...about how you worked effectively under pressure. * How do you handle a challenge? * Have you been in a situation where you didn't have enough work to do? * Have you ever made a mistake? How did you handle it? * Describe a decision you made that was unpopular and how you handled implementing it. * Did you ever make a risky decision? Why? How did you handle it? * Did you ever postpone making a decision? Why? * Have you ever dealt with company policy you weren't in agreement with? How? * Have you gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, how? * When you worked on multiple projects how did you prioritize? * How did you handle meeting a tight deadline? * Give an example of how you set goals and achieve them. * Did you ever not meet your goals? Why? * What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an example of how you handle it. * Have you had to convince a team to work on a project they weren't thrilled about? How did you do it? * Give an example of how you worked on team. * Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How? * What do you do if you disagree with a co-worker? * Share an example of how you were able to motivate employees or co-workers. * Do you listen? Give an example of when you did or when you didn't listen. * Have you handled a difficult situation with a supervisor? How? * Have you handled a difficult situation with another department? How? * Have you handled...
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...arrival of new birds labeled as “exotic” or “different” and their impact on existing culture, is what causes the penguins to immediately call for a review (Hateley & Schmidt, 2008). They groan about how the new birds go about their daily business, and even the penguins that are accepting of the new birds, are intimidated by the notion of interacting with the new additions. I experienced this first hand as a manager at Apple, Inc. where I came into a leadership role at 27, and was working directly with other leaders who averaged 40 years of age. Needless to say, it was quite an educational experience for all parties involved. While most talked about how things were done a certain way since they had been there, I always questioned why it was done that way and how we could be more efficient using the resources at hand. I also felt like my career was on a major upswing and that the others had already peaked career wise and were growing complacent. There were also several instances where the concerning parties made inaccurate assumptions about one another. For instance, I always assumed that other managers felt uncomfortable learning about Apple products that were being released....
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...way to work. The air was cold, unsympathetic and wet with rain. As I drove the thirty minute drive to my work, the wind seemed like it was going to blow my car off of the road. I had gotten little sleep the night before so the thought of going to worked pricked at my insides all day before finally leaving to go work the late shift. I knew it was just going to be one of those days. The days where it’s hard not to constantly glance at the clock. Where you hope for the best in customers but know that you’ll be experiencing the worst. That day though there was a chance occurrence. Something that might seem small to some, but to me, it meant a lot . Customer service, to me, is something that I for the most part, don’t particularly enjoy doing. Although in the past few years I have come to terms with the fact that as a student, having a job working with the general public while trying to get through school is unavoidable. Safeway was only the second largest corporation that I have worked for. In the past I had worked at Target, where I became so tired of dealing with angry customers that I began to hide from them. I’ve worked a lot of jobs, all of them completely different while at the same time they all had one thing in common, working with the general public. Throughout these experiences I felt that I had seen everything. The good, the bad, the ugly. The really ugly. But this job. This was something different. I had been working at Safeway for a little over a year at this point...
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... Tom is the manger of the machine shop in the company’s factory. Jim is the manager of the equipment maintenance department. The men had just attended the monthly performance evaluation meeting for plant department heads. These meetings had been held on the third Tuesday of each month since Robert Ferguson, Jr., the president’s son, had become the plant manager a year earlier. As they were walking, Tom Emory spoke. “Boy, I hate those meetings! I never know whether my department’s accounting reports will show or bad performance. I am beginning to expect the worst. If the accountants said I saved the company a dollar, I’m called Sir, but if I spend even a little too much- boy do I get in trouble. I don’t know if I can hold on until I retire.” Tom had just been given the worst review he had ever received in his long career with Ferguson & Son. He was the most respected of the experienced machinists in the company. He had been with Ferguson & Son for many years and was promoted to supervisor of the machine shop when the company expanded and moved to its present location. The president (Robert Ferguson, Sr.) had often stated that the company’s success was due to the high quality of the work of the machinists like Tom. As a supervisor, Tom stressed the importance of craftsmanship and told his workers that he wanted no sloppy work coming from his department. When Robert Ferguson, Jr. became the plant manager, he directed that monthly performance comparisons be made between actual and...
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...It is not easy to be perceived as the bad guy. In a room full of management, I once looked my employer's CEO straight in the eye, and told him that the software he was ready to deliver did not work. It did not work, and was one of the ugliest pieces of user interface I had ever seen. In fact, I told him, I had seen school projects that were better quality that the junk the company was about to deliver to a major client. I will never forget that definitive moment of corporate terror, the reflection of panic from the sweat beads streaming down his crinkled face; the death of silence in the room. What went so wrong that this product was almost allowed to ship? Why was a mid-level software engineer telling the corporate head his watch had just created a pile of software crap destined for the company's best customer? The CEO should have been sweating; he was faced with the very real prospect of contractual breach, and litigation. The testing team had been copious in their documentation of the software verification results, and sent them to the quality manager on a weekly basis. The reports showed consistent failure of major components, and data corruption. Why didn't top management see the damming information that was so pervasive? This company had a system in place that allowed defective products to ship. But the problem was not technical, it was political. The issue was a quality manager who had more concern for the creation of a façade, than with reporting of reality. Perry...
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...and describe a great manager. What makes him or her stand out from the crowd? I believe a great manager is someone who can deal with any situation in a professional manner and at the same time make sure his workers are taken care of. What I believe makes a great manager stick out from the crowd, is their personality and their relationship with their subordinates. If you see that the workers are happy, then that says something about their management. 2. Have you ever seen or worked for an ineffective manager? Describe the causes and the consequences of the ineffectiveness I have personally worked with an ineffective manager. I believe the manager did not care about his work and was unhappy. With his negative attitude, this caused a ripple effect so that everyone else was also unhappy with work. Nothing got done, and if it got done, the quality of the work was very poor. 3. Describe in as much detail as possible how the internet and globalization affect your daily life. Internet plays a major role in my life. I use it for almost everything. Being in a different state as my immediate family, the internet helps me keep close tabs on them. The internet also allows me to see what is going on all around the world. Without internet, I would feel very lost and lonely. As for globalization, I feel this effects my daily life because without it, we wouldn’t have certain products from different countries that we use every day. This was especially true while I was on deployment. There...
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...which we feel our efforts do not count I am a little surprised by the high scores of my styles of behavior. It is interesting that approval and dependent can go hand in hand. I would agree that I seek approval when it comes to things at the superficial level, but I didn’t think so much in my everyday life. My job position is a very independent one. I do second guess myself a lot at times. My old manager used to reprimand me for not being my own thinker. She would point out that I would never be promoted if I wasn’t more independent. I would be unsure of a task or an answer and she would always spin it back to me to challenge myself. I suppose I do not like to be challenged when things get uncomfortable, such as not understanding the information. I am afraid of failure. I always blamed her management style for the reason why I struggled with my job at times. I wanted her approval because I wanted her to see how successful I could be at my job. I lost sight of everything and struggled at both my job and her approval. It created low self- esteem and my determination to be liked by her. Her management style did not mesh well with my personality. She was critical and a micro manager and it was not a healthy work environment. I have a new manager and I am so much different, I work more independently and I am more successful. I have more confidence from the encouragement of my new manager. She believes in me and now I...
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...Labor Laws and Unions HRM/531 23 Jan 2013 Dr. Michael A Barker University of Phoenix I have chosen to write about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA has been around since the mid-1950s conducting space exploration and happens to be near and dear to my heart as my late father made his career at the NASA located at Edwards AFB in California. However, I shall focus on the NASA Headquarters Professional Association (NHPA) Local #9 which is located in Washington DC and is also an affiliate of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). NHPA was established in 1984 to represent the non-supervisory scientist and engineers working for NASA in the immediate Washington DC area. In order for NHPA to exist they had to go through the unionization process first. Organization must begin with a drive of some sort, either organized by the employees themselves or at the union’s request. Once started the union must obtain at least 30% of the employee’s signatures on an authorization card. If the union receives more than 50% they have the opportunity to ask management for direct representation upon which if denied, they must petition the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election. If the union is successful during the election they are certified by the NLRB. Upon commencement, the union can provide many benefits for the employees and serves as their “voice” for many things. NHPA will often acting on behalf of bargaining...
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...General motors corporation (GM) filed for chapter 11 bankcruptcy protection, the second-largest industrial bankruptcy in history (worldcom was the largest). GM, which hadn’t made aprofit since 2004, declare in its filing that it had 172 billion in debt and 82 billion in assets. As any competent business student could tell you. The ratio doesn’t make a balance sheet balance, especially when the companys equity is worth little. Fritz Henderson, who named CEO of Gm on march 30,2009, was a numbers guy, but he knew the companys culture had to change. His vision of the new organizational culture revolved around four guidelines: risk taking, accountability, speed, and costumer-product focus. The problem was that GM had tried before to reinvent itself, with mixed success. “GM’s past is littered with the buzzords of culture change. It has struggled to impose cultural change across the highly bureaucratic company in which brands, departments, and regions operated like self governing and competing states within a federation. But GM’s executive said, this time would be different. After all, there was the bankruptcy and the selective elimination of entrenched leadership. Were things really changing, though? Despite his well intentioned plans, Henderson was fired by the board on December 1, 2009 some felt he wasn’t radical enough to change the company. His replacement was the person appointed by the obama administrations car czar to oversee the automakers revival after bankruptcy, ed whitacre...
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...The Worst Job Ever Two years ago I started to look for a job. I found many job openings and decided to go with a supermarket; Yummy Market. Once I got the job I was so excited that I thought I will stick with it for a long time. I even thought it would be my best job experience. One day I came home early to a loud noise telling me my mom decided to have renovations. I groaned, threw my backpack, and tried to get a half an hour rest in. I proceeded to make my food, and then glimpsed at the calendar to see if it’s any closer to Friday. All this stalling and disappointment is due to the fact that I hated my job. I worked in culinary, and it's not what you would expect, tasty food, samples and weekends off? Not here. You would think getting a degree would make this a happy work place, but this job is full of everyday hassles and cleaning dirty dishes. The job was horrible for couple of reasons. First the job is extremely hard, especially on the weekends. I came to work, and it's wasn’t a good start. The boss was already complaining that the food hasn’t been checked after lunch the other day. See, the problem is that she refused to hire another person to help us. That's right; we had to serve the customers, smile to them, and make their day. When I came in the afternoon, I checked in, slipped into my uniform, wore my precious smile and then started off with my shift. Then I began to serve the customers. My first customer was rude and obnoxious. It took time to please him. I can't...
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...Care Service Corporation (HCSC). HCSC is the largest customer-owned health benefits company in the United States and is the fourth largest health insurer in the country overall. The organization is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and is the parent company to four regional Blue health plans: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma. HCSC’s line of business is to provide group and individual health plans, managed care programs, and Medicare supplemental coverage to its members. Beginning in the late 1990’s, the corporate culture started to deteriorate and employee morale took a turn for the worst amidst public claims of unethical business practices and poor corporate citizenship. In 1998, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL) was involved in a public scandal and pled guilty to eight felony counts of Medicare fraud and agreed to pay $4 million in criminal fines and $140 million in a civil settlement for lying to federal auditors, destroying documents and mishandling claims. The company’s reputation suffered grievously and it seemed as if overnight BCBSIL went from a highly-regarded organization to an unscrupulous vulture in not only the public’s eyes, but also in the eyes of their employees. Not only did the public’s perception of BCBSIL become tarnished, the whole affair took a toll on employee morale as workers started to...
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...support and argument on why I decided to pursue my MBA and how the results of my Jungian Personality self-assessment fit into my MBA goal. My desire for education started at an early stage in life. My parents who migrated from Cuba in 1966, ended up with five children and no education. I experienced hard-ships that I always attributed to my parents lack of education, to no fault of their own. I was the only sibling of five to obtain anything higher than a high school education. I always prided myself in my scholastic accomplishments given my upbringing, and until this day believe that in today’s competing society an advanced degree is necessary to maximize income potential. Taking my education to the next level is a very important step in achieving my goals of an advanced degree and reaching a senior manager position within my agency. Because obtaining an MBA degree will give me a competitive advantage above my peers, I will be able to advance my career despite competition, economic uncertainty, and a shrinking workforce. I believe that to standout and better prepare myself for the challenges of becoming a senior manager, there are many aspects to managing and being a better leader that I need to learn or improve upon. There are various skills that managers must apply on any given work day, which I have yet to develop. According to ChangingMinds.org (2007) “proper management is vital in these complex environments. The quality of manager and effective management styles...
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...Art of Innovation “An accountant? Creative? I don’t think so.” That was a comment I made to a group of colleagues about twenty-five years ago when I was working with an international CPA firm. I can’t recall many specific conversations from so long ago, but I do remember this one. I think it stuck in my mind because the managing partner of my office overhead my comment and interrupted the conversation. He responded that he had seen plenty of instances in my work that demonstrated my creativity and he thought I was quite creative. That conversation was before the October 2001 Enron fiasco and at that time, accountants serving “sophisticated” clients were expected to sometimes be creative in their accounting practices. Not to say that I ever witnessed any “creativity” such as that shown at Enron. If, however, if a client wanted to record a transaction a certain way, for example, a good CPA would do his best to find a way to support his client’s accounting. A great CPA was nearly always successful. Since then, I have left public accounting (pre-Enron, not as a result) and have been on the client side for the last twenty or so years. I’ve witnessed that most people in business do not appear to be creative and, in fact, many seem to be stuck thinking “that’s just the way we do it.” Most companies have a couple of people who do most of the creative thinking and the rest of the people just react…or resist. Over time, I have found it difficult not to slip into that mindset...
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...philosophy was something I felt was successful based on your skills, experience, and attitude within a corporate environment. The author Stephan Covey states that “Personality Ethic” was something that “Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction” that “this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes maxims such as Your attitude determines your altitude”. My reasoning for agreeing with this concept was due to my 20 plus years in corporate America dealing with various forms of management personalities. During my experiences I encountered managers what I’ve put in categories as: okay, good, great, dysfunctional, bad, and horrible. The horrible bosses range from a manager I previously had who had been arrested and charged for embezzlement, to supervisors who discussed employees company personal business during lunches. I have had supervisors who were unqualified with no college education experience nor prior knowledge of the job, to a Department manager who had worked her way up the ladder with only an high school education but was extremely knowledgeable and was hands down the best manager I have ever had. I was unfortunate enough to encounter a manager with various degrees and credentials but he had the worst management interpersonal skills I have ever encountered thus far. These have all been experiences that have formed my preconceived...
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...3 Differentiation CRUEL AND DARWINIAN? TRY FAIR AND EFFECTIVE I F T H E R E I S O N E O F M Y VA L U E S that really pushes buttons, it is differentiation. Some people love the idea; they swear by it, run their companies with it, and will tell you it is at the very root of their success. Other people hate it. They call it mean, harsh, impractical, demotivating, political, unfair—or all of the above. Once, during a radio talk show about my first book, a woman in LA pulled off the highway to call in and label differentiation “cruel and Darwinian.” And that was just the beginning of her commentary! Obviously, I am a huge fan of differentiation. I have seen it transform companies from mediocre to outstanding, and it is as morally sound as a management system can be. It works. Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean. — 37 — UNDERNEATH IT ALL When all is said and done, differentiation is just resource allocation, A company has only so which is what good leaders do and, much money and in fact, is one of the chief jobs they managerial time. are paid to do. A company has only Winning leaders invest so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where where the payback is the the payback is the...
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