A Team Divided or a Team United?

 

 

Introduction:

 

This case mainly describes a conflict situation between the manager and its subordinates’ team that resulted in firing one of them. It focuses on how the manager dealt with different people in the team having different needs. The case shows the social bond of the team members and its effect on the work.

 

Case Facts:

-          Global Service:

o       Is the international division of Marketing Research Int’l.

o       It is a new division in the company since it was just established in 1992 (just a year an a half before the incidents of the case)

o       It deals with international market.

o       The company’s (esp. GS division) survival is highly based on sales and target revenue earned.

o       Failure in achieving the revenue goals in one year may not result in the termination of the division but will put more pressure on its members.

-          The Team:

o       It is composed of three members all are reporting to Claire.

o       They work as client service/sales persons.

o       All members are hired six months after the establishment of the GS division and the hiring of Claire (the team manager)

o       The members were able to work together very well from the first three months.

o       The members developed strong social relations even outside the work.

o       Each team member achieved his/her revenue target in the first year.

o       They have a lot in common in terms of sport, education, sales enjoyment and even they all love Chicago.

o       They shared their success and selling techniques while there were competing to get the maximum revenue.

-          Claire:

o       She is a single and 35 years old.

o       She has both BA and master degrees in business

o       She joined the Marketing Research Int’l in the GS division when it was established.

o       The case does not state anything about her previous work experience.

o       She became the manager of three new employees after 6 months from starting her Job.

o       She is the sales/marketing manager.

o       Her current position is her first position as a manager.

o       She suspected that there was dissatisfaction in the team.

o       She believed that Mark was poising the team’s morals and so he was its source of the dissatisfaction.

o       When Mark could not reach his target revenues the second year she fired him.

o       She was worried about the effects of firing Mark on the rest of the team since they have good social bonds.

o       She believed that this would be the difficult on the team initially but it will be for the best in the long run.

o       She was worried about effect of the news on the team and how she is going to tell them.

o       A replacement of Mark was ready to work within few days after his dismissal.

o       She selected the best clients in terms of revenues and prestige for her.

-          Mark:

o       He is a single and 30 years old.

o       He has BA in economics and master degree in business.

o       He had experience in international marketing and sales.

o       It is not clear from the case why Mark has changed his old job.

o       He thought that he was the most qualified member in the team.

o       He believes that Claire was always stressed and insecure.

o       He was always arguing her policies and, believed that Claire thought that everyone should agree with her decisions.

o       He was interrupting and questioning her decisions.

o       The rest of the team members were backing him up with the discussion but let him lead.

o       He believed that he was fired based on his bad personal relation with the manager and his bad revenue was just an excuse.

o       He was assigned to small and less developed clients that do not produce many revenues and need exceptional efforts.

o       He has a dream to start his own consulting business.

-          Dan:

o       He is 27 and married.

o       He has BA in business and preparing for his master in marketing.

o       He was working at Marketing Research Int’l in client service.

o       He had good internal network of contacts that helped him a lot.

o       He did not like Claire’s management style but he wanted to stay on her good side and he advised Mark to do the same.

o       He was expecting that either Mark or Claire would leave the work to solve the problems.

o       He believed that Mark’s dismissal was unprofessional and irrational.

o       He had the option to select the clients he wanted.

-          Madeleine:

o       She is 25 and single.

o       She has MBA and BA in psychology.

o       She was sales representative for small food manufacturer before joining GS.

o       She believed that Claire lacked the skills needed to manage people.

o       She believed that both Claire and Mark should handle their conflict in rational manner.

o       She was assigned the smallest clients and those do not need lot of efforts.

-          The situation:

o       A week before Mark’s dismissal, he was informed that he must provide his sales projections, meetings’ calendars and all information needed about his clients.

o       Mark was inspected before leaving his office after he was fired to check if he is going to take proprietary information.

o       Both Dan and Madeleine believed that the dismissal of Mark was due to personality differences between him and Claire.

o       Dan and Madeleine believed that Claire should say the truth about Marks dismissal.

 

Analysis:

People:

-          Claire: Even though she is 35 years old and had work and good study experience, she lacks good leadership skill. Because of her lack of managerial experience, she was hesitating in decision taking and was worried always about the results. She was not able to create good relation with the team members. All believed that she has no good management experience but they all express this differently.

-          Mark: Has not good listening skill, which appears from his frequent interruption of his manager. Self-efficiency seems to be the trait that influences his behaviors. (Greenberg Ch3 p88) defines self-efficiency as “individual’s beliefs concerning their ability to perform specific tasks”. He believed that he was the most qualified person in the team and had experience that enables him to work efficiently and even he wanted to start his own consulting business.  This trait gives him self-confidence and provides him with the ability to be good leader of the team. (Robbins Ch2, p314) defines in the trait theory of leadership that there are six traits on which leaders tend to have. Self-confidence, desire to lead and job-relevant knowledge are among them and which mark posses. In spite of that, he must work on improving his listening skills to improve his leadership skills.

-          Dan: It seems that he is a self-monitoring character because he has the ability to stay on Claire’s good side even though he did not like her management style, which means that he was able to adapt his behavior to situational demands as (Greenberg Ch3 p90) defined this trait.

 

 

Relations:

-          Relation between team members:

Similar-to-me perception is the strongest factor that affects the good relations between the team members. They all have common interests and share the same social activities. The team members are cooperative and understandable even though they are in competition because they all have the same goals in getting the maximum revenues. The open communication between them strengthen their social bonds and the trust relations between them,

 

-          Relation between Mark and Claire:

Both Claire and Mark do not believe in the abilities of each other so according to Halo effect (Greenberg Ch2 p46) perceptual bias, both do not look at any positive side of the other which escalates the conflicts between them.

 

-          Relation between Dan and Claire:

Since Dan got this job based on his good contacts that clearly provide Claire with good impression about him so for the first impression, she thought that he could be the best one of the team. Besides that, Dan was able to adapt to all situations and help to keep good impression on her.

 

Case actions and reasons behind them:

 

The Conflict:

The situation between Mark and Claire has symptoms of conflict according to (dealing with conflicts) which states that poor communication, dissatisfaction with management style, lack of openness and seeking power are signs of conflict. It is apparent that these signs exist in the relation between Mark and Claire. For example, Claire has not open communication channel with her team, this appears from what Madeleine and Dan said, “Let’s see how she handles this”. She also arranged for firing Mark in advance before notifying him since a new replacement was ready just after his dismissal.

 

According to (dealing with conflicts) article there are nine possible sources of conflict such as, needs and wants are not met, perceptions are being questioned and knowledge is minimal. Marks desire to have autonomous work is not achieved and he was always questioning his manager decisions. Besides that, Claire has not much managerial work experience that affected her dealings with the conflict.

It seems that Clair was afraid that Mark was competing her and may take her position because of his experience and his good relation with the team. Besides that, the conflict and the lack of management experience caused stress on Claire and so she found that the only solution for this stress is firing Mark.

 

People in this case are highly educated and got studies in business and management related fields; they should be able to deal differently with such situation.

 

Suggested solutions

 

Claire did not work to discover the real source of dissatisfaction in the team instead she blamed Mark.

She could set with the team and define the goals and strategies together after listening to each one’s suggestions and try to find the weakness and strength of each one. (i.e. it should focus on the team work and listen to all of them) 

 

She must make sure that her suggestions and decision are understood correctly and clearly state the bases on which she made those decisions. She must pay attention and request for feedbacks from the members because they are who deal with the clients. This feedback will improve the communication with the team and reduce misunderstandings.

 

She must take advantage of the cohesion of the team by allowing them to select and divide their clients together. She could just put guidelines for them and recommendations.

 

 

Mark’s performance degradation:

 

In the first year, Mark was able to achieve good results because of his ambitious and experience. The case does not mention the why he left his old but it is possibly he wanted to gain more autonomy over his work and found that being in a small team would help him much. After he got the new job, his expectations were not met.

He was not able to get his revenue because of the stress cased by the conflict. (Robbins ch18 p568) states “stress symptoms include change in productivity”

According to the self-fulfilling prophecy and Golem effect (Greenberg ch2 pp48) Claire did not believe much in him, which appears from the way she assigned him the clients. Besides that, she was favoring Dan over the rest of the team, according to the equity theory, this de-motivates Mark. All these factors increase the chances in the degradation of his productivity.

 

Suggested solutions

 

It seems that Mark would be motivated by satisfying his self-esteem needs according to Maslow’s theory. He and the rest of the team were satisfying their self-esteem need through sharing their knowledge and experience with others but Claire did not notice that. She should support such activities in the meetings, discuss the success stories, and share her own with the team, which may increase the trust of her, and her decisions.

 

Mark should work harder, achieve his revenues, and discuss with Claire about his success stories and challenges instead of arguing her decisions. This may open good communication channels with her and starts respecting his ideas. The reset of the team did not really contribute to improve the relations between Mark and Claire; they could notify their manager about Marks achievements and experience. The bad relation between Mark and Claire increases the overall dissatisfaction and stress on the team.

 

Although the team members have different tasks but Claire could do team rewards for achieving certain revenues together. Since there is cohesion in the team they share their knowledge and experience among them, such rewards may increase the cooperation between them, and allow them to think together to find solutions to problems facing each one, they could produce superior revenue.

 

 

 

 

 

Mark’s dismissal:

 

It seems that Mark’s dismissal was the best and fastest solution for Claire’s stress. She had pressure from her managers to achieve target revenue because this will affect the whole department.

Since Mark was very dissatisfied and showed that for everyone, he was increasing the dissatisfaction of the rest of the team.

On the other hand, his dismissal is not the best choice for company and specially in the way it was done. (More about this in the consequences section)

The firing of Mark was prepared in advance even before the notification because there was a new replacement for him. This reduces the trust between the team and their manager and supports their understanding of their college was based on personal problem between him and the manager and not due to the degradation of his performance.

 

Suggested solutions

 

Mark must be notified of his bad performance and discuss the possibilities of improving it before taking the action specially that not achieving the target revenues of the half year will not harm the company. He must given at least few extra months to improve his performance.

 

Consequences of the action and possible solutions:

 

·         The team after Mark will be cautious from Claire and do not trust her or believe in her managerial skills. (Dan and Madeleine say “Let’s see how she handles this” meaning they want to hear if she is going to tell them the truth or not).

·         The team may not easily accept the new team member because they feel that she took their friends position.

·         Although getting a new replacement quickly is vital for the company’s operations, the new employee may not be able to recover the loss of revenue caused by her predecessor because she has to get to know the new staff, clients and new company culture. This may lead to even more loss in revenues and sales of this year. Only if the new member has high ambitious and talents can achieve the target revenue. In general, most new employees in any position tend to be hard workers to fulfill their self-esteem needs after achieving the basic needs according to Maslow’s theory.

·         Claire may be able to focus on other issues after the dismissal of Mark, the source of her stress.

·         Claire should try to be closer to her team and be open while communicating with them to increase the trust between her and her team.

·         She should try to put goals and plans together with the team, which could motivate them.

·         She should try to increase the social activities between new team members because it seems the old team members have social needs.

·         She must try to figure out her subordinates’ needs and how to motivate them

·         If Claire could not succeed in managing the new team and achieve good revenues, she will face problems not only with her subordinates but also with her managers and this may lead to extra stress on her.

 

 

General concepts from the case:

 

• The case shows the importance of the communication skills between the manager and its subordinates. The communication must be open and be based on mutual trust. The feedback is important to make good communication and the sender must make sure that his message reached its destination correctly.
• Conflicts in organizations should be handled carefully and based on finding the exact source of the conflict.
• Motivations are so vital to help employees achieve good performance. These motivations should be selected carefully according to the needs of the employees.
• Managers must pay attention to the internal situations and relations between employees and figure how to make use of them for the best of the organization. In this case, the manager could be able to get much better performance if she had made use of the strong relations between the employees.

 

References:

·         Greenberg, J Baron, (2003), Behavior in Organizations. (8^th ed.) Prentice Hall.

·         Robbins, S.P, (2001) Organizational Behavior. (9^th ed.)

·         NSBA.org, Dealing with Conflict, Retrieved  October, 26, 2003 from World Wide Web at http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/Conflict.html