Reflection Essay Assignment: Write a Letter to your “Future Self” as a Manager
*Due by Wednesday of Week 2 via the Assignments section.
In this assignment, you will write a “Letter to Your Future Self” as a manager per the parameters below. This assignment is designed to help you reflect deeply on the importance of a global mindset in adapting your communication styles for greater success when working in an intercultural environment, the role of diversity in contemporary project teams, and how project managers can effectively manage global perspectives in working groups for the benefit of projects. This reflection consists of several important steps and cultural profile assessments. Please complete all the steps.
Step 1 – Complete HBR Cultural Profile
Reflect on your own global mindset profile. Complete Erin Meyer’s “What’s Your Cultural Profile?” Assessment on the Harvard Business Review Portal to gain insight into your own culturally-based tendencies and preferences. This assessment will help you to determine how well you understand cultural differences within the workplace.
Step 2 – Attach Results:
Download your results. You will attach your results to your essay. Also, attach the results of the two assessments linked in Section 3 (the “Personal Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension” (PRICA) and the “Intercultural Communication Competence Scale” (ICCS)).
Step 3 – Writing Prompt:
Write a “Letter to your Future Self” as a manager in the style of an advice piece. Reflect on your “Cultural Profile Assessment” results and include your cultural profile details in the essay. Also, reflect on your PRICA and ICCS scores (Are there any patterns? Were your assessment scores higher or lower than your intended goals?) Be sure to write to “you” in the second-person perspective (using “you”), starting with “Dear _(first name)__, my future self as a manager.”
Overall question: Write a letter to the manager you will be 2 years from now (in the future.) What overall advice would you give to yourself who will be managing culturally-diverse project teams? Describe potential team interactions across 4 of Meyer’s behavioral scales. How do you anticipate adjusting your behaviors to forge deeper relationships and make progress toward team missions/goals? What shared preferences with team members would facilitate good working relationships? What do you anticipate being possible areas of conflict? What solutions would help you and your team overcome potential challenges and achieve success? Finally, is there anything you would like to remind your future self of? Passions? Questions? Memories? Motivations?
In addition to the above questions, use the below scenarios to help guide your thinking:
Scenarios:
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You may be a project manager leading a culturally-diverse project team in delivering a domestic project.
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You may be a project manager leading a project in another country with a different culture from your own.
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You may be a project manager leading a global project with teams from various countries.
Step 4 – Structure of Essay:
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Introduction:
Begin with a hook (a question, an interesting observation, an amazing fact, a unique scenario) and then a brief introduction discussing your results in relation to your mission/goal. Why do you believe managing cultural diversity is important in contemporary project management? How can you effectively lead intercultural project teams? How can you effectively manage communications in intercultural project teams? -
Body:
You must cover at least 4 scales from Meyer’s Cultural Profile Assessment for the assignment (e.g., pick four from the following: communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing, and scheduling). Reflect on concepts, processes, and your own experience managing projects in organizations. Include discussion of the skills/behaviors from our class discussion of factors that contribute to project success in an intercultural environment. Identify elements of your global mindset profiles that you would like to keep as strengths, improve, or change. Describe concrete solutions, and recommendations. Use realistic situations in your analysis (e.g., only discuss a hypothetical software development team if you know how one would function).
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Conclusion:
Conclude with a look to the future. Provide a greater implication in relation to: a global mindset, cultural diversity in projects, communication management in an intercultural context, and virtual project teams. -
Length:
Your piece must be between 1000-1,300 words.
Step 5 – References:
Your essay must include reference to at least 1 of the 2 articles from this unit, in Week 1 also indicated below:
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“Cultural Intelligence” by Earley, P. C. & Mosakowski, E., (October, 2004). Harvard Business Review.
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“Navigating the Cultural Minefield” by Meyer, Erin. (May, 2014). Harvard Business Review.