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.

This situation occurred while serving as a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. My mother
unexpectedly passed away and over the next few months, my performance at work was
negatively affected. During my semi-annual mid-term review, my leadership told me that
I was doing well and to keep up the good work. Six months later when it was time for my
official evaluation, the leadership told me that my performance had declined leading to
my performance scores falling from where they were the previous year. The reasons they
gave were poor and were not justified. This negative evaluation would make it so that I
could not advance for at least five years leading me to passionately arguing and
confronting my leadership.

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

"Organizations often rely on CEOs or other prominent leaders as exemplars” (Bolman &
Deal, 2021, p. 258). Most commanding officers rely on their senior enlisted leaders to
have good insight on the command and its Sailors. Because of the many high-level
responsibilities that a commanding officer has daily, there was no way for him to
properly evaluate all 170 of his Sailors. The commanding officer relied on the input from
the senior enlisted leader for the content of my evaluation. Senior enlisted leaders are
usually reliable, but this one was not and had invalid reasons for the scores he gave me on
the evaluation.

The Navy has a term called deckplate leadership. This type of leadership involves chiefs
getting out from behind a desk to train, mentor, and work hand in hand with their Sailors.
This senior enlisted leader did not live up to the role of a deckplate leader and primarily
stayed behind his desk at one building. Because he stayed at the headquarters building, he
did not have the heartbeat of the command and its three other locations. This directly
affected the scores on my evaluation.

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

An alternative course of action for this situation involves me having a one-on-one

conversation with the senior enlisted leader earlier in the year. A couple months after my
mother passed away, the senior enlisted leader made false accusations against some of
my Sailors. He brought part of my team into his office to tell us that we could not do
something that we were not doing in the first place. After this meeting, I could have
talked to him about his lack of deckplate leadership and how doing better with it could
have prevented his false accusations.

Becoming a chief petty officer, you are accepted into a brother and sisterhood of fellow
chiefs all throughout the Navy. There is an implied fellowship that allows you to ask any
chief for help no matter the issue. While struggling with my mother’s passing, I did not
reach out to any other chiefs for assistance. Although I would not be open to sharing all
my emotions with fellow chiefs, I could have asked them for some extra support while I
was struggling with the loss.

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

For a long time, leadership frowned on seeking assistance with mental health. The overall
thought was that if you needed mental help, there was no way you could be trusted to
hold a secret or top-secret clearance. Sailors were expected to deal with their own
problems whether it was PTSD or any list of other mental issues. Even though the Navy
has made great strides with mental health over the last decade, I was still living by the old
myth of it being considered a weakness to seek help. If I had stepped back and looked at
it differently, I could have considered seeking professional help to deal with my loss.

Other than those three ideas, I do not think that there is anything else I could have
executed differently with this situation. Even if I had accomplished all the suggestions
listed above, there is no guarantee that the senior enlisted leader would have listened and
done anything differently. There will be some leaders that think their way is the right way
and do not want to hear anything different. I believe that this senior enlisted leader was
one of those people.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.