University of Maryland, College Park

Pearl Diving Assignment 2

Calvin Parker

Communication for Project Managers: ENCE424

Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman

October 30, 2021

 Introduction

Communication for Project Managers has offered many lessons on the importance
of storytelling through its many lectures and assigned readings. The classes verify that the human
mind has long been structured to understand people, businesses, initiatives, products, and causes
through that of narrative. We need to have a story that resonates with us to inspire us, trigger our
emotions, and allow us to fully understand what is being presented to us. The course gives
students the opportunity to improve their ability to story tell and create their narratives that will
differentiate themselves from their competitors to prospective employers. So, the fourth part of
this essay will detail my personal story of my adversity with academic struggle and mental health
issues at the University. This story will be crafted in the way we were taught in the various
lectures and readings; particularly, with the lessons taught in chapters 10 and 11 of Five Stars.
However, before the presentation of these stories, I will show what we have learned in dealing
with conflict on a team through the use of an email to address the lackluster performance of an
individual on a team and their need to improve. Then I will talk about a specific influence
principle we learned about in Week 8 of the course and show its importance. Next, I will use
principles we learned from the course text, Crucial Conversations, to properly address a scenario
in which my boss has called me an idiot in front of my team. And lastly following the story, I
will detail my results from the Big Five Personality assessment, my response/reaction to it,
whether I agree with it or not and why, and compare the results with previous personality
assessments that I have taken in the course.

Email

Dear John,

Hey John. First of all, I hope all is well with you and your friends and family. I wanted to
contact you to address your performance on our team project so far. Before I get to the matter at
hand, I want to thank you for being part of our team. The sacrifices that you have made for us are
greatly appreciated as we certainly do not take them for granted. We understand your busy
schedule and many obligations you have outside of the job, and we assuredly are thinking about
that when it comes to your responsibilities for the team.
However, despite this, the team has been concerned with your progress on your parts in
the project performance report. As we have discussed, we decided that you would be responsible
for graphing the data, making the charts, and writing the performance summary. In the meeting,
we talked about setting deadlines of what we all wanted to have done by certain check points.
We have noticed that for the first two weeks, you are the only member of the team who has not
hit his or her checkpoints. What is the reason for this in particular? Let me know if you are
confused on what your roles were exactly, and I can go into more detail about your particular
responsibilities and how we want them done. Is there something urgent that is preventing you
from hitting these checkpoints on time? Please, let me know if you are overwhelmed and if we
should redistribute the workload so you do not have too much on your plate. Also, notify us if
there is any confusion in any of your responsibilities and I will seek the proper department to
provide you with the assistance you need. Please try your best to have your parts done for the
checkpoints in a timely manner and to the best of your ability. Your hard work and diligence, as
always, will be greatly appreciated and it will do a great deal with our goal of submitting our
performance report to the state. The reason that I am stressing you collaborate with us effectively
to get your part of the project done, is because we need all of our team members to submit a
polished product to be able to submit the best performance report we can. It is these reports that
if done well, will add to the value of our company as we will be able to get more funding for
various projects and initiatives and have more clients want to consult with us and use our various
services.
So, John, I want to say on behalf of the team that we appreciate your effort, hard work,
and sacrifice that you have given to the project. However, we are kindly asking you to dig a bit
deeper to submit your part of the performance report project on time so that we can have our
work reviewed and edited at each checkpoint. We understand you have obligations on other
projects and tasks outside of work, but we are unfortunately on a strict deadline for the
submission of this report so please do your best to work with us. Thank you for your time, and
we wish you the best of luck with everything!
Sincerely,
Calvin Parker
Team Leader

Week 5-8 Concept

In week 8 of Communication for Project Managers, we learned about the eight influence
principles including what they were, examples of them, and to be aware of them and how they
play a part in our daily lives. We also learned about how some can be used to our advantage. To
illustrate our understanding of the principles, we broke into groups and came up with a
presentation on a certain influence principle in relation to the Covid-19 Pandemic. My group was
selected to present on the influence principle of Consensus/Social Proofing. So, this is the
concept that I will focus on in this essay.
Consensus/Social Proofing is the notion that people look at what others are doing,
especially similar or respected others, for cues about how to behave. Basically, people tend to
“fit in the crowd” when they are in a situation in which they are not sure how to act or what to
do. Many people don’t want to stand out and so to be comfortable and appear normal, they
simply do what everyone else is doing whether this is good or bad. For our group activity, we
gave three examples of how the principle of social proofing has been and continues to be
exhibited in the Covid-19 pandemic. Our first example was everyone’s behavior in the beginning
of the pandemic. When the pandemic first emerged, there was a lot of uncertainty about the
situation because most of us have never been in a situation quite like this before (as the last
pandemic happened around 100 years ago when we were not alive). Therefore, people followed
actions similar to that of their friends, families, and peers when the pandemic first struck. If
one’s family was apprehensive about the uncertainty of how dangerous the pandemic would be
and they stayed indoors and followed lockdown orders and chose to wear masks, then they
would follow suit and due the same. However, if your friends were some of the fearless Spring
Break partiers that were not going to let the pandemic cancel their plans as they prioritized
having a blast over taking caution for a potentially dangerous situation, you likely stuck by the
side of your friends and continued to be out in crowds partying. Later in the pandemic when
mask wearing became prevalent (and even required in most public spaces in many states),
individuals would decide whether or not to wear a mask by observing those around them. Most
individuals who would enter a store, or a house, or any other public entity and saw other people
wearing masks, they would likely follow suit and put the mask on. However, in some instances,
whether there was a mask mandate or not, and a person saw little to no mask-wearing, they may
decide to take their mask off as well as they deem that it must be okay to do this since everyone
else is doing it. Our last example was that of the vaccine. If an individual believes in science,
data, research, medical professionals, and other public health officials that can prove the
effectiveness and the benefits of getting vaccinated, than they will likely get vaccinated as well.
If a person’s friends and/or family have been vaccinated as they believe in it’s potential to
protect them from Covid-19 and reduce the risk of them dying or being hospitalized or severely
damaged if they get a breakthrough case, then they will likely fall in line with their families’
actions and be vaccinated. However, if a person is surrounded by friends and family who do not
see the necessity of being vaccinated as they believe that they do not need this or want this to be
protected than they most likely will refrain. If said person has had family members who have
suffered from severe rare side effects from the vaccines than they may refrain. If an individual
surrounds him or herself with people or information that give a multitude of reasons not to get
the vaccine because of whatever conspiracy they believe in that paints the vaccine in a negative
light, then the person will likely refrain from getting it. These examples of social proofing in the
age of the Covid-19 pandemic prove that it does happen in society and we should be aware of it
as an influence principle.
This concept is important because we must be aware of it as an influence principle that
occurs in everyday life. We must learn to fight the tendency to follow the crowd and do what
everyone else is doing when the action is wrong or disadvantageous. Just because everyone is
doing something, it does not always mean that it is the morally right or wise thing to do. We
must learn to think for ourselves and figure out what will be the best decision we can make for
our own lives. We should only follow what others do if we deem that it is morally right and
would be wise or beneficial for us to do. On the other side, we must understand that our actions
will influence other people to follow us. Therefore, we can each break away from a crowd that is
doing something wrong and congregate in a new crowd that goes against a morally negative
status quo and does the right thing. And maybe with this, we can use the social proofing
influence principle in a positive light as we influence people to make good choices as they follow
our actions. So, I plan to be aware that this influence principle exists and find my tendency to
follow a crowd when I see them doing something that is morally wrong or would not put myself
in a better position. And lastly, I plan to use it by leading by example and doing all I can to
exemplify good behavior so that I can hopefully get a plethora of people to be influenced by me
(and others like me and others who follow me) and do good and spread positivity as well.
 Boss Scenario
In the event that my boss called me an idiot in front of my entire team I would obviously
feel embarrassed, bad about myself, and possibly angry at my boss. However, I would focus on
calming down my emotions, tempering my anger, and making sure that I kept a level head. I
would refuse what the book Crucial Conversations deems, “the Fool’s Choice”, (Patterson, pdf
page 17). The text says that “the mistake that most of us make in our crucial conversations is that
we believe that we believe that we have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a
friend”, (Patterson, pdf page 17). The text goes on to give an example to illustrate the fool’s
choice which it describes as, “a choice between two bad alternatives”, (Patterson, pdf Page 17).
In my scenario I would avoid the fool’s choice. Two bad alternatives that I may think to decide
from if I were not operating as an expert in dialogue would be that I could either lash out back at
my boss and harshly defend my self and risk being demoted or even lose my job, or silently take
in this harsh name-calling and never address it and continue to hold in this anger, sadness, or
embarrassment that I feel from being ridiculed like this. In the scenario that I ignored it and said
nothing, my boss may take this as a sign that he or she can continue to disrespect me as I have
not said anything to stand up for myself. I would refuse those options and think deeper to find a
better resolution to the situation. Refusing these two options would also be correctly refuting
going to “silence and violence”, (Patterson, pdf page 27). The text defines silence as, “any act to
purposely withhold information from the pool of shared meaning”, (Patterson, pdf page 27). And
it defines violence as, “any verbal strategy that attempts to convince, control, or compel others to
your point of view; It violates safety by trying to force meaning into the pool”, (Patterson, pdf
page 27). Both methods would restrict the flow of shared meaning in the pool of dialogue that
the text stresses is important for making the best decisions. Yelling back at my boss and ignoring
the situation altogether (thus resorting to silence or violence) will both do nothing to appease the
uncomfortable and unpleasant situation as a necessary crucial conversation is either being
avoided or pseudo-avoided because it is handled in a malicious way.
After avoiding the fool’s choice, I would do as the text says and, “make it safe”,
(Patterson, pdf page 18). The books says that experts at dialogue are masters at doing this as it
allows everyone to add meaning to the shared pool. The text stresses that we should make it safe,
so we avoid reacting in such a way that we “fight” or “take flight” because we are fearful.
(Patterson, pdf page 27). An important idea the text stresses is that “if you make it safe enough,
you can talk about almost anything and people will listen. If you don’t feel you’re being attacked
and humiliated, you yourself can hear almost anything and not become defensive”, (Patterson,
pdf page 27). This is why I would strive to do this because not only will it calm me down and
allow me to make a great decision in creating a meaningful dialogue, but it may also calm my
boss down as well as he learns what he did was wrong, and he can improve his behavior himself.
To make it safe, I would apologize to my boss for whatever I said or did to make him feel and
react that way. I would do this in an honest tone of voice that is not sarcastic but is genuinely
concerned with my boss’s riled up state that I somehow caused. In public, I would ask what I
could have done to do the job better so that he would not berate me like this. I would continue a
calm demeaner as I hopefully am able to take his suggestions and have a civilized dialogue that
adds value to the company. After this, I would request a private meeting with my boss. In this
meeting I would greet him happily, let him know that I have been taking in his suggestions to do
the job differently ever since the incident happened, and apologize again for making him upset
enough to refer to me as an “idiot” in public. However, I would calmy tell him that I did not
appreciate him calling me out like that and attacking me ruthlessly. I would be talking in a
serious demeaner as I explained to him that it made me feel very sad, embarrassed, and bad
about myself. I would tell him how I have no problem if you disagree with the way I do things
but I what just ask kindly that he treat me with the respect I deserve as a diligent hardworking
employee. I would swear to always respect him and always keep the conversations classy no
matter how much we may disagree with each other. I would do this just to ensure that the respect
is mutual, and I am not asking him for anything that I could not return myself. In the
conversation, I would address what I did to make him so angry to call me out like that and then
try to directly improve whatever that action or behavior was. And hopefully, in this conversation
we could both add a lot to the pool of shared meaning and have a civilized, honest, and respectful
free flow of dialogue that results in him evolving as a boss who won’t call me out like that
anymore no matter the situation, and me as a better employee so that I won’t even do anything
close to make him feel that way.

Story
I had always been a focused, dedicated, and hardworking student all throughout my
academic career from lower education up throughout my time in college thus far. But
particularly in the second half of my collegiate career as the coursework was becomingly
increasingly harder, I began to lose focus and not try as hard as I usually have. I felt this a little
in the Fall 2019 semester as this was one of my hardest semesters as I was not only taking five
courses (in which one was the very difficult and infamous fluid mechanics aka fluids) but also
fitting time into my schedule to work part-time at an engineering firm to help my parents pay for
my rent for South Campus Commons here at the University of Maryland. I felt like I would work
so hard and still be disappointed with my exam scores and lay in my bed sad and depressed all
day. I also was very upset when I was not selected to participate in a summer internship at an
engineering company that was very close to my home (away from College Park) in Baltimore. I
felt like I had a very good interview and made myself a promising candidate, but I was
heartbroken when I found out that I did not get the position. I had interviewed for positions that I
have been denied the position before in the past but for some reason, this felt like the most
crushing one. I believe it was because the representative from the career fair actually reached out
to me as I was walking and it seemed like they were very pleased with my resume, and the job
would be very close to my house. I was able to finish the semester and pass all my courses but
with my loss of focus, I would waste a lot of time and not study for exams like I should and
therefore, make them a lot harder for myself and not get as high as grades as I probably could
have.
My bad habits of being distracted with technology only worsened in the Spring 2020
semester. I would continue to waste more and more time and thus limit the potential of how high
my grades would be. This was obviously no good as an engineering major because the classes
get significantly harder as you go along, and even if they don’t, they are always at a certain level
which requires significant effort. These habits led me to struggling in my coursework even
before the pandemic, and the onset of the pandemic only made school harder as I could not meet
up with my peers and professors in person anymore, and I had to be responsible and motivated to
watch recorded lectures, turn in work on time, and study for exams and quizzes all in a virtual
environment at home with endless distractions, in a time that no one has ever seen before which
was another distraction. This led to me getting lower grades than I would if fully focused and me
having to drop a course and fail my first ever course in my entire academic career (lower
education or higher learning).
The Fall 2020 semester was when all the problems reached a significant climax as I was
quite possibly the least focused I have ever been in school. I was back on campus but since this
was still in the days before the vaccine was distributed, so all courses were virtual. I had a decent
start, but I fell off as my focus strayed to other things which caused me to get lower grades. 2020
was a very eventful year from start to finish so I would often catch myself reading stories about
the pandemic and politics. This was an election year, so I spent a lot of time online debating with
people on policies and expressing my feelings about each of the candidates, their proposals, the
debates, their focuses, and why I supported whoever I did. I also spent a lot of time expressing
my support of the Black Lives Matter and the Social Justice movement during the entirety of
2020 as I felt like ever since the George Floyd murder, I have been open to speak up and speak
my mind on racism and police brutality that African Americans deal with in America. I felt very
empowered in this movement as I even attended a couple of protests early in the semester to
show my support on the cause. I felt like the entire year was a period of racial reckoning like we
have never seen before as evidenced by the unprecedented number of individuals marching
against police brutality worldwide. I felt like the semester being online did not help because I
essentially did not have to leave my room much, so it was difficult at times to find the internal
motivation to attend zoom class and do work. I had also been way too caught up in sports, music,
and other forms of television and media and was at this point, not doing assignments flat out. I
would get this horrible feeling because I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I felt that I was
in a loop and could not get myself out of it. I ended up failing three out of my five courses and I
was so scared that I did not tell my parents about it.
I kept the lie up that I would be graduating in the Spring 2021 semester until I finally
admitted that I would not because I failed multiple courses that I would have to take from the
previous semester. My parents were very disappointed, and I told them about my bad habits of
giving up, not being motivated, and hiding from doing work by living in leisure with my
technology. Around this time of being stuck in this funk, I would often turn off my phone and
thus cut contact from my family with me because I did not want to face the reality that the jig
was up, and I could not hide the truth anymore. I began doing this when my mother started
asking me about applying for graduation and about other things I had to do for this process. They
gave me advice and serious motivational speeches to cut the technology out, but I still could not
despite all of the talk, and they found out that I had still been refraining from doing work and not
attending the tutoring sessions to help me (some in which we were paying for). I would continue
to cut off my phone and ignore my mother’s calls and messages. Things got so bad that my
mother went into my housing portal and found my suit mate’s phone number and had to contact
him to tell me that I should turn on my phone because my mother was trying to reach me. She
was very concerned and worried sick about me because I would go hours and even days at times
of not responding to her. Another low point was when I ignored my collegiate assistance
program director’s email about me not attending the tutoring they supplied me with and even
hung up on him mid phone call when I realized it was him and did not want to face the reality
that I had not been doing work or attending the tutoring. It got to the point where my parents had
to take me home from my apartment and have me take my courses from home so they can watch
over me as they rebuilt their trust in me. I had my mother heartbroken from her not being able to
reach me. My father told me how this was horrible because my mother especially, and the rest of
the family were already going through grief and mourning with the loss of my grandfather (my
mother’s father) due to Covid-19 who’s casket I literally help carry out and lower into the burial
site on my birthday which was one of the saddest days in my life. My mother told me that this
was almost as bad as her losing her father. I remember my father saying that my mom just lost
her father and now she thinks she is losing her son to. I did a little better, but I had been missing
so many assignments that the damage would be very hard to overcome. I was taking two courses
at the time, and I was able finish and pass one, but I was granted an extension by my professor to
complete my course over the summer and make up all the assignments that I missed because of
my mental health/depression issue sighted from my doctor. I ended up having to use almost the
entire summer for the course as I had to switch tutors as my mom, and I found that the help I had
been getting from my previous ones wasn’t efficient and I was still struggling. I had also been
taking anti-depressant and medication to help me focus while telling a psychiatrist and
psychologists about my problems via zoom while listening to their advice and taking the
medicine they prescribed. I ended up having to keep moving my exam back to give myself more
time to finish all the assignments and study, but this was worthwhile as my new tutor was
actually very helpful. However, my mother was enraged that it was taking me so long to finish
the course and threatened to pull me out of school entirely if I were to fail this course. I
continued to do many practice problems, review concepts with my tutor, and get help from my
professor. All this hard work paid off as I was able to get a very good score on the exam, finish
and turn in all of the missing assignments, and successfully pass the course. I was so excited to
hear this news as I was able to regain my motivation, self-esteem, and focus to push through and
finish this course despite being at such a deficit and coming off a couple of bad semesters. In all
of this, I was never placed on academic probation, but I was once close, and I am excited to say
that I dug myself out of that hole.
This journey of my academic struggle has been a microcosm of life for me. Even know
the work is hard, giving up is never an option. I must face my fears and step out of my shell and
take challenges head on. I learned that I came up from hard-working and dedicated individuals
that never gave up so I should never do this either. This journey has continued to make me
mentally tougher, more motivated, more honest, and more dedicated to taking control of my life
and trying the best that I can. The journey has taught me to continue to have confidence, believe
in myself, and to stop putting all these other distractions above my academic and career goals.
Although I still struggle with being distracted and procrastination at times, I always think of the
dark times I have been experiencing the last few semesters and quickly refocus myself so that I
do not fall back into that dark place again.
 Big Five Personality Assessment
I agree with my results that I got from this personality assessment as when I look at the
scores and descriptions, I am definitely hearing my personality, tendencies, disposition, and
behavior described. For my OCEAN breakdown, (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) I scored the highest in agreeableness and I would agree (no
pun-intended) with this notion as I believe I am an understanding and compromising person who
tends to make sacrifices for others and/or the betterment of the team. My next highest
denomination was unfortunately but accurately, neuroticism. This would assuredly describe
myself as I have long been self-conscience and exhibited self-doubt as I have struggled with self-
belief, confidence, assuredness, and have been emotionally unstable, depressed, and struggled
with frequent negative thoughts as I often find myself in a guilty conscience state of mind. My
lowest breakdown was extraversion as expected as I have always and still consider myself an
extremely quiet, private, shy, and introverted individual.
My openness score was well below the average, and this was not surprising as I see
myself a closed book to people outside of my family and even to my family at times
unfortunately when I cannot face them and accept that I have done wrong. I was described as a
person who is practical and straightforward, did not prefer theories and abstract ideas, and a
person who has very little interested in the arts. I can confirm this as I tend to think of things in a
conventional way as I sometimes struggle to think outside of the box. Coming up in school I
always hated art class because I could not draw like most other kids and since I was not creative
and imaginative like a lot of others, I simply gained no enjoyment for the class as I tried to come
up with the best product I could (even know I found this process boring and annoying) to simply
get by and move on to things I was more interested in. I would vehemently agree with the
assessment’s notion that I would much rather spend my time enjoying activities like sports and
pop music. For my circumplex graph, I scored the highest in practical caretaker and I would
agree with this as I would refer to myself a very helpful and thoughtful individual. I am always
offering my parents help when I think they may need it and have always been open to helping
my peers with coursework whenever I could. I agree with the descriptors of being altruistic, kind,
compassionate, and empathetic as I always considered myself and extremely nice and caring
person. I can confirm the assessment’s notion of my alignment with established institutions and
my preference to do things in the traditional way as this can be exemplified by my decision in
life to take the collegiate route while many of my fellow Generation Z peers have decided that
college was not necessary as they rather take advantage of the rise of the internet and social
media to make a living by being a public influencer (or entertainer) and looking for creative
ways to promote themselves and/or brand or a business, product, or service they have launched
to generate wealth. I did not gain any surprising insights.
My results from this personality assessment where similar to that of my JUNG and DISC
personality assessments. The Big Five Personality assessment continuously described me as a
practical person who is very straightforward in his approach. This is similar to both the JUNG’s
description of me as a sensor who relies on facts and is good with handling practical matters and
the DISC’s description of me a steady individual who likes to follow a clear, definite, course of
action. My introverted nature is reflected in all three personality assessments as I scored very low
scores for the dominance and influence sections in the DISC assessment, I was described as an
introvert in the JUNG assessment which both relate to my extremely low score on extraversion, I
received in the Big Five assessment. The benefits of taking different personality assessments are
checking the accuracy of each because if you began to see common themes amongst these
assessments, you can confirm that this is probably your personality and it is great to understand
who you are to know how to use your strengths, to be aware of your weaknesses, and constantly
work on trying to grow as an individual.

Conclusion

So, Communication for Project Managers gives stresses the importance of storytelling
through its readings and lectures. We have often spoke about the importance of presenting your
narrative to a prospective employer. Our lessons have taught us that we all have a story, but we
have to find out what it is, craft it, and continue to refine it until it is well-polished and can
inspire and entice any employer, investor, organization leader, client, etc. I began the essay by
exemplifying how to use our conflict management skills to properly address a scenario in which
a team member has been behind in his work and needs to catch up. I ensured a positive,
supportive, and uplifting tone in the email to ensure that I appealed to logos, ethos, and pathos
and addressed the individual respectfully so that the team could start getting the best out of him.
Next, I illustrated the influence principle of social proofing by talking about our example my
group gave in Week 8 of the course with how this principle was evident in the Covid-19
pandemic. I made sure to stress that we be aware of this principle, and I pledged to use it for
good. Following that, I used principles and strategies from crucial conversations to properly
handle a situation in which my boss has called me an idiot in front of my team. This involved
keeping a respectful, calm, but concerned and serious manner and even addressing him in private
after apologizing for making him feel that way in public. I would go on to detail my story on my
academic challenges here at College Park and how I overcame my mental health issues to
eventually prosper. Finally, I shared my results of the Big Five Personality Assessment. I
wholeheartedly agreed with the assessment’s narrative of me as an introverted, practical, straight
forward, and kind, caring, and unselfish person. I believe this model is very accurate because the
picture that it painted of me was in fact my story as it did echo my behaviors, tendencies, and
methods of operation. My Big Five Personality type aligned very closely with both my JUNG
and DISC personality type’s thus proving the validity of these assessments as I can confirm who
I really am and learn to work on myself.
 Works Cited

Patterson, Kerry, et al. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High.
McGraw-Hill Education - Europe, 2011.

Gallo, Carmine. Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great. Pan Books,
2019.