Pearl Assignement 3

University of Maryland, College park
Pearl Diving Assignment 3
Rick Wandji
Communication for Project Managers:ENCE424
Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman
November 15th, 2020

A. Write an email to your team in which you address the team’s lackluster performance
and the need for improvement. You are the team leader and your email should appeal to
ethos, logos, and pathos.
Email
Dear Team,
I wanted to take the time to talk to you about our overall performance.There’s no other way to
say it, our effort has not been good enough in the past weeks. I understand that the pandemic has
put a stress on things. Stability in the workplace has been affected and I understand that this can
affect our work. However we need to be able to try and persevere. We need to be better and that
starts with me. As the team leader I need to be doing more to set an example. We will be meeting
on Monday to check over what we can improve on please come prepared to improve. Our
performance can and will get better.
Your Team Leader,

Rick Wandji
B. What is an important concept you learned from the classroom activity this week?
One important concept I learned from the classroom activity was patience and speaking
up. In the video that we watched we saw how over time as the boss berated him and berated him
that him keeping it in almost caused him to explode at the end. That video taught me multiple
lessons both from the viewpoint of a boss and for the viewpoint of an employee. One concept I
got from the viewpoint of the boss is how important it is to be approachable and accountable.
Throughout the video it felt like only the employees we’re messing up and that THEY had to be
the ones to work harder. Ong bossed them around, not asking them for feedback or availability.
He was too concerned with simply getting the results and failed to think about his employees.
Using pathos would tell me to try and sympathize with me employees, to try and hold myself
accountable as well. Instead of telling everyone how bad they were doing and asking them to
work overtime, start by recognizing my own failures for not having everyone organized and on
time. Then we talked about how once you do that you can actually work towards a solution. That
was one concept that really stuck with me, using pathos and trying to maintain a good
relationship with your employees even when you’re criticizing them. It was clear the relationship
was deteriorating thanks to bad communication on Ong’s end and no communication on the
other end. Another concept I got from the employee was to speak up. The reason things were
allowed to get that bad has to be partially on the employees. If they had tried to pull the manager
aside and take the time to express his discontent the relationship could have been patched up.
Instead he continued to get upset with the way his manager was treating him, until he ended up
quitting and storming out. Had he said something perhaps the situation could’ve got better,
maybe it wouldn’t have, but you still need to try and communicate.
Another important concept I learned from the classroom activity was the importance of
professionalism. Writing emails,especially during covid times, will be much more important that
it was in the past. This exercise taught us the importance, and damage, a bad email can do. It also
taught us that writing professionals emails don’t need to be overcomplicated. The concept was to
try and make it professional and concise. Being direct and having the correct tone was something
a lot of the emails lacked, and simply having that changes the email by so much. Instead of
taking two paragraphs to explain your indecisiveness about accepting a job offer, 3 sentences
thanking them for the opportunity and kindly requesting more time to decide is much more
professional and appropriate.
C. Using the techniques covered in Crucial Conversations, how would you handle the
following scenario? Be sure to discuss what you will do, what you will say, and explain why
you have chosen this course of action. Be sure to appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos in your
response.
If my boss called me an idiot my gut reaction would be to retaliate. However knowing

that my relation with my boss is important I would most likely use some of the techniques
covered in class as well as crucial conversations. The first thing I would do is try and take a page
out of the “yeah, but” chapter. In regular scenarios a good boss is a good teammate and wouldn’t
be doing that in the first place, or an employee might step in and say something. However I need
to be able to rely on myself. I would politely tell my boss that there is no need to tell me that, and
I am sorry if I've fallen short somewhere. This would most likely depend on how angry my boss
seemed to be. If they were especially vexed I would wait until after the meeting and talk to them
in private. In this case I would need to be confident and concise and make sure that I get my
point across while also not trying to strain our relationship. The book talks about the need to not
be too deferential to authority, but to also be self reflective. I need to be able to understand how
we got to this point in the first place, and see what exactly I did to even be in this situation. The
main thing I would do in this situation is to try not to defer to authority and make sure I get my
feelings across. Saying nothing could be detrimental if my boss continues and continues to berate
me assuming I am okay with it.
D.After completing the assessment, write an essay explaining whether you agree or
disagree with the results and why? Did you glean any surprising insights? How are your
Big Five Personality Trait scores similar to and/or different from your JUNG personality
profile and your DISC assessment results (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, or
Conscientiousness). What are the benefits of taking different types of assessments?
Looking at my results I think that I agree. My two highest rated placements where
openness and agreeableness which I think fits my personality. I am a generally reserved person
(which might explain why extraversion is my lowest rated one). I am a generally open and
agreeable person, however I don’t think that I am a pushover. I think that I am reasonable and
adaptable making it easy for me to deal with. I was a little bit surprised by the definition for
openness. It says “ person’s tendency to think in abstract, complex ways. High scorers tend to be
creative, adventurous, and intellectual.” When I think of openness I think of honesty and
humbleness not necessarily creativity. I’m a little surprised by how high openness was for me. I
do think that the arts are important and I try to make sure I stay positively balanced however I
feel like I am not as invested in it as I want to be which makes the high rating seem a bit odd.
Overall I think that these assessments match up with my JUNG and DISC assessment, one of the
benefits of taking 3 different assessments is that it gives you different overall profiles of who you
are. With each assessment I take I look back and think to myself how does such and such
actually affect me in real life. It causes self reflection which is important if you want to continue
getting better not only professionally, but as a person as well. I like how different these
assessments can be, they cause me to analyze different parts of myself.
Works Cited
Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations:
Tools for talking when stakes are high. New York: McGraw-Hill.
The Big Five Personality Test. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2020, from
https://www.truity.com/personality-test/17315/test-results/29453014

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University of Maryland, College park

Pearl Diving Assignment 3

Communication for Project Managers:ENCE424

Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman

November 15th, 2020

Your Team Leader,

If my boss called me an idiot my gut reaction would be to retaliate. However knowing

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