SOC 101 Southern New Hampshire University Ximenas Status and Role Analysis

A group of employees at Spruce Paper Company recently finished a major project that involved multiple departments, from creative to distribution. The goal of the project was to develop a new line of holiday cards. One of the group members, Ximena, worked on this project from the beginning.

EMPLOYEE PROFILE: XIMENA

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Ximena has worked in creative design for a few years. For the holiday card project, Ximena and the team work together to come up with new ideas for cards. Ximena spends most of her time coordinating with the group on what art will work best for each style of card, making sure they reach a consensus about each design.

The group spends time in each meeting checking in with Ximena on publication updates. Being the only member of the creative team on the holiday card project, Ximena does not have anyone to go to for advice. If an art-related issue comes up, she has to talk to someone outside the group and then report this information back to the group.

As she was born in Spain, Ximena brings a unique perspective to the job. However, she sometimes struggles with American idioms and phrases. To ensure she is understanding the perspectives of other group members, she often asks them to repeat themselves and then restates the main idea she heard.

IDENTIFY STATUS AND ROLE

The first step in your analysis is to determine Ximena’s sociological status and role. As you learned earlier in this chapter on page 6.3, status refers to the position a person occupies in society. Everyone holds different statuses at the same time, from your professional occupation to more relational positions such as parent, sibling, friend, and student.

A person’s status dictates their role. Looking back to page 6.4, you can see that a role is the behavior expected of someone with a particular status. Roles help people interact with one another, but only if they share an understanding of what their respective statuses are and the expected behaviors attached to them.

Use the information from the scenario and profile to determine Ximena’s status and role.

PRACTICE TEMPLATE

What is Ximena’s status, the position she holds within the team?

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What is Ximena’s role, the behaviors expected of someone with her status?

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ANALYZE THE IMPACT ON ENGAGEMENt

Now that you’ve determined Ximena’s status and role, you’re ready to consider how these impacted her engagement and collaboration with the team as they worked together to complete the project.

Use this template to continue your analysis of Ximena’s status and role.

How did Ximena’s status and role impact how she worked with others to complete the project? Be sure to provide evidence from the scenario and profile.

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IDENTIFY RELAT

The next step in your analysis is concerned with building relationships. As you’ve already noticed, a person’s statuses and associated roles affect the way they relate to others. It can be helpful to keep this in mind when determining the appropriate relationship-building strategies to use.

The strategies outlined on page 3.2 can help you forge connections and deepen bonds with others holding a variety of statuses. Building relationships with those around you depends on developing trust, mutual respect, mindfulness, diversity and inclusion, and open communication.

Use the information from the scenario and profile to describe a relationship-building strategy that Ximena utilized.

PRACTICE TEMPLATE

What relationship-building strategy did Ximena demonstrate? Be sure to provide evidence from the scenario and profile.

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CHECK YOUR ANALYSIS

Evaluate your analysis of the strategies Ximena used to build good relationships with the members of the group by comparing your response to the answer of the following multiple-choice question.

MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION

Which type of relationship-building strategy did Ximena demonstrate?

Choicesadmitting her mistakes

limiting information

attending to nonverbal cues

active listening