OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Symbolic Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the symbolic frame
2. Apply the symbolic frame to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

I work for Starbucks as a district manager. I manage a team of 12 store managers, and
upwards of 350 partners (employees). I had a store manager who was showing an
unconscious bias against men. She is an amazing store manager who was excelling in her
store but she never hired men, only interviewed a few but was always hiring women. I
had another store manager who had an unconscious hiring bias as well, except she
preferred to hire athletes. I noticed this trend with both of them and that it was beginning
to effect their stores. Manager one’s store was beginning to experience a lot of drama and
store two was running into conflict as well. After reflecting on the training for hiring that
our store managers goes through, I realized that the two store managers had never gone
through the unconscious bias training or diversity training being that they were older
parnters. I had all of my store managers go through it and we had a healthy conversation
about what it means to hire with out an unocncious bias and being mindful about creating
diverse teams and what the benefits are.

2) Describe how the symbols of the organization influenced the situation.

The symbols of the organization, I feel created this situation. Starbucks culture of trust
and partnership clouded my judgement when it came to these two managers. I was too
close and made excuses for their actions. Once things started to impact others on their
teams is when I finally had to come to terms with these two managers were not hiring
diversely within their stores.

3) Recommend how you would use organizational symbols for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

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 Facing everything is another huge value at starbucks, I think by facing everything and
leaning in when it made me uncomfortable with my store managers, this situation would
have ended so differently.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about this frame.

It was my responsibility as a leader to ensure that my store managers were upholding the
starbucks experience for every partner and customer in their store. By not hiring diversly
they were not doing that. If I could go back and change anything about this situation it
would be to ask more questions as to why, and support them in seeing how their actions
did not support Starbucks culture.

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 Reference or References