these individuals are
from, or fully understand the cultures in these regions. This
portion of the team will consist of an older male and middle
aged female to interact with the Middle Eastern immigrants, and
an older female and middle aged male to interact with the South
American immigrants. The make-up of the teams serves two
purposes. Mainly on the Middle Eastern side, woman do not
talk to men they do not know, and men do not take direction or
advise from females, so this is a necessity. Additional, older
men are held in high regard. On the contrary South American
cultures tend to put a high value on woman, particularly their

3. mothers. Secondly, by having male/ female teams with an age
disparity, the teams should naturally interact with each other.
Once this portion of the team is established, the rest of
the team responsible for coordinating the logistics of movement
and relocation can be formed around them. It is still imperative
that this team is motivated, cohesive, and integrated with my
cultural facilitators as they will also be an intragal part of the
relocation. The remainder of the team will be made up of 4
personnel (for a total of 8) an administrative professional, a
relocation specialist, a medical professional, and a general
assistant to the team. As is stated in Organizational Behavior
(2014) teams smaller the 10 are optimal, and diverse teams with
complementary skills perform better (Organizational Behavior,
2014, ch.9, pp.33-34). These 4 personnel will come from
Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Washington to help with
assistance in relocation, diversify the team even further, and
encourage collaboration.
Reply to DOJO 1
Communication types include verbal communication, written
communication, and nonverbal communication (The Saylor
Foundation, 2014, Ch. 8, pp. 27). My current employer is
separated from his employees being located across campus in
different buildings, so his communications style is more written
communication by email, to the workforce, which is good
because this can be saved and read at any time (The Saylor
Foundation, 2014, Ch. 8, pp. 30). Although, his emails are not
always clear or convey his meanings and or facts (The Saylor
Foundation, 2014, Ch. 8, pp. 30). When he does want to
communicate verbally, a simple email is sent for a meeting held
in his office with the time and day but no reason to why the
meeting is called. Emails such as these tend to fluster
employees because of the unawareness of the meeting was not
displayed in the email. Communication of this nature may be a
barrier of filtering to manage the employees anticipated reaction
and or questions to his meeting discussion (The Saylor

4. Foundation, 2014, Ch. 8, pp. 9) and or gender difference in
communication. Often the communication barriers I see between
the employees and our employer are word interpretation and
differences in meaning based on age, cultural/military
background (The Saylor Foundation, 2014, Ch. 8, pp. 18). I
would say my employer’s communication style is not effective
because of the reasons were given. My work environment is not
so diverse in aspects of age and gender, with that said since
there are more males in the organization information is often
spoken in “sports metaphors” (The Saylor Foundation, 2014,
Ch. 8, pp. 17) rather than putting out clear guidance. Lastly,
giving clear concise guidance and facts through your channels
of communication is what employees are looking for. Barriers
of communication can hurt and stagnate organization and
abilities to build better employees.
Reply to TEVA 1
Communication is key in many aspects of our lives. We use it to
relay our thoughts, our feelings, how we interpret things and
how we relay them. It takes time for us to truly understand how
communication affects us and our actions. It is key to achieving
our goals and getting things done as well (Organizational
Behavior, 2014). As a manager and leader, trying to figure out
and understand how to communicate to your employees can be
difficult. There may be some barriers, such as language, not
sharing important info, emotional disconnects, lack of
credibility and Semantics. In the military, we use a lot of
acronyms and learn again and again that just because they are
familiar to you, they may not be familiar at all to someone who
works in a different career field. One quick example is when we
do quarterly awards, we like to use Acronyms and abbreviate
things to save space and get more info in the bullet, however it
can come across very confusing to someone who does not know
what you do and is trying to make sense of it. It the end it ends
up hurting the individual because they lose points. Staying away
from the semantics is key.
On to my example of where communication failed me and my

5. organization. The way he communicated was very ineffective
and clearly had an impact. We had an individual in my chain of
leadership who did not like to communicate with you unless it
was trying to put you down or make himself look better in front
of people. There was a meeting I used to have to attend and we
had a few slides that covered information from my flight. Every
time we got to our slides, he would have a snide comment about
how things could be done better or how it was impossible for a
certain thing to take place because he was sure it was not
allowed. So instead of asking me, as I was sitting right there, he
would talk around me as if I wasn’t. This obviously caused an
emotional disconnect, there was no trust w/ him because he did
not have trust in what we did (PALISZKIEWICZ, n.d.) . He did
not listen to anything we tried to say, which caused me to stop
communicating (Organizational Behavior, 2014). His lack of
care and professionalism caused me to disconnect really
quickly. Communication froze essentially. When we were
outside of work, his non verbals were clear that he did not want
to engage w/ not only me but others in my unit. He would walk
right by and not say hello, no eye contact was made and his
demeanor made it clear that he did not want any type of
communication to ensue (Organizational Behavior, 2014). He
also never visited any of the flights in my unit or tried. We were
clearly not worth his time nor his energy. There were no
generation barriers or cultural differences that caused him to be
the way he was that I could tell. When he left and new
leadership came in, it was very refreshing. Someone whom will
look at you when they spoke, valued your opinion and cared. I
slowly regained trust, opened communication again and felt as
though we were part of one team and that we mattered.