Scenario: You are a recent graduate working in an organization that has had a lot of baby boomers retire. There are still a few baby boomers working along with many Generation X employees. Millennials are about one-third of the organization’s employees. The millennials are very diverse racially and ethnically. There have been many generational and cultural misunderstandings and complaints. The complaints include millennials supervising older employees and older employees supervising millennials. All the generational groups complain that they don’t understand the other groups. You have been asked by the top executives to do a 3-5 page single-spaced report on how to create more effective cross-cultural teams. Once one is a supervisor or manager, he or she is managing teams. Effective teams are the key to effective organizations.
Summary: Summarize the cultural characteristics in chapter 5 and include some of the characteristics of millennials (from the first-week assignment). Focus on the behaviors and beliefs that hold some employees back in their careers. Bridging those cultural differences is key to developing employees and employees being seen as leadership material.
Analysis: Define the 5 foundation cultural competencies and give a concrete example of how each applies to racial/ethnic, gender, and millennials. Briefly discuss how these foundation cultural competencies will create better relationships among the employees. The foundation cultural competencies are used to develop professional relationships with other managers in the middle management ranks. At the executive level, the relationships are with other organizations and community and political groups.
Recommendations: describe 3 to 5 organizational changes that you would recommend to the top executives of your organization to create more effective cross-cultural and cross-generational teams using the five foundation cultural competencies. Develop a brief implementation plan for your recommendations.
