Gloria and Lakeisha are co-workers who are assigned to work on aproject together. Lakeisha is very organized and wants them to doreally well on this project. To help them get started, Lakeishatook some initiative and prepared a list of to-do items along withdue dates. She even color-coded the list to indicate which partnerwill do each item and sends an email to Gloria with the to-do list.Lakeisha wants her partner to know that she’s serious about theirsuccess.
Gloria is happy her teammate has shown initiative but issurprised by Lakeisha’s to-do list and feels a bit uncomfortablebecause she feels like Lakeisha is micromanaging her. Gloria wantsto do her part on the project but is feeling anxious because shedoesn’t know where she fits in, and it is making her worried aboutworking on this project. She wonders how she can succeed on thisproject if Lakeisha is already the leader. When working for aprevious employer, Gloria felt anxious about her ability tosuccessfully complete a project and attempted to communicate herfeelings with a co-worker; however, her co-worker didn’t seem tounderstand Gloria’s concerns and said that she should just ignoreher feelings and get the work done.
As Gloria ponders having a conversation with Lakeisha, shestarts to feel overwhelmed and thinks it might just be easier to beremoved from the project. Using your problem solving and self andsocial awareness skills and what you have learned about personalitytraits and emotions, answer the questions below to help Gloria calmher anxiety and find a solution to her problem:
1. From Chapter 3 in the webtext, what did you learn about thebig 5 personality traits?
2. Consider Gloria and Lakeisha’s different approaches to theproject. On which one of the Big 5 personality traits do they mostdiffer? How do they differ?
3. Chapter 6 in the webtext focused on emotions. Using what youlearned, give advice to Gloria on how she can identify and regulateher own emotions so that she can stick with this project, and besuccessful.
4. If you were in this situation, how confident are you that youcould successfully resolve a workplace conflict like the one thatGloria faced? What past experiences or knowledge influence youranswer
