Rudolph Guilianis ÂLeadership :: Leader Leadership Management

Rudolph Guiliani's ‘Leadership Leadership style and behaviour are key determinants of effective organisational management. The leaders are "The people who co-ordinate and balance the interests of all who have a stake in the organisation, including- the executive team, all other managers and those in team leadership positions or with a subject leadership role" Witcher (2007) argues that POSIES gives us an impression of a sequence of tasks, top-down strategic planning idea. Leadership style depends on how strategic management is managed by top managers. There are different leadership styles and therefore there are different ways that leaders review strategic priorities. In Rudolph Guiliani's book ‘Leadership', his philosophy is to identify the core purpose of an organisation and align the resources and focus along with that purpose. He also believes strongly in organizing around a purpose. In order to develop an organisation structure Giuliani's first question is always "What's your mission?"- not a day to day but on a long term basis. Therefore he proposes to analyse the Purpose, Objective and Strategy of an organisation before setting the structure. Weber (1924) classifies types of leadership in relation to types of authority. These vary from a commanding leadership, where people must have obedience to orders, to an inspiring type. This inspiring type may also be related to John Seddon's ‘systems thinking'. He argues that leaders should work the work. They should manage how people do things, not what they do. Chester Barnard (1938) argues that Executives primary job was to facilitate co-operation and that authority should not be imposed. Leadership is sometimes associated with visionary and a personalised form of management. Witcher gives us the example of Ford who had a clear idea of his vision for his car company. His vision was creating simple model cars at low cost and this vision produced the Model-T car, the modern mass production assembly line that made it possible. However, Witcher argued that this form of leadership may encourage short term, individually based goal setting, rather than team work. Senge (1990) advocates a dispersed leadership for the learning organisation where progress is achieved through small steady changes. A great leader in his view is one who encourages others to say, "We did it ourselves". Collins (2002) mentions that the difference between good to great performers is a consistent system with clear constraints. Discipline is a very important aspect with vision and faith. Strategic understanding is necessary and he stresses on the idea of getting disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who then take disciplined action.

Internal Competition A Curse for Team Performance

Table of Content Introduction1 Question 1: What are the dysfunctional characteristics of the FIS project? 1 Question 2: What type(s) of conflict did the team experience? Explain your answer. 3 Question 3: Is the poor team development process a consequence of dysfunctional characteristics? Explain your answer. 6 Question 4: What course concepts contributed to the team’s performance failure? Explain your answer. 8 Question 5: What should the new team leader do? 9 Bibliography12 Introduction – Internal competition – A curse for a team performance.As the title indicates this assignment describes in essence a prehistoric dilemma that dates back to the origins of the human being. The individual and his eternal struggle for a better life. How individual goals are achieved and the question weather to go alone or to be a part of a team? What is the best way forward?. This is a case about the ego. The backdrop is the Indian company called FIS, a business process outsourcin g unit specialized in consulting and financial advisory. It is working on a project for a US based client designing and creating training modules for ERP implementation.The FIS team performance management is largely grounded in a three level appraisal system that is obviously designed to increase the effectiveness of the team. The outcome is to ensure solid project completion and customer satisfaction. Needless to say that did not happen and the project becomes plagued by internal rivalry, poor leadership, poor coordination among other things that ultimately leads to a failure. Our mission is in short to explain in relevant terms why we think this happened and finally describe how it could be prevented to happen again.Working in a group and striving for a common goal can be challenging as this paper will demonstrate. We as a group did clearly experience many of the same concepts that characterize the FIS case when working on this assignment. However as this paper demonstrates, we dr ew on the recently gained organizational behavior (OB) knowledge and resolved it in peace and harmony. The context of the case is described in the following paragraph and organizational chart. Steven Fernandez is the Human Resources Manager who is shortly introduces in the beginning of the case.He is playing a minor role with regard to the team conflicts due to the fact that he is not within the team at the clients site. His subordinate is Pete Philly who is described as an easygoing project manager. As a team leader was Sai Rishi selected who is lower ranked than Philly but is the boss of the other four team members Nirmal Sara, Shri Shalini, Lia Aarthi as well as Abey Sidharth. The following sections will introduce into the numerous types of conflicts and their consequences. Question 1: What are the dysfunctional characteristics of the FIS project?In order to point out the main problem one can say that the team neither works efficiently nor effectively. The result is an inadequate group development process. In the following paragraphs we want to show a lot of examples in order to explain which dysfunctional characteristics of the FIS project cause the bad team performance and why these aspects lead to the failure of the project. The first thing to mention is the intra-group competitiveness. In our opinion the reason for this internal competition is the evaluation system.Employees’ promotion, wages and future prospects depend on the ratings and feedback from the project manager. There are three levels in an appraisal – (a) below expectations, (b) met expectations and (c) exceeded expectations. This over simplified grading system does not work because it only focuses on the individual performances of each team member regardless of the team performance as a whole. For a group project it should be more relevant to highlight the result or rather the success of the task and the customer satisfaction.Another issue in this case is that the evaluation s ystem is based on only three categories. Hence every team member tries to reach the highest category (exceeded expectations) in order for promotion and higher wages. This leads to that each individual team member tries to lower the performance of the other team members to highlight his or her own performance. All together it constricts team development and performance as well as project success. Achieving individual goals is seen as more important to some team members than the team goal – finishing the task reaching the best outcome as possible.Therefore it grows a information filtering between team members. Some team mates hesitate to share information and restrain their work results in order to have advantages against their colleagues. As an example Sara needs information from Sidharth, but he puts her off claiming it took him a long time to find this documents and Sara should spent the same time of searching on it. Otherwise he shares the information with one of his group mates. Finally some of the team members or rather small groups of the team stuck in a rivalry mindset.For this reason the team is not able to create a common vision or a feeling of corporate identity and to share common ideals. In general for every project a new team has to be set up. Team members have to get acquainted to each other. This can lead to bad team performance. In this case the problem is that if people have worked together and know each other well, they tend to form smaller groups within the groups which cause a kind of group thinking. As well as if the size of the team changes over time it is hard for new people to integrate into the existing group.For example those team mates who have worked together in previous projects, separate themselves from the team through being together without involving other members into their small group during the breaks. It is especially a problem in this case because after two month of already working on the project, several new members joint the team. To sum up one can say that there is a lack of group activities and finally very low cohesiveness between the team members. A further fundamental factor causing the bad performance of the team and the failure of the project is a lack of behavioral norms.Members of the group gossip about other team mates. It can be seen in the case that the team leader Rishi is talking to the project manager Philly and claims that Sara is not talented enough to prepare courses curriculums. Besides the gossiping there is also a way of bullying existing. For instance Philly accuses Sara in front of the whole team by stating that she misses deadlines although that actually is not true. In addition to that he corners Sara through advancing deadline dates. Relating to the lack in behavioral norms it is also important to bring up the differences in attitude of working.Philly seems very lax to answer emails, to take important phone calls and to take care of the needs of the team. This attitud e costs the team late hours in the office to meet the deadlines. As a consequence the team feels irritated which has a bad influence on the motivation and causes frustration. The main task or function of the project manager or at least of the team leader is representing a role model and avoiding the problems mentioned before. However they reinforce the trouble because of a huge lack of leadership. As outlined before the attitude of Philly`s work is not appropriate as well as his behavior to Sara.Regarding convenient communication and coordination Philly and Rishi fail. The poor coordination arises through a wrong composition of the team. The performance as individuals is high but the team performance is low due to the reasons that are explained above. Concerning to the case the proper execution of Philly’s and Rishis tasks is not ensured. Instead of focusing on his team leading topic Rishi always does Philly’s work. Philly relies on the results given by Rishi in place of checking the work and to pay attention to success of the whole project.One of the reasons for the low level of communication for example is that a few members are even reluctant to reveal the details about their own work and do not integrate new team members. All in all the lack of guidance, low cohesiveness and all the other dysfunctional characteristics lead to misunderstandings, suspicion and disagreements among the team. Question 2: What type(s) of conflict did the team experience? Explain your answer. Regarding to question one we now want to show the different types of conflicts that took place. At first we have to define what is meant when we talk about conflict. Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two or more independent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scare resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals. † A conflict can have either positive or negative effects. Constructive conflicts are helpful to achieve goals; dysfunctio nal conflicts are likely more destructive due to emotions and differences between two parties. In the explanation below we focus on different types of dysfunctional conflicts and the reasons for these conflicts which we can find in the case study.The first important conflict arises from the organizational structure which causes a structural conflict. Those types of conflicts result from either structural or process characteristics of an organization. Further it can be divided into two different categories, vertical and horizontal. The latter one occurs between groups at the same organizational level. Vertical conflicts take place between employees on different hierarchical levels. The evaluation system in the case causes vertical conflicts on the one hand and horizontal conflicts on the other hand. The feedback system is not well rganized because there are only three appraisal categories that can be achieved. Only one of them is probably seen as a positive assessment by employees. R ishi’s promotion depends on Philly’s feedback to him and simultaneously he is concerned of the performance of Sara. Hence, he tries to lower down her performance to highlight his own work. That can be seen as a vertical structural problem as well as the matter of fact that he always show compliance to Philly or even do Philly’s tasks. The evaluation system also causes horizontal conflicts. The internal competition increases due to the lack of differentiation of appraisal categories.Employees might have only a low chance to get promotion or wage rises because they are probably not able to reach the only positive feedback. This is a reason for frustration and strategic behavior. Instead of working together for the team success some team members try to highlight individual performance through undermining the work of their colleagues. This structural horizontal conflict is also observable for the example of Sara. Her position is a junior developer, but actually she seems to have more experiences than other team members. This is probably one reason that other team members try to undermine her performance.This is especially illustrated in the fact that Sidharth and other colleagues reveal important information which will be explained in detail later on in this chapter. To sum up in this case there is a lack of explanation of feedback as well as unsuitable and not well differentiated appraisal categories. Due to those examples one could easily imagine that the most of all other types of conflicts are related to these aspects explained before in some way. A conflict of interest occurs because of incompatible needs or competition over resource constraints.This type can be subdivided into three different sources – substantive, procedural and psychological issues. Our case deals with time, physical resources and in the broader sense with money which are substantive aspects. The individual interest like promotion, pay hike and own reputation of Rishi are more important for him than the team success. Hence, he always humors Philly and does Philly’s work rather than using his time appropriately through focusing on his main duty leading the team to success and looking after the needs and tasks of the team members.This is also a kind of task conflict which is illustrated in the next step. Concerning the physical resources one can discover that people refuse to share resources and critical information. Not only that Sidharth refuses to share his documents with Sara but also some members of the team are even averse to reveal their working results, because they are afraid that other team members get the laurels for their work. A task conflict occurs over a disagreement about tasks or goals. Referring to the FIS project the employees expect appropriate work from project manager Philly.However Philly is very lax in managing his tasks. As expressed above he needs a lot of time to answer emails and is often refused to take si gnificant phone calls to the customers. Besides he is very careless checking the course material before it is submitted to clients. Nevertheless it can also be classified as a differing process goal when people have for example a disagreement about how to accomplish a task. Otherwise this topic is also interrelated to a conflict regarding different values which accrue when individuals or teams have an unequal understanding of values, worldviews or certain other aspects.As one can see from the example explained above the project manager and the team members seems to have diverse attitude concerning accomplishing their work. Sara and Shalini are very committed to the project whereas Philly seems to be not very much engaged. This causes long working hours and struggling to meet deadlines which lead to frustration and demotivation among the team. This matter of fact can be dangerous for the success of the project. An organization needs high motivated employees which are more likely prod uctive in doing their work faster and in higher quality.Besides the different values and attitudes to work there is another big disagreement about a process goal. This so-called process conflict takes place because the first draft of the results of the course material reaches the client. However this is not the correct procedure. Regarding the process description the first draft is only an overview or a sketch. It is not a final version and therefore it should not be handed over to the client. After reworking the first draft, the second draft should be send to the team leader, Rishi, for review.Afterwards the final draft has to be checked by project manager, Philly. When the final review is completed the the material is delivered to the training leader. First mistake is that Rishi send the first draft to Philly, even though he should have only submitted the second draft to Philly. The second huge failure is that Philly deliver the first draft to the client without checking the mater ial. In this aspect there is also a task as well as the value conflict included. As explained beforehand Philly always relies on Rishis working results and he has a lax attitude of work concerning fulfilling his tasks.Another reason that could have happened is poor communication because if the team members as well as the superiors would exchange data and talk to each other in an appropriate way they could avoid such mistakes. The result of the poor communication within the team is that there are many information conflicts. This type of disputes occurs when needed information is missing, misinterpreted or rather interpreted differently, not correct or when there are disagreements about the relevance of certain data. As a role model Philly should not take so much time to answer emails. Sidharth refuse to share an important document with Sara.As already mentioned as well a few members are even reluctant to reveal the details about their own work. These examples for informational confli cts are also reasons for debates, arguments due to confusion in the integration issue of their individual work results. At least it leads to misunderstandings, clashes and finally chaos. All these issues are drivers of several relationship conflicts. Interpersonal differences arise due to inconsistencies or controversies between people within teams. Referring to the FIS project there are many examples of interpersonal differences.One of the momentous issues are that a small group of team members knowing each other in advance are not willing to integrate new people into the team. That leads to formation of subgroups and finally to a lack of inclusion and cohesiveness. A second example is the dysfunctional characteristic that for some team members the individual success expressed in the appraisal rating is more important than project development, team success and customer satisfaction. For instance Rishi claims about Sara’s weak work to Philly, to emphasize his own work. Howeve r Sara’s commitment to the project is very high.Philly trusts and believes in Rishi’s opinion and statements, though he also begins to bully Sara. He passes the buck to Sara blaming her in front of the whole team she would always miss deadlines. Actually struggling to meet deadlines is caused through Philly’s lackadaisical attitude to work. However Sara first tries to avoid the conflict and concentrate on her job but she is inwardly frustrated and demotivated. Later she tries to talk to Rishi about Philly’s behavior expecting him to help her as a team leader. But he shows compliance to Philly and denies supporting her. Again this is a ack of leadership; he does not take care to needs of his team. All in all it seems to be clear that the organizational structure of the evaluation system is responsible for the most of the dysfunctional conflicts. Some of the team members are working more as individuals or in mini-groups within a team not realizing that this project requires integrating individual’s work to one big picture. Though all stuck in a rivalry mindset and the possible failure of the project is predictable. Question 3: Is the poor team development process a consequence of dysfunctional characteristics? Explain your answer.In the previous chapters was outlined that the project team had to face a lot of different conflicts. The sum of these conflicts led to the low team performance and a team development which cannot be seen as exemplary. The advent of this poor team development process can be seen in the selection of the several team members. Based on communication skills, experience, appraisal and fitting to the project requirements a global team is set up (out of Americans and Indians), regardless if the team members fit to each other or not. When people have to work in a group there are two possible forms possible: workgroups and teams.They differ in various aspects. Workgroups tend to follow individual goals and are focused on their individual tasks. The interdependence is low and social skills are rather not important. Whereas team members are following a common goal and are focused on their collective goal. Analyzing the project team of FIS Consulting services it seems to be rather a workgroup than a team. Team members differ in their individual working styles. Sara and Shri Shalini are very well performing employees with excellent appraisals. Their senior Philly had a different approach to get work done.For instance he refused important inquiries from clients also his long response time. This differing process goals, differing values as well as interpersonal differences are one cause for the dysfunctional conflict which supports the team development process in a negative way. Any process gain which can be derived out of the team work will be offset through these differences. In the end all the advantages which team work implicate (better performance for instance) have vanished. Another sourc e of dysfunctional conflict is the resource constraints. Specific team members refused sharing resources as well as crucial data.What also happened was the duration of information gathering. As mentioned above it takes several days to get an answer of Philly and Abey Sidharth required two days to obtain critical data. These kinds of action are not beneficial if a team has to complete a task. Instead of collaborating they undermine each others work. On one site this hinders an efficient goal attainment and on the other hand it offends other team members. If the work of one team member is questioned causelessly time and again the performance and enthusiasm of this person will decrease significantly. In the worst case this behavior will be acquired by other colleagues.This is especially fostered group formation. This means that within the whole group several smaller groups are formed. In the company FIS Project Services this happens a lot due to previous project work. If for instance a duo has worked together for a long time and then is integrated into an existing team consisting out of six people. The duo tends to stick together and is reluctant to integrate other team mates. This group forming is very well illustrated in the case. Certain subgroups have lunch together but not the team as a whole. The entire project lacks team building events, like going to movies or a common breakfast at the hotel.Furthermore it is essential for effective teams that they have or develop group cohesiveness which is very beneficial if the team targets a common goal. Group cohesiveness ensures that team members have the feeling that their character and their work is appreciated within the team. That increases the performance because the employee has an intrinsic motivation to push the project forward. People can count on each other and work hand-in-hand very efficient. For the FIS project team this example is unfortunately not the case. People cannot rely on others and they do not have the feeling that they are going into the same direction.The team is not cohesive, they rather push each other away. If a manager wants to develop a well-functioning team in our opinion a team contract is a requirement. In this contract all the rules and procedures are written down and are open to scrutiny for everyone. Most beneficial would be if the team contract is set up during the first meeting in which everyone can contribute to it. A further benefit is that the team contract prevents the omission error and therefore unethical behavior. Due to the fact that the FIS project team lacks such a contract it is no surprise that the problems and the conflicts escalates.If Rishi would have been a good leader he would set up a team contract. Furthermore the team leader Rishi lacks a lot of leadership capabilities. One of the most important tasks of a team leader is that he has to care for his team. Only when this task is properly performed the project goal (development of ERP trai ning materials) can be reached. But as described above he failed in his duties miserably. Instead of fostering team cohesiveness he started bullying his team mates, especially Sara. When other team members hampered each other he did nothing to end this destructive decision.He could have been a mediator and facilitate as a third party between the two opposite parties. But he made it even worse and fueled the disputes. Question 4: What course concepts contributed to the team’s performance failure? Explain your answer. As outlined in the previous chapters the project team faced a lot of conflicts which led to the low team performance and a team development. For a team to become successful they must share common goals and responsibilities for specific outcomes. The job of the team leader is to set these goals and establish behavioral norms within the team.As pointed out it was believed that the project team members of the FIS project possessed substantial individual technical exp ertise, but lacked the skill to perform together successfully, meaning that the team had all the potential to be efficiently as a team. Philly seemed to lack effort, approvals were delayed which led to frustration amongst the team members, the team was working long hours and struggled to meet deadlines. Philly failed at setting a common goal and responsibilities with specific outcomes and a direction and he did not have an enabling structure that facilitated teamwork.Philly also failed in managing the diversity, observable and unobservable similarities amongst the team. Diversity can cause misunderstanding, suspicion, and conflict in the workplace that can result in absenteeism, poor quality, low morale and loss of competitiveness as well as lowered workgroup cohesiveness. In simple terms this is exactly what happened in the case. As a result the team lacked cohesiveness, to the degree to which members are attracted to the team and to its members and how loyal team members are to th e team and to each other.This lack of cohesiveness reached its lowest point in absolute bullying. Nirmal Sara is a victim of workplace bullying by Rishi and Philly, manifested in repeated mistreatment, verbal abuse and humiliation. Teams typically progress through a series of developmental stages before performing effectively. The FIS team underwent an inadequate team development According to Tuckman’s model there are five-stages for a team to form successfully. Forming; in which members learn about each other and the team’s goals, purpose, and lifespan. Storming; team members begin establishing goals, work processes, and individual roles.Norming; the team becomes more cohesive and clarifies members’ roles and responsibilities, team goals, and team processes. Performing; the team is cohesive, productive, and makes progress toward its goals and at last adjourning; when the team disbands. Referring to the previous chapters the FIS consulting team only got through the first two stages, forming and got stuck in storming. As also explained beforehand the team began forming groups within the team and was reluctant to involve other members. The team was working as individuals in mini groups, which escalated into intra-group competitiveness, the groups compete against each other.From the start the team began focusing on achieving a high performance appraisal rating rather than working together as a team. Team members commonly formed their suggestions as in small groups separating themselves from other team members. The groups provided suggestions without consulting or briefing the rest of the team members prior to the meetings resulting in team members promoting their own agenda for the sake of a personal benefit. The team members did not seem to realize that that the project required integrating each individuals work into a cohesive whole as they were stuck in rivalry mindset.The team was assigned with designing different courses, training materi al and preparation tasks. Each of these tasks were performed by different team members and these components would later require alignment and integration to complete the final module. So it should be obvious that resource sharing was very important to the project. Different groups of the team started refusing to share resources and critical information with the rest of the team. This eventually led to misunderstandings and disagreements amongst team members.They did not succeed in developing cohesiveness to the degree to which members were loyal to the team and to each other. So the team never got to the point of performing due to intra-group competitiveness. Because members of the team lacked cohesiveness and were not committed to the team or its goals the team performance suffered as a result. These factors led to process loss as a consequence where the team performs worse than the individual members would have if they would have worked alone. This failure of the team development and therefore the FIS project ultimately led to a negative impact on the company’s image.Question 5: What should the new team leader do? It seems quite obvious that before the new team leader does anything, he must analyze in detail what really happened at the FIS project in North America. When he has established a clear picture of what went wrong he should form a plan to prevent it from happening again and aim to increase customer and employee satisfaction in the process. One of the most striking things when reading the case is the level of autonomy the off-shore team has. How bad things could get before they were identified and dealt with at the FIS HQ.So the first thing the new team leader (and the HR department at FIS) needs to establish is clarity and a strong quality protocol for each project. He needs to integrate a detailed project roadmap that has frequent internal reviews, process definition, milestones and performance accountability. This system has to be redundant , so if one link in the chain fails an alarm goes off and there is a B-plan to fall back on. For major milestones like a client demo a quality assurance manager has to approve that the product meets delivery qualifications and client expectations.We assume that in this analytical exercise the same core concepts as we have highlighted in answers one to four would surface. In short, how the evaluation system generated a destructive intra-group competiveness and low cohesiveness as a result. How the poor leadership and work ethics on both senior and mid level affected motivation and caused frustration in the ranks below. How the vertical and horizontal structural conflicts generated task, goal and process conflicts that combined with poor communications nearly drove this project to the ground.So the first thing would be to assess the pros and cons of the current evaluation system. The rather crude three level individual appraisal system does seem to foster internal competition and indi vidual goal orientation that in the end is not aligned with the company goals. Without the scoring details of the internal evaluation system the result; below, met or exceeded expectations seem a bit granular parameters given the complexity of the task and the size of the group.The second thing would improve it by preventing that a direct sabotage or conflicting interests like holding back information or resources could benefit individual appraisal. Then make a strong effort to align individual goals with the company ones through task performance and integrity. In addition the team leader needs to add more focus on the collective group effort and task completion as well as client and employee satisfaction. Thirdly he needs to make sure there is much higher cohesiveness in the group to generate better working morale, motivation, team spirit, performance and employee satisfaction.One of the things that affected the FIS project was that the group grew from a small workgroup to fully fl edged team with the relevant differences in their interdependence, accountability, decision making and leadership. Sadly the cohesiveness of the team diminished relative to the increased size of the group. As a group leader he needs to give those growing pains special attention and lead by example. He should instigate and structure various team building exercises and events to foster good group communications. This can be as simple as a group breakfast at the hotel or even just a walk in the park.And on the topic of communications, to prevent the omission and commission errors from the past the team leader needs to create a secure communication process where employees can report misconduct (either under name or anonymous) or and seek consultation or mediation at early stages of a potential conflict. This communication system needs to be able to feed up to a higher source at FIS consulting HQ in some instances, as one of the major source of problems and dysfunctional behavior were th e former team leaders Philly and Rishi.Lastly the new team leader should also form a doctrine with code of ethics and behavioral norms that reflect the FIS company values, vision and culture. This document should be presented to all employees at say a team offsite event, and be proactively introduced to all new employees so they understand how their actions, big or small have an important social impact. If those conditions mentioned above were met, we believe the offshore department at FIS would be capable of taking on and completing big and complex projects and pass with flying colors.But in essence the dilemma of the new leader is the same that every team leader is faced with. To motivate his team in physiological, behavioral, cognitive and social context to curb the individuals effort into a strong team effort and strive for a common goal. To quote Al Pacino in the movie â€Å"Any given Sunday†: â€Å"And, either we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. â⠂¬  ? Bibliography Phillips, J. M. , & Gully, S. M. (2011). Organizational Behavior. Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning.

Honor Thy Children Essay

Overall the book Honor Thy Children by Molly Fumia was great. There were points in this book that just tugged at my heart. For example when the Nakatani’s found out that their middle son Greg was shot and killed. There were also points in this book that I felt if I had been in their position, I would be in a great deal of pain and misery and would not know how to work through all that had happened. I thought that Al and Jane were brave parents to endure the deaths of their three sons. This book by far was the most interesting non-fiction book I have read. This book would move the heart of any person that read it. The best thing about this book by far is how the parents have persevered throughout all these events that has happened to their family. From the running away of Glen, the murder of their son Greg, the finding out that their sons Glen and Guy were gay and their contraction of HIV, and also the death of them. They had to have heavy hearts after all of this happened, and yet they still go through all the HIV campaigning to show us how dangerous this disease is. A thing I did not like about this book is that there were very little happy things that happened to this family. I also thought that it was hard to keep track of the Nakatani’s children because all of their names were so similar. If I were to grade this book, I would give it an A++ because this is a very good book and shows that humans have the will to push through any obstacle. Even though they have gone through all of that God did not give them a break and show them mercy. Despite their hard troubles, they pushed through all the sadness and despair and turned it around to help other people not make the same mistakes as them. This would definitely be a book I would recommend to people because there are very good life lessons in it. For instance, there is a limit to strict parenting, choosing your words correctly (Greg), and when faced with the worst of situations there is always something you can do about it. It also demonstrates that when a child is is pain and dying, parents always want to try and help to do what’s best for them, even at the expense of their own self. I think this book would be for ages 15 and up because there are things that would be hard to understand for someone of a young age. Also I feel that the person reading it should have some respect for gays, lesbians, etc. otherwise reading this book would be pointless. The book and movie were great to say the least. It taught me to accept who you are and that death is not the end. Memories can carry on and teach others how to deal with the loss of your loved ones. This book allowed me to take a glimpse into the Nakatani’s life and how they dealt with the loss and the grief that followed. Honor Thy Children taught me that no matter what life throws at you there are always ways to overcome these challenges. The thing I thought was most interesting was Guy will to go out to speak even while confined to a wheelchair. He had the courage to go out in the state he was in and speak. The person I identify most with in this story would be Greg. I identify with Greg the most because he was the middle son, a macho, speak his mind kind of person. The person I would identify least with would be Guy. I identify least with him because if I had gotten HIV and knew I was dying I would probably hate the world and seclude myself and not really try to do anything. This book did not really impact my life because even though it was a great book, it did not really apply that much to my life. I think that, because I have not had something similar happen to me, I have no gay or lesbian friends and I also do not know anyone with a serious disease. I think that the only things that would apply to me would be the Asian/Hawaiian culture, the dealing with the death of a loved one, and parenting. Their culture is exactly like mine because I am Japanese and I was born and raised in Hawaii. In our culture we are taught to respect your elders and listen to them. I also felt that the Nakatani’s dealt with the death of their sons better than I would have. When my brother and grandparents died I had a hard time and at some points I went through a period of depression that lasted a month in which I did not attend. It made me feel that I should have been a better grandchild and brother because I caused them a lot of trouble. The parenting part got to me because I was lucky that my parents, who were somewhat strict, were not as strict as the Nakatani’s. This helped me learn to appreciate my parents more.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Free Online Research Papers The poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, consists of four stanzas. In the first stanza, the speaker describes his position. He has been out walking the woods and comes to two roads, and he stands looking as far down each one as he can see. He would like to try out both, but doubts he could to that, so therefore he continues to look down the roads for a long time trying to make his decision about which road to take. He had looked down the first one â€Å"to where it bent in the undergrowth,† and in the second stanza, he reports that he decided to take the other path, because it seemed to have less wear than the first. But then he goes on to say that they actually were very similarly worn. The second one that he took seems less traveled, but as he thinks about it, he realizes that they were â€Å"really about the same.† The third stanza continues with the cogitation about the possible differences between the two roads. He had noticed that the leaves were both fresh fallen on them both and had not been walked on, but then again claims that maybe he would come back and also walk the first one sometime, but he doubted he would be able to, because in life one thing leads to another and time is short. The fourth stanza says this: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. There is nothing in the poem that suggests that this difference signals a positive outcome. The speaker could not offer such information, because he has not lived the â€Å"difference† yet. The other word that leads non-discerning readers astray is the word â€Å"sigh.† By taking â€Å"difference† to mean a positive difference, they think that the sigh is one of nostalgic relief; however, a sigh can also mean regret. If it is the relief sigh, then the difference means the speaker is glad he took the road he did; if it is the regret sigh, then the difference would not be good, and the speaker would be sighing in regret. But the plain fact is we do not know what that sigh is. Again, the speaker of the poem does not even know the nature of that sigh, because that sigh and his evaluation of the difference his choice will make are still in the future. It is a truism that any choice we make is going to make â€Å"all the difference† in how our future turns out. Research Papers on "The Road Not Taken" by Robert FrostMind TravelUnreasonable Searches and SeizuresLifes What IfsResearch Process Part OneAnalysis Of A Cosmetics AdvertisementEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenThe Hockey GameQuebec and CanadaPETSTEL analysis of IndiaGenetic Engineering The road not taken by robert frost Free Online Research Papers There are many choices in life, and their will be many thrown right at you and at one point they will be easy, hard, and really tough choices. But you must always remember that every single decision as little as it maybe it will make a big difference in life, based on the poem, The Road not Taken by: Robert Frost. It tells us about how the speaker in the poem is in the woods and is in front of two roads that diverged. Road A. leads one way and probably also leading to another, and has been taken many times since in the poem the speaker says it was all stomped on. And there was Road B. that leads to a whole different way also leading from one way to another. But according to the speaker this road had grass and wanted wear. Obviously this was the road not taken. The speaker is trying to find the differences and similarities between the two roads in the poem and since he knew that Road A. had been all stomped on. And Road B. wasn’t, he/she decided to take Road B. also known as the road not taken. And of course the speaker chose to take this one because this was the road the speaker felt he/she should take and wanted to take, and make his/her own decision. And as the speaker has taken the road the speaker says and yet knowing way leads on way to way I doubt if I should ever come back and sa ys that hence two roads diverged in a yellow woods and I-I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. In other words metaphorically saying the speaker had two different choices to make, and they were both very different from each other and he didn’t want to choose one he didn’t like just because it was the most popular one. Because when you make a choice or a decision you got to make sure it’s the right on because sometimes when you make a decision or a choice you cant always go back and undo it. So in this case the speaker had to make a choice that was a bit difficult having to choose what was the right thing knowing it would affect him in life one way or another. And well he let us know that the choice he made was the correct choice when he said â€Å"and that has made all the difference† meaning he probably made a positive and good choice , for example I have too make choices in life myself like, will I go to college or be a d rop-out. Will I work in the family business or will I get my own job. See, these are some of the many choices I will have in life they will be difficult but I know these will make me who ever I become, a rich a wealthy, healthy or poor, all I can really do now is do my thing and do my home work go to school and see where life takes me. Research Papers on The road not taken by robert frostMind TravelPersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyResearch Process Part OneAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 2Capital PunishmentHip-Hop is ArtEffects of Television Violence on Children19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraThe Hockey GameGenetic Engineering

Group Case Study

Group Case Study Group Case Study Abstract Our group’s name is â€Å"Graceful Youth Group†. We started the group last year with other two members because of having a common goal to achieve. We acquired other members from the community after them agreeing to work upon the goal and the objectives of the group. Having leadership qualities was one of the regulation upon which we acquired new members. The members of the group also agreed to work with a cordial relationship to avoid unnecessary conflicts that may arise. After the formation of the group, which consisted of fifteen individualities, we conducted a walk across the community to ensure that every member of the group had a prior knowledge of the community as a whole. Introduction In our community, there has been a vast exhibition of soil erosion, with its impact on the people of the community far reaching. Therefore, as the members residing in the community, this triggered us to form a group, which could see us addressing the problem of soil erosion. In the process of establishing our goals, we realized that there were other problems hindering development in our community. We decided that the group was to be there for any problem that may hinder development in our community. Type of group Neither was the group established on the grounds of gender discrimination, nor was it based on age discrimination. Guarantee for membership was there for any focused member of the society: be it a girl or a boy, old or young. Being that our group’s objectives were a beat many, we had to consider having twenty members in our group (Hardina, D., 2006). Our goals Our group formation was mainly steered by the motives of a better community. Therefore, our main goal in forming the group was to see that there was a greater deal of development in the community. The members, having their community in mind, agreed unanimously that developing the community was there goal. Role of individual members Every member has a role to play in ensuring that there is achievement of group’s goals. Each member is like a brother’s keeper. They give counseling to members who seem to be going astray as per the group’s objectives. They also ensure that every member is present at any group’s meeting even though we still experience some cases of individuals coming late for the meetings. Leadership style The group members designed the leadership style of in such a way that every member feels that he is a leader. Leadership position goes in cycle around a group of four, considering gender and age. The group leads for one month then another group of four takes their shift for another month. We found this suitable because every member has his own leadership quality, therefore leadership going in cycle helps in having diversity of opinions. Integrating the different leadership qualities lead to a positive outcome. This also helps do away with the problem of discrimination based on gender or age. Management of conflicts Conflict is inevitable among human so we sited some possible solution for management of conflict whenever they arise. Members are ready to treat every conflict that arises in the group in a special way. Conflict mainly arises when group members differ in their opinions. Therefore, as a group we have resolved that when there is a meeting everybody should have their chances in raising their opinions. Members then find a way of integrating the points so that every member feels part of the opinion. With members having the brotherly feeling towards one another, it is not easy to find members fighting among themselves (Rahim Afzalur, 2011). Conclusion Focus of the members on achieving their goals, is a clear indication that the group will never show any kind of resentment. They exhibit the spirit of togetherness in their work, which eventually will see them through in achieving their goals. The result will be more different if the members of the group do not address factors, like lateness. For the group to continue being successful, I propose that they include development of other nearing communities in their goal. This will help them to be more focused and in achieving their goals in wider area.

2 Synthesis paragraphs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

2 Synthesis paragraphs - Essay Example p). The author suggests that, â€Å"Physician assisted suicide disproportionately affects the poor and people living with disabilities (Acton, n. p).† This implies that the assisted suicide affects the poor and people living with disabilities who cannot afford other health care services. The medical institutions are profit-driven in which doctors try to minimize costs by reducing care. The physicians fear that the medical expenses incurred by the vulnerable groups will surpass their medical coverage limitations, leading to losses at the hospitals. The notion of undermining the disabled has been thwarted by the state governments with legislations aimed at empowering them to enjoy services like others. For instance, Oregon has a comprehensive medical plan that supports assisted suicide patients by allowing them to obtain lethal drugs (Acton, n. p). The author suggests that, â€Å"the six month rule that only patients with less than six months to live can qualify for assisted suicide (Acton, n. p).† However, the mentally ill are given the lethal drugs due to faulty prognosis conducted by the physicians. This arises if the doctors feel that someone is mentally ill and having the lethal drug would be the only amicable choice for them. The other protection of the vulnerable patients is the six-month rule in which the sick with a minimum of six months to live can qualify for the assisted suicide (Acton, n. p). In another article, George Dvorsky contends that it should be someone’s rights to request for assisted suicide. The author contends that, â€Å"As it stands, physician-assisted suicide is illegal in most jurisdictions (Dvorsky, n. p).† The notion is that people should be ready to observe laws that support assisted suicide, especially in the era of technological adoption. Life support systems are gaining recognition in hospitals and this shall

Managing Markering Communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Managing Markering Communication - Essay Example A company will only be successful when it uses marketing to turn potential clients into consumers of its products or services. Communication is Constant It is a recognised fact that whether people know it or not, they are constantly sending messages in different ways to others. It has been estimated that marketers’ skills are only responsible for 15% of their success in attracting customers, while the remaining 85% is the result of their ability to inspire trust in potential clients through their communication methods (Gould 2004). This is the reason why companies spend so much on researching on the best ways of creating advertisements (Rossiter and Bellman, 2005). Commercials, as well as other methods of communication, represent a company’s feelings and intentions for its clients. The verbal as well as non verbal cues that are carried in advertisements are vital because they tell potential customers what how they can benefit from the products and services of a company (Zeithaml, Bitner and Gremler, 2006). Even where person to person communication is concerned, strangers will make an immediate assessment of someone upon first meeting them (Shultz 2004). This is before the person has even said a single word. Advertisements for products or billboards are unconsciously analysed in the same way by potential customers. When people first come upon a company’s products through different media, the first impression can result in feelings of distrust, or in feelings of interest (Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard and Hogg, 2006). IMC Defined Integrated Marketing Communications basically means combining all the promotional tools of a company in an effort to reach customers with a message about the company’s products. All communications methods will have a greater impact on the student body if they are joined together than if they are each used in isolation (Kitchen, Brignell and Tao, 2004). This is even more beneficial for the company in question whe n integration also includes different levels of integration like the vertical, horizontal, external, internal, and data integrations (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman and Hansen, 2009). Horizontal Integration can be extended across corporate functions as well as the marketing mix. For instance, finance, production, communications and distribution operations can be made to work together to create the most effective messages for potential customers (Malhotra and Birks, 2003). On the other hand, singular departments like advertising, direct mail and sales combine efforts in working on data integration (Girvin: Strategic Branding Blog, 2010). This calls for a marketing information structure that gathers and shares the important information across varied departments. Vertical Integration basically means that all marketing purposes have to support the higher level business goals (Malhotra, 2004). Internal Integration holds that all the personnel working in a company have to be informed at a ll times, of any fresh developments taking place; whether this means new corporate identities, strategic partners, advertisements, or service standards. Lastly, external integration holds that external partners like public relations firms and advertising agencies have to work together to generate an all inclusive and comprehensive message to potential and existing clients. IMC –