Leadership
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Thenewsupervasior.docxGrace Reed had been working at the County
Medical Society Answering Service for 18
months when she received a promotion to
shift supervisor. Grace was quite excited.
She had worked very hard to develop the
technical skills for answering calls and the interpersonal
skills for communicating with patients and their doctors.
Also, she had demonstrated her desire for the promo-
tion by volunteering for overtime and holiday work.
Finally, she had been promoted.
However, now Grace faced problems she had not
anticipated. How would she be able to convince her
friends to take her seriously in her new role as their
boss? How was she going to maintain her friendships
and still maintain the discipline needed in this work-
place?
The Medical Society’s physicians were extremely
disappointed with former county answering service
companies, which handled not only physicians’ calls but
business and private accounts as well. Thus, the doctors
had decided to start their own answering service. Their
call handlers would handle only medical calls, would be
better trained to recognize urgent and emergency calls,
would receive better benefits, and would be paid more
than the competing answering service companies paid
their call handlers. The doctors believed this would allow
them to attract and retain the best-possible workers.
To oversee the day-to-day operations of the service,
the physicians hired a professional manager, and each
shift had a supervisor whose responsibilities included
scheduling workers; handling complaints from doctors,
hospitals, pharmacies, and patients concerning how
their calls were handled; learning how to operate new
equipment, and train their call handlers to do the same;
and maintaining the high level of service required by the
physicians. These duties were in addition to the supervi-
sor working her or his own eight-hour shift.
Grace was the fourth call handler hired by the or-
ganization and the first promoted from the ranks. When
she was first hired, she was lucky to train with a very
experienced, competent call handler. She modeled her
own skills on those of her trainer and worked diligently
to handle the most calls with the fewest mistakes and
even fewer complaints. Whereas the other call handlers
worked only 60 to 70 individual incoming lines, Grace
routinely handled 100 to 120 lines, including some of
those with the highest call volumes. She not only cleared
her own calls but frequently assisted other call handlers
in clearing their backlogged messages. When extremely
difficult calls came in, such as suicide calls or nuisance
calls from patients to whom even the doctors did not
want to talk, often Grace was asked to handle them.
She rapidly developed excellent relationships with all of
“her” doctors, their staffs, and even their families.
During her first year, she was named call handler of the
month five times. In her second year, she learned how to
schedule workers and received other advanced opera-
tions training.
Although the work was extremely fast-paced and re-
quired concentration, there was always time to talk with
other employees, joke, and have fun. Strong friendships
developed among the workers, who frequently socialized
after hours and on their days off. Moreover, the high lev-
els of training and pay led to extremely low turnover
rates, giving workers a sense that they were a “family” of
sorts. There were always waiting lists of applicants for the
positions. If a call handler wished to leave, he or she had
no problem finding work at hospitals or for the phone
company. Morale was generally high.
Grace’s friends at the answering service threw a
party for her when she received her promotion.
Everyone who wasn’t working attended. They were
happy for her and sincerely wished her well. After all, it
was proof that any one of them could be promoted
from the ranks! Grace was anxious to assume her new
responsibilities and even try some new procedures she
had been devising.
Within a month, Grace wasn’t nearly as happy with
her promotion as she had thought she would be. Her
friends, who were now her subordinates as well, didn’t
seem to pay attention to her suggestions concerning
their job performance. They ignored her instructions and
frequently treated them as a joke. She worked many
hours planning schedules only to have the call handlers
switch shifts, leave early, or arrive late, saying they were
sure she wouldn’t mind because she understood all their
personal complications with their romantic relationships.
She was their friend, after all; they knew she would cut
them some slack. And her best friends seemed to be
some of the worst offenders.
Grace soon realized that her new position was missing
one thing—authority to go with her new responsibilities.
She had no authority to sanction any of her subordinates:
she couldn’t dock their pay, make them work overtime,
or cut back on their hours. She couldn’t shorten their
lunch breaks or eliminate their coffee breaks. Only the
overall company manager could impose sanctions of
that sort. The problem was that if she tried to insist that
a call handler use a new procedure or work certain
hours and the call handler balked, she had no recourse.
If she complained to the manager about her situa-
tion, she would be viewed as unable to do her job. She
couldn’t complain to her friends because they were part
of the problem.
233
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To combat her problems, Grace tried to act with a great
deal of authority. For example, she insisted employees fol-
low the new methods she had devised. As a result, she was
met with hostility, and her friends stopped talking to her.
One day she had had enough and berated a group of her
friends about how they gave her no respect, were uncoop-
erative, and were not doing their jobs. After all, she never
asked them to do anything she wasn’t willing or able to do
herself. Still, morale was plummeting and productivity was
falling. Grace felt like a failure at the job she had worked so
hard to get, and, even beyond that, she felt she was losing
her friends.
Grace knew that something was going to have to
change. She needed to try something new, to somehow
regain the respect of her subordinates and find a new
way to inspire them to improve their performance and
efficiency and to restore morale. And she had to accom-
plish all of this while still maintaining her friendships.
Questions
1. Which traits, skills, and behaviors associated with
successful leaders does Grace possess? Are there
characteristics she could enhance to improve her
leadership ability?
2. Why did Grace have problems making changes and
maintaining discipline when she first was promoted
to a position that required leadership?
3. Analyze Grace’s leadership situation in terms of her
sources of power: Are there types of power she
couldn’t or shouldn’t use? What types of power
could she draw on, and how could she use those
