The Listening Skills Yeah Whatever Video and The Out of Office Reply Video - Essay Example

Virtual Workplace Video Assignment In the Listening Skills Yeah Whatever video, we look at the meeting taking place between Pilar Grimault, a Senior Account Manager and Miguel Valentino, a creative designer at the firm. Miguel appears overwhelmed and overjoyed by the success of one of his campaigns, and keeps on reminding Pilar of this, while Pilar congratulates and acknowledges his contribution but at the same time tells him that some of his clients were concerned that he went over budget on the campaign. Pilar tells Miguel that he needs to have a system in place that tracks spending, or tell his assistant to take over this responsibility. She even looks at the possibility of their having a meeting once a week. Miguel appears over the moon at his success, and is not looking at Pilar, twiddling with his pen, taking a phone call and appearing generally disrespectful and self absorbed. In the second part of the video, taken three weeks later, Miguel is seen coming to Pilar’s office and asking for a meeting with her. He has just heard that he has been taken off Jezebel’s account and seems shocked and unbelieving that this has happened. Pilar tells him that they had already had a meeting on his weaknesses the last time but he did not seem to acknowledge or want to understand the reality of the situation. In the second meeting however, Miguel appeared to have come down to earth and is more attentive to Pilar’s instructions. Pilar tells him that it was Jezebel’s decision to themselves replace him with Jack for the remainder of their campaign. She is however willing to give him another chance to make amends and tells him that he has to send in a report every Friday on the spending position of every account under him and that they could meet every Tuesday at 2.00 pm to discuss the issues that appear. This time clearly Miguel is more receptive and even notes the time of the Tuesday meeting in his appointment book or diary and tells Pilar that he will definitely send the spending report in by Friday as needed. On her part, Pilar says that she did not want to lose the Jezebel account and had no choice but to go with the client’s suggestion. Once the situation has settled down however, Pilar tells Miguel that she will try to give him back the Jezebel account. In the Out of Office Reply video, we have the meeting between Ralph Ramos, the Senior Claims Manager and Angela Zanoni, a Claims Investigator. Angela has been working from home but it seems that performance issues are cropping up. She is piqued that Bob Simmons has told her that he is getting better accounts to deal with while she feels that she is being sidelined because she is working from home and therefore not visible to Ralph. Ralph assures her that this is not the case and that both she and Bob have different skill sets and that he gives the employees the accounts to be handled based on their past relationships with the client. While he would not feel comfortable handling Angela the accounts that Bob had been handling in the past, he would also not give Bob her accounts so she is misinformed. At the end of the first meeting they set up and appointment to meet again, but in the second video recorded two weeks later it appears that Angela has failed to keep her appointment. Always the gentleman, Ralph first tries to put Angela at ease by asking her a personal question about how she is and how things are at home, but it seems that Angela misreads him because she is preoccupied. On probing into the matter further because it is not like Angela to miss a deadline-she has not done so in the four years they have worked together- Ralph finds out that Angela had missed the deadline because she felt that nothing fruitful would have come out of it. She is still hurt because she feels that she is being treated differently because she is working from home. She even offers to resign because she is so frustrated. Ralph reacts quickly to calm things down and just manages to do so, be telling Angela to sit down and listen to him for just five minutes. Once the situation has been controlled, Ralph proceeds to make a fair deal with Angela. She will continue to work from home for another two weeks, but they will communicate with each other every day over the phone. At the end of two weeks, they will see how the situation has worked out. This will then be followed by Angela working two more weeks with Ralph at the office. Once this second period is over, they will then see which option was the better for the both of them and stick to that. Angela thankfully sees the fairness and wisdom in Ralph’s plan of action and agrees to give it a chance. We see that there is often a falling out between employees and management, or between office colleagues or peers because of miscommunication (Robbins, 2001). In the case of Pilar and Miguel, in the first part of the video there is an absence of communication because Miguel is self absorbed in his success and is not even willing to look at Pilar directly, much less understand what she is saying to him. As a result, he completely misses the importance of what Pilar is telling him about controlling budgeted expenses. In consequence, Jezebel decides to replace him with Jack on the rest of their project. In the second part of the video, he is much more attentive and down to earth as he realizes what has happened and why he has lost the account. Comparing this to the situation with Ralph and Angela, I would say that in the first part of the video, Angela is on the offensive because she fears that she is being sidelined because of her working from home. In the second part of the video, things are still at an impasse because she is not convinced that Ralph is giving her an even chance; she is further miffed when Bob Simmons spreads a rumor that he is getting the better and more lucrative accounts. It is a credit to Ralph’s patience and expertise in working with people that he succeeds in calming Angela down rather than let the situation escalate to the point where she resigned and walked out. I would opine that selective perceptions and emotions are getting the better of Miguel in the first part of the video, where he is particularly inattentive to Pilar. Active listening demands attention as well as intellect to understand and comprehend what the other person is really saying- it consists of getting behind the meaning of the words (Schermerhorn et al, 2005). Empathy or stepping into the other’s shoes and imagining how the conversation will affect them enhance active listening. As regards conflict, the two major types are (1) constructive or functional and (2) destructive or dysfunctional. I would say that there is a conflict of perspective on the need to control expenses in the Yeah Whatever video and in the second instance a misperception on the part of Angela that she is been treated less favorably just because she is working from home. In both cases the situation has moved from a potentially destructive one to a positive one in the second part of the videos (Oke, 2011). Pilar seems to be using a combination of Accommodation and Compromise to resolve the situation, while Ralph seems to be using a combination of Accommodation and Collaboration to resolve the situation with Miguel. I would definitely say that Ralph Ramos is a better manager because he was faced with a much more difficult situation of Angela wanting to resign- only his quick and effective actions prevented this from occurring. I would imagine that distributive negotiation is occurring between Pilar and Miguel-but that integrative negotiation is occurring between Angela and Ralph. Both negotiations were effective because they dealt with the problem at hand while also taking into account the affected personalities. REFERENCES Oke, R. (Ed.) (2011). Management and Organizational Behavior. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Custom Learning Solutions. Robbins, S. (2001). Organizational behavior (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Schermerhorn, J., Hunt, J., & Osborn, R. N. (2005). Organizational behavior (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Read More