OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the political frame
2. Apply the political 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.

There are annual reviews going on within my organization. For context, I am in

the United States Air Force and these reviews are called Enlisted Performance Boards
(EPBs). This process can be tense since your results can determine whether or not you get
a “promotion statement”. These statements allow members a certain number of points,
extra, for when they go to test for promotion.
The EPB is a new system since the previous rating forms we used last year.
However, there has been some disconnect as to what is the most important information to
capture from the previous year. Certain people, such as my superintendent (a person in
charge of multiple work sections), feels as though it should be direct work related to the
mission. For example, how many jobs you completed. Whereas “Big Air Force” feels
we should be still capturing the extracurriculars to include volunteer activities and
education. This has left people at the shop level, such as myself, in an odd position since
we are at the mercy of the superintendent’s corrections to our EPBs even if this will
render them non-competitive at the squadron level.
This has left me and two fellow Noncommissioned Officers (NCOs) in a weird
place where I wasn’t considered due to a preexisting reputation regardless of my strong
paperwork, another member was told to leave off his extras and became non-viable, and
the third was competitive and was mainly extra stuff.

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

As we learned in our readings, a loarge part of politics in the workplace is building alliances.
This has never been more true than with this exact situation of deciding which members deserve
these coveted promotion statements. “Most important decisions involve allocating scarce
resources—deciding who gets what” (Bolman, Deal, 2021). It almost becomes moot what is
written on paper for your annual review until it gets to the board and they pit you against your
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peers. The biggest issue is that the people in your chain of command can hold you back from
even being brought to the table, so to speak.

I had mntioned that I was not considered for being competitive. This is because I went toe to
toe with my pevious superintendent and upset him along with my previous civilian boss as well.
We had conflicting viewpoints and I was left without support as false allegations were levied
against me. Although the formal paperwork against me is long gone along with the people that
were in power, the reputation still stands. Therefore, my superintendent does not think I care
about my job but more about my extra duties. These include being a master resilience trainer
and a DEI educator. Both of these are official functions that I was hired or trained into, yet in the
USAF, perception is reality.

This picking and choosing based off alliances left me dead in the water, and my peer (who
was favored) non-competitive since they pushed up his package missing things that higher
leaders were looking for.

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

I would use organizational politics to build stronger alliances with people who have sway
over my career’s future. “The final proposition of the political frame emphasizes that goals are
not set by edict at the top but evolve through an ongoing process of negotiation and bargaining”
(Bolman, Deal, 2021). For example, I would attend functions where my highest leadership is
present in order to build my image and reputation. I am already doing this and seem to be
gaining notice from the ranking enlisted member in my squadron. (This is the person who
ultimately gives a final recommendation to the commander for giving out promotion statements.)

Also, I will try to take the people out of the problem and advocate for myself and show
all the major progress I have made. Simply because it is me, my accomplishments go largely
unrecognized. Therefore, I am going to work towards getting awards that highlight my wins and
show that I am completing many tasks. I have already started by securing a letter of
acknowledgement showcasing my expertise and usefulness when it comes to training the new
batch of the base’s resilience training assistants.

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

If I was able to redo the situation I had gone through to put me into this negative political
spiral in the first place, I would hae leaned more on my alliances. I would not have gone to
any meeting alone and perhaps would have had people speak on my behalf when addressing
certain members. Although my next direct supervisor in the chain of command was my
superintendent at the time, I perhaps would have ha my civilian foreman do more since I was

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 predominantly judged because the other NCOICs in my careerfield outranked me. I think I
would have used this to wager my odds when compromising.

“Academics and managers alike have often assumed that organizations have, or ought to
have, clear and consistent goals set at the top” (Bolman, Deal, 2021). This is only partially true
with my situation. I would leverage my position and get the people I report to, to adhere to one
standard. To this day, I still am unsure what they were looking for in order to get a promotion
statement. This lack of clarity is leaving many people frustrated, and I am building coalitions of
my peers to be candid with the feedback we received and are building our own roadmap to
promotion. Therefore, I will again utilize politics in the sense of building my own team of
people who will support one another in order to accomplish a unifying goal: promotion.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership.
Jossey-Bass.