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 am a cycle instructor at a local indoor cycle (spin) studio in my town. We are locally
owned and operated and therefore face a lot of unique challenges of being a small busi-
ness. A couple months ago, our studio manager announced she wanted to open an addi-
tional studio location even though our current location isn’t performing well. She made
this decision without soliciting any feedback or ensuring she had the trained staff to suc-
cessfully open another studio.

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

The owner of the studio decided to create this business because she wanted to build a
community and environment where everyone is welcome regardless of fitness level or
what they looked like. During our trainings as instructors, the owner always told her story
of growing up as a dancer and feeling like she was never enough and how fitness became
more of a chore than something she enjoyed. She persevered through the dog-eat-dog
world of competitive ballet, an eating disorder, and self hate and transformed it into a
lifelong love of moving in a way that makes your body feel good where it’s at and pro-
moting self love to everyone.

While it’s an inspiring story of a young woman challenging norms and shedding societies
expectations of her, it manifested into a “I can do whatever I want because I overcame
xyz”. When the owner put the new manager in charge, she served as an extension of the
original symbol: an insecure girl who doesn’t fit the stereotypical mold of a fitness pro-
fessional trying to find her way in the world managing a boutique fitness studio.
Equipped with the empowerment that she can do whatever she wants because it worked

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 out for the owner, the manger pursued opening a second location without any real plan-
ning of foresight.

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

The owners story of overcoming adversity and using her influence to help others find
their power has been a beacon of light in the community. I think her story is empowering
to many and sharing her story of why she opened the studio kept the studio alive and pro-
vided examples to “channel everyday behavior” (Bolman & Deal, 2021). Her story and
it’s impact were daily reminders for the team to accept and welcome everyone and she
wanted to share that beyond the one location.

While she had an inspiring story, there was no ritual associated with it to really immerse
everyone in the culture. During our training we learned her story but that was it, there
was never any work done around how we wanted to bring it to life in the studio. Having
defined rituals would allow for everyone on the team to share the vision and the values of
acceptance of you who are and leaving feeling better than you came much better. Rituals
bring people together, help align them, and help “enclose and define special forms of
symbolic behavior” (Bolman & Deal, 2021). Having no defined rituals or even visual
symbols made it harder to share our message and create an environment that was thriv-
ing.

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

Based on what I know now, there isn’t much I would do differently. In all of these reflec-
tions, I think that the one thing I would have done was speak up and share my thoughts
and concerns more. I had become a neatly rehearsed character who was carefully
scripted in what I said in my organizationally approved dress code, and played the game
by the acceptable rules of conduct (Bolman & Deal, 2021) A new player needed to enter
the game in order to create change.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leader-
ship (7th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.