Bizcafe Case Study

Within our group, Clay acted as one of our primary leaders, especially in BizCafe, in which he was the team member with the responsibility to advance the simulation each week. Clay’s top trait according to StrengthQuest is Belief. I think Clay moderately displayed the Belief trait in mostly positive ways. While open to compromise and flexibility, in BizCafe, Clay would enter into situations with an idea already in his head. For example, when dealing with Special Decisions in BizCafe, Clay would always have an opinion on how to deal with the problem, his motivations based in his values or in pragmatism. Sometimes however, usually in trivial cases, these strong beliefs lead to a level of stubbornness and inflexibility, for example, at the beginning

In BizCafe and project meetings, Clay consistently initiated and added onto discussions, generally staying on topic and offering good contributions. Clay often lead important discussions but made sure not to talk over the contributions of others. Although he often acted as the de-facto leader, he would always cede with what the majority supported or alternatively try and persuade the group to try a new method if he believed it would benefit the group as a whole. Perhaps the best example of this was on the eleventh period of BizCafe when our numbers were not doing well. At this point, we all felt defeated and with so few periods left we were concerned that there was no way for our team to succeed in the simulation. With new information about how Tigré was running their café, Clay proposed a drastic new strategy of expanding our hours, hiring way more employees, and cutting advertisement. This new strategy turned out to be incredibly successful, even though some of us were hesitant to try it at first. Clay reframed the issue so those who were undecided could understand his viewpoint. Throughout the BizCafe simulation, Clay was one of the most active contributors, proposing changes and strategies large and small. A minor role Clay exhibited was that of Encourager, with I observed both inside and outside of our group. Throughout the semester, Clay has worked to acknowledge the contributions of