Behavioral Analysis Project

INTRODUCTION

This behavioral analysis paper is focused on a failed organizational initiative. This situation is burned into my mind due to the complete and utter failure of what was intended to be accomplished. After taking MBA 6612, I understand that managing and leading are two very different things, but even now I am still in shock that one person can be so blind and naïve. That is why this situation sticks with me.

SITUATION OVERVIEW

I worked for an organization and they hired a new Regional Manager (RM), Carly, for Pocatello. Carly was new to management, but had been with the Company for a couple of years. Carly took over managing a somewhat dysfunctional team that did not work as well together. One of the team members, Lisa, had also applied for the RM position and was miffed that Carly had been chosen. This situation added fuel to the fire for the team not working so well together.

I had only been with the Company for two months when this whole scenario occurred. Carly announced that she was implementing weekly meetings where we were required to participate in team building exercises. The intent behind having these weekly exercises was to create bonding and some kind of cohesion for this group of people who had been at odds to some extent or another for quite some time. Some of these exercises did the exact opposite of what they were supposed to accomplish.

Every meeting was met with dread and exasperation by all of the staff. During some of the meetings, we told success stories that we had from the previous week. Other meetings we did arts and crafts together, or created “thank-you” jars to leave notes in for one another. It was all very hokey and childish. We were a team of well-trained, well-educated women who were professionals working in a professional Company.

One meeting in particular stands out to me. Carly had been experiencing quite a bit of turnover in all of the positions that she managed, so our team had an eclectic variety of newbies and “old-timers” to the Company. Lisa was still on board and going out of her way to be a pain in the rear for Carly. In this particular meeting, we were being joined by Carly’s bosses, the Director, Denise, and the VP, Tonya. Carly led the meeting and had asked us to all write one positive thing about each team member as well as one thing that each person needed to work on improving.

Denise interjected and asked us all to talk about the positive things for each team member and began writing these on the whiteboard in the conference room. We then had to all tell everyone the thing that each person needed to work on. All of us were expectedly polite with the negative thing that we identified, intentionally not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. After each of us had announced our thoughts, Denise told us that we were all being “too nice” and what we had said was not good enough. Carly was the first to volunteer a more “honest” answer. Suffice to say, all did not go well during this meeting. Lisa and Carly were crying by the end, one of my friends, Suzy, was completely shut down and I was pretty much in total shock that this whole scenario had just occurred. It felt like I was watching a scene in a movie. Things like this do not happen in real life, right?

This was the breaking point for the work that had been done with the team up to this point. Lisa quit, which rolled like a domino through the office. Carly quickly slipped in her management duties. She began playing favorites to those who would play nice to her face or say the things that she wanted people to say. Carly focused her disciplinary actions toward anyone who said anything negative about her or any part of the office functions. Office morale was at an all-time low, and somehow still sinking. Carly was completely blind to the part that she was playing. Carly constantly voiced that she was the victim of other’s attempts at manipulation and wondered out loud why no one could see that she was just trying to bring the office to “greatness”.

The meetings continued, but were reduced to once a month. In these meetings, Carly would expect each one of us to contribute “positivity” to the meetings, and would hold her ground until she got what she wanted. Carly would ask a question, such as “What things went well this week?” and would stand at the front of the conference room in complete silence until each one of us said something. If it took 20 minutes of standing in silence, she would stand there. We were all gun shy about saying anything after the big blow-out meeting.

The meetings continued to be rammed down everyone’s throats. Since the meetings continued, Carly was able to report to Denise and Tonya that everything in the office was great, all of the staff contributed to the positivity and wonderful atmosphere of the Pocatello office and there were no concerns about staff morale. I left the Company after about a year and a half, for reasons related directly to the RM. As far as I know, these meetings continue to this day.

RELATED ROPES TALES

The related Ropes tales that apply here include chapters 18 (Sunrise Service), 23 (Like It Is) and 24 (Hold That Line) in various degrees that I would like to discuss. The first chapter that this whole situation makes me think about is in chapter 18. The point of meeting so early in the morning was to get everyone working together so that the meeting could be discontinued. Initially, the weekly meetings at the organization I worked for were intended to be negative reinforcement for a team that did not get along well. One might think that after the team started doing better, the meetings would discontinue, or occur less frequently. There was irreparable damage after the meeting where we all had to say something negative.

Chapter 23 comes to mind in relation to the content of that fatal meeting. As with Stanley in the chapter, in an attempt to be honest and do what her superior asked, Carly voiced her honest opinion and created a multitude of negative problems. Chapter 24 comes to mind in the latter part of the situation discussed. As Carly continued to push the team building meetings, she created her maximax to match the employee’s minimax, which was to go along with the meetings and participate in the “positivity”.

RELATED MANAGEMENT THEORIES

The management theories that relate most to this situation are attribution theory and employee-oriented leadership. With attribution theory, it became clear in my mind that Carly was attributing the low morale of the staff to their poor attitudes. This seems to me to be a fundamental attribution error as the staff had low morale due to external factors, not personal attitude problems. With employee-oriented leadership, I believe that Carly saw herself as an employee-oriented leader – someone who put value on interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, she completely missed the mark with accepting individual differences and valuing employee needs.

FUTURE SITUATION

Should I find myself in a similar situation in the future, I would take time to speak to the RM and let that person know what the team was feeling before it got to the point where there was the big blow-out meeting. I would be more vocal about the true effect of what the team building meetings and exercises were doing to staff morale. As noted in Chapter 18 of the Ropes, keeping quiet and not wanting to rock the boat can be good at times, but there is certainly a time and place for bringing problems to someone’s attention.

If I were the manager in a similar situation, I would do my best to strive toward being an employee-oriented leader. There are ways to go about talking to employees and getting a feeling for what is contributing to the issues with the team members not getting along. I would speak to the employees individually so there is not confrontation with other employees and find out what their concerns were, and delve into finding what their individual motivations were. Knowing what motivates each employee gives a manager the ability to offer appropriate incentives for the team. I probably would also implement some sort of anonymous method of reporting problems and concerns, in an attempt to get information from all employees. At this point, I would try solutions that fit with the needs of the team to resolve the issues with everyone not working well together.

CONCLUSION

This behavioral analysis is an excellent process of taking a past situation and being able to analyze what happened, what went wrong and how I might take a different approach to my part in the situation. The main point of this analysis is that someone with a Manager title does not walk into a job and always know exactly what to do. This was my first experience watching someone without management knowledge flounder and struggle to gain their bearings in a painful public manner.

Through this experience, I learned many lessons about what not to do as a manager. Denise was completely and utterly oblivious to the incredible damage she did that day to the tea, when she forced people to talk about private, inner feelings that were best left unsaid. I also learned that it is acceptable to take time to talk to others and see what they perceive problems may be. Once you decide upon a course of action, it most certainly does not mean that you must stick to it for the rest of eternity. If it is not working, change it. We know that people are resistant to change, but having taken time to find out motivations for employees and finding an appropriate way to overcome resistance, such as participation, you may find yourself in a good place as a manager. The employees who work for you and others who work with you will be more likely respect you in the long run for saying your plan did not work and being humble enough to make a change.

Grade: 90 of 90

Comments: excellent job. I think you wrote an outstanding paper and hope you learned from the course and the act of writing the paper.

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