OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

The situation I will be discussing is from when I was transitioning from a barista
to a shift supervisor role for Starbucks. I had to face and overcome a lot of tough
situations while transitioning into my new store and position, however I was able to
overcome them through perseverance and staying true to myself. I had a hard time getting
my new team to support me and my new role and I often found myself the odd one out.
The team at the time had a hard time grasping the fact that they were now going to be
under my lead as a shift supervisor because I was someone they didn’t know and hadn’t
formed any kind of trust with me yet. Within my new role as a shift supervisor I was
taking on a lot more responsibilities such as learning deployment, inventory counts, and
maintaining drive thru times just to name a few. Another thing that was of importance to
me was getting to know my new team and learning about their strengths and weaknesses.
Seeing that I hadn’t worked with these employees before I needed to learn what they did
best at and what they needed improvement on. In addition to this one of the big reasons
why my new manager wanted me to become a part of her team was to help build
structure within the store. This included teaching and learning plays and also ensuring my
team knew and followed procedures to guarantee our customers they were getting the
best quality products. While my team was very hesitant in the beginning they slowly
came around to me and understood that I was helping them and not making their jobs
harder. Over time they built their trust with me and started to accept the changes.

I feel that ethics plays a huge role in general when it comes to organizations.
When talking about ethics it is a set of moral principles which can help us to lead a more
fulfilling life in both our personal and professional lives (Merriam-Webster, 2020). These
principles are what help us to guide and shape our decisions and help us to ensure that the
choices we make are in the best interest of everyone. I feel that ethics play a big role
when it comes to Starbucks and the situation I experienced. For starters, Starbucks has
flourished due to the response people have when it comes to visiting our stores. People
come for the experience and not just their coffee, so this is why it is so important for the
company to ensure that its partners are ethically sound and have the ability to know the
difference between right and wrong. Starbucks will be built on the foundation of treating
its customers as family and that its stores could be considered the third place. The third
place is supposed to represent a warm and welcoming atmosphere for people to come in
and be able to be appreciated and have a sense of belonging. “For an organization, group,
or family, soul can also be viewed as a resolute sense of character, a deep confidence
about who we are, what we care about, and what we deeply believe in (Bolman & Deal).”

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 Starbucks wants to provide that overall feeling to their customers, so they want to
continue to come back and be able to get that experience again and again.

When it comes to my situation ethics played a role in the fact that my team was
weary of me and my new position as their shift supervisor. They were now having to take
direction from someone who was new to their store and new to the position. I truly feel
that if it wasn’t for ethics my team wouldn’t have grown to accept and like me. However,
I was able to show them a nurturing side of me and helped to provide the comfort and
support that they needed to grow and develop. In helping my team grow and develop this
also allowed me to do the same when it came to my own skills. I enjoyed being able to
make personal connections with my team and use my morals to make decisions that I felt
were the most appropriate for my team. Starbucks whole motto revolved around giving
love in order to receive love and I feel that is what has grown the company to the status
that it currently has (Bolman & Deal). People come back to us because they know they
are going to be getting a personal connection out of it. Coming into the store they know
they are going to be welcomed and engaged in conversations to help pass the time while
there products are made, and this also helps to make connections between customers and
employees which also creates a drive for customers to return.

When it comes to using ethical communities for my particular situation I feel that
there are many different approaches that could be taken. To begin with one course of
action would have been to use ethics to establish a guide to help my team when it comes
to decisions, principles, and policies. This is what I was brought into the store to do. I
was brought in to help my team become stabilized and able to handle the volume of
customers that they saw. By using my ethical standards, I could help my team know what
the correct direction of action is for different situations. Working for Starbucks you
encounter a wide range of people, personalities, language barriers, and problems. By
applying ethics, it allows employees to rightfully choose how to react to any situation that
they are faced with whether it is big or small.
Ethics and soul are essential for not only living a good life but also being able to
manage a fulfilling organization (Bolman & Deal). By imposing both ethics and soul I
can help my team to gain their trust of me and feel comfortable coming to me when they
are faced with a problem and are unsure on how to address it. One of my previous
supervisors had always told me that we need to treat customers with the most care that we
can cause you just never know who needs it and the impact our positivity and caring can
have on them. Having now worked for the company for six years I can see just how true
this is. The amount of times I have been able to help comfort a customer whether they are
a regular or a stranger is a fulfilling feeling. I think it is important to treat others the way
you expect to be treated because you never truly know the impact it may have on
someone lives. The positive experience that I provide for a customer could be what sets
their mood for the entire day or even be able to turn their day around.

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 When it comes to ethics in my organization I feel that there isn’t much I would
personally want to change. I do feel that there is and always will be room for
improvement. Sometimes it can be hard to choose the right choice when faced with a
tough situation because you don’t want to offend anyone or choose the wrong choice. I
think being able to practice and become more comfortable and confident in your
decisions is the way to growing your ethical choices. Our text mentions that “confronting
vulnerability allows us to drop our mask, meet heart to heart, and be present for one
another (Bolman & Deal).” I find this to be one of the keys to help bring unity amongst
people. I feel that people are so against letting their guard down that they act in ways that
people don’t always accept. I truly feel that Starbucks and their organization as a whole is
helping to break down those barriers and allow people to from deeper connections with
one another.

In addition to this over the years Starbucks has adapted more practices to ensure
that its partners are well equipped to handle situations with an ethical view. The company
has begun to assign third place training that was created to help us know how to
recognize certain situation, how to address and handle them, and also the tools and
resources we might need. This however is a fairly new tool that the company has started
using and they created this after the Philadelphia incident where a couple of African
American men were arrested for refusing to leave for having not made any purchases yet.
The company decided to act and shut down all of its stores to introduce their first series
of this training tool. It helped partners to better understand ethics and why the company
finds it important.

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 References

Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass

Ethic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 01, 2020, from https://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/ethic