A Troublesome Employee
Ms. Z was a team leader managing
a team of 5 members. There are targets to be achieved quarter over quarter. Any
lapse would severly curtail her growth irrespective of the reasons for lapses. A
new employee Ms. V joins the team. Ms. V suffers a hangover from a personal
problem and thus seems least interested in work. No matter whatever task
assigned to her, she is stubborn not to work. At the very least, a perception
is sought to convey she is not capable of working. Ms. Z however knows V has
some capabilities and perhaps pretending the personal hangover as an excuse for
non-performance. She perhaps is bidding time to get a better offer. A
discussion with the superior fails to yield any result. Apparently, the boss
seems least interested in penalising the employee as she seems to have been
pushed into the organization on compassionate grounds by somebody top in the
hierarchy. The other members of the team start complaining about the
non-performance of the new employee. The team leader is stuck between a rock
and hard place. If non-performance seems rewarded at least implicitly, it has
an impact on the other employees, they too start taking their work lightly. The
superiors have no interest even in transferring the troublesome employee to
some other department. For the team leader however, her performance is
contingent to targets. How will Ms Z handle the scenario? What kind of
leadership she has to provide. What motivational theories come into the fore a
Ms. Z grapples with the targets? What personality traits do we see in Ms V and
the boss?
An Act Gone Wrong
Ms. A was heading a team of
social media marketing. They landed a contract of marketing a mega event
expected to be graced by celebrities. Any sign of even a minute shortcoming
would boomerang big. Given the lead time of around 3.5 months, she with a team
of 15-20 members began toiling day and night for the first task- building and
refining the database. .in parallel, marketing campaigns were launched across
various social media platforms. The boss
Mr.J however wanted to retain the email component with himself. He asked the team to hand the database to
enable him to mail the same through the mass email platform he has had access
to. Ms. A was in touch Mr.J for the follow up, yet he seemed to procrastinate.
Perhaps after a couple of weeks, the mails were sent as part of promo campaign.
During the course of campaign, allegedly on spam ground, the mail id was
blocked. Mr. J kept it to himself and did not reveal to Ms. A or other members
of the team. It is by chance Ms. A comes of know of this. They depended on Mr.J
for the emails, now on ground of mail-id being blocked no progress seemed to
have happened. Further J sounded casual. Ms. A and her team whose fortunes
depended on the success of the event were left clueless. There was a hardly a
month left for the event and they had a mammoth task ahead. It seemed they were
back on square one. How would Ms. A
motivate her team to perform? What kind of leadership does Ms. A will have to demonstrate
to achieve the outcomes? What kind of leadership and personality does Mr. J
represent? Will textbook leadership, motivation and personality theories work
in this context?
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