OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Understand the four ethical communities
2. Apply an ethical community 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.

In Module 1, I spoke of my role as a Treasury Management Implementation Associate III

in the Treasury Department of City National Bank. The situation referred to the transition
to working from home during COVID-19 and how the department was not ready or
prepared for the amount of work that came and how that would trickle down to the
colleagues. The senior colleagues who were used to providing training based on their
skill set were not able to transition smoothly to virtual training and did not like to provide
training. Fortunately, I was the only colleague who did not mind providing virtual
training and liked it. I went from training on one system to four systems and creating
guides while still assisting in completing my normal workload. I noticed my schedule
went from 25% training with the completion of my daily workload to about 65% training
with the completion of my daily workload which naturally became an issue.

As a result, I would have to advocate for myself to either have a training role created or
for the training to go back to being evenly distributed so that I could maintain my
required workload. This did work in my favor and a new role was created for me as a
Quality Assurance Implementation & Training Associate I, where I solely focused on
training colleagues to complete the tasks correctly. When I wasn’t training colleagues, I
was performing quality control on completed assignments so that I could gauge which
colleagues needed a refresher course.

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

Ethically my situation was unique in the way that I was happily taking on additional tasks
of training current and temporary colleagues while completing my daily workload
without even thinking. My strong work ethic didn’t want me to fall behind because I
knew the work would pile up thus leaving clients hanging in the balance of receiving
access to services. Further reading aided in this revelation, specifically the text, “Some
 people have such strong ethical convictions that it matters little where they work”
(Bolman, 2021 p.412) I now understand that had I not spoken up and advocated for
myself to receive the job title then my manager would have continued to take advantage
of me. The only reason I spoke up was due to burnout since I was in school while
working.

Once the position was created it had to be formally announced to my department in a

meeting, in case another colleague was interested and luckily for me, no one wanted to
take on the task. My colleagues were championing for me to receive the position and help
to alleviate them of training as a part of their job tasks. As well as provide some broad
clarity to what was once a cloudy pile of misinformation given to us by many people and
a slew of past product managers.

3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical community metaphors (see
Exhibit 20.1 in Bolman and Deal) for an alternative course of action regarding your
case.

In this situation, when the position of a formal trainer exists in the Treasury
Implementation Department the Human Resource Frame will only improve with widely
known knowledge and less back and forth. This provides a show of caring for the well-
being of your colleagues and clients because work is processed quickly for the clients’
access. I’d also like to include the Symbolic Frame of having one person who knows
everything and who is providing guides to be readily accessible will give them hope, as
the text states “Leading is giving, Leadership is an ethic, a gift of oneself.” (Bolman and
Deal, 2011, p.416) The training position unknowingly placed me in a leadership role I
happily accepted because I developed a passion for making sure colleagues fully
understood their job tasks.

Ethically, the new position brought clarity and assisted with having a quicker
implementation process along with fewer errors to have and go back and fix further
delaying the client’s access to the products. The Human Resources Frame is changed by
the relief of the training now being detailed and there is enough time provided for
colleagues to grasp the concepts during training. The Symbolic Frame will only be
enhanced since having a colleague who does all the training, takes the calls, and attends
the meetings with Product Managers ensures we uphold the Blue Ladder and white-glove
service of giving clients immediate access to their accounts on their products.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about ethics.
Having obtained a deeper understanding of ethics when advocating for a trainer position
to be created, I would tie it in with the Symbolic Frame of driving home our clients
deserve a seamless process to allow them access to our services. Therefore, since City
National Bank prides itself on the white-glove service, I would emphasize the need for
there to be general knowledge not just for the benefit of the department but more for the
benefit of the clients. This would further drive the spirit of the organization making it less
about what the department needs and more about what the client needs.

Independent of that there is nothing I would do differently than what was done during the
situation. Thankfully there was a positive resolution that the Treasury Implementation
Department benefited from having a trainer who could weed out all of the confusion.
Therefore, assisting in a better quality of learning and understanding than what was
previously provided.
Reference:
 Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership (7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (ASU Bookstore Automatic
Purchase-Perusall Version Only)