Questions

• Provide an alternate perspective on your colleague's justification for their proposed rating for Ben or on their ideas for what Nisha should say to Ben. Defend your perspective with at least one source.
• Expand or remark upon a colleague's integration of relevant resources in their justification.
• Please note that, for each response, you must include a minimum of one appropriately cited reference.

CASE STUDY

Provide the rating that you would give to Ben if you were in Nisha's place.

If I were in Nisha's position, I would give Ben the grade he deserves which is a 2 or below. He openly admitted that he had been slacking through the entire process and did not contribute to the final delivery of the project. Despite this, he is expecting Nisha to grade him based on their history of friendship rather than his actual work effort. It seemed like he was trying to guilt-trip her into giving him a favorable evaluation to satisfy him and his Boss's needs.

Provide a justification for your rating.

During the first meeting, he arrived late and appeared disinterested. There were multiple occasions where ben just did not show team collaboration. "He turned his laptop toward them to show the file. Nisha had read it carefully the night before. When did you send this? Ben asked, squinting at the screen, Ben said, taking a bite of his sandwich, "Ben kept eating". Nisha was confused. They had agreed that Ben would do the initial analysis on those statistics". Ben blames his poor work contribution on his new role as QC, which he states requires more from him. "I dropped the ball. My bad. The day after I found out about this project, I was put in charge of the QC push for Knight Days. I won't show up this unprepared again promise" (Mayo, J., Margolis, J. D., & Gallo, A. 2020). Ben is aware that he bailed out of his teammates and not contributing to the final product, so it would be helpful for him to work on being more actively engaged

Explain what the impact of your proposed rating might be in terms of the professional relationships among the key players moving forward.

Ben was assigned a part in this project and failed to deliver. Mark, from the beginning held Ben accountable for not following through, and Ben already accepted Mark's decision to grade him a 3. Nisha on the other hand, throughout the entire process kept covering up for Ben and even doing his share of the work that Ben was responsible for and was put in an awkward situation where she had to turn to her Mentor Dennis, for his input on the situation.

Explain what strategies you would employ to the feedback system in Ness Entertainment if it were in your power to do so.

Per the case study, "Punctuality wasn't a big part of the culture at the gaming company Ness Entertainment, so it didn't bother Nisha that her coworker Ben Lassner still hadn't arrived by a few minutes past noon". First and foremost, Ness Entertainment may need to implement a system to hold employees accountable for punctuality as it can have a negative impact on the company's business in the long run. "Feedback should generally be open, direct, and transparent or at least that is the usual aspiration. But what if the culture of the company is not mature enough to sustain an open system when feedback can come from any peer or collaborator? In such cultures, people fear creating conflict or damaging relationships by delivering negative feedback. If this is true, such a system won't be effective or help people develop" (Di Fiore, A., & Souza, M. 2021). Although feedback is meant to be direct and transparent, I would suggest introducing a more anonymous structure so that colleagues do not feel threatened or uncomfortable when rating each other's work ethics.

Explain how you could apply what you learned from this case study to a professional situation in the future.

In my future professional endeavors, I intend to apply the insights from this case study by emphasizing the importance of fairness and evaluations in the workplace. Proper balancing the business objectives versus one's actual contributions during performance reviews are crucial. I plan to implement a rigorous rubric system for assessment and providing constructive feedback which is meant to foster professional advancement.