Business Case Kalinsky Was Correct

Business Case Kalinsky was correct in firing his former brother-in-law. There are two main reasons why this move was necessary. The first is that the younger Kenworthy was unwilling to be a contributor to the team. His leadership skills were poor. His public criticism of Kalinsky illustrated his lack of suitability for such an important role. More importantly, he had not only become a liability to the business but clearly was unwilling to admit his failings.

He lost the Capital One account, and it was only through good fortune that Empyrean was given a chance to salvage the account. As this account is worth 40% of Empyrean's business, not only could the company not survive without the account, but that account needs to be the hands of the company's best manager. Clearly, Kenworthy was not this person. Moreover, the lack of maturity he demonstrated indicated that he would be unwilling to accept a demotion away from that account.

There are five main conflict management styles: forcing, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating (Williams, n.d). Kalinsky demonstrated many of these in this case. He avoided the problems with Kenworthy at first, hoping that those problems would resolve themselves. When that did not happen, he sought to accommodate the Kenworthys. In the end, he ended up having to find a compromise in order to let them leave the company. In this case, only the compromise was a truly effective conflict management style.

The avoidance only served to let the conflict build. Each phone call was more difficult and each discussion more heated in part because Kalinsky did not adequately address the issue. Even by going to Bruce, he was avoiding direct confrontation with David. The problem resolved itself eventually, however, when the compromise was struck with respect to the settlement agreement. However, it took the threat of legal action to compel Kalinsky to take this step. Integrated negotiations focus on finding a win-win solution.

This approach involves the parties sitting down and hammering out a deal, typically in which there are multiple issues at stake (Negotiations.com, 2009). When Kalinsky finally sat down with the Kenworthys, he did employ integrated negotiations. The two had failed to disappear from the picture simply because their needs were not met. Therefore, it was essential that Kalinsky meet some of their needs in order to have his own needs -- getting rid of the Kenworthys -- met.

That the situation came to a head the way it did was because of multiple communication errors. The first was the failure on the part of Kalinsky to properly communicate to Bruce and David the scope of David's role and the performance expectations therein. That Kalinsky and David did not speak much for a period of years is also a failure of communication.

When Kalinsky spoke to Bruce about David, there appeared to be a failure to discuss the issue in terms of its ramifications to Bruce -- he only discussed the issue in terms of its ramifications for himself and David. Thus, Bruce's desire to leave the company was a surprise. Lastly, there was a failure to adequately communicate David's firing quickly. By waiting, Kalinsky opened the situation up to Bruce's interference, which in turn only made the situation worse.

Each of these four communication problems contributed to the situation that Kalinsky faced, with two investors seeking to leave the company, including one he did not envision leaving. Many of the conflict styles used in this case by Kalinsky met with failure. His avoidance of the conflict with David only served to make the problem worse. It festered, and resulted in bad blood between the two. Moreover, it compromised Kalinsky's ability to oversee his company's operations, nearly costing him the firm's biggest client.

This initial conflict could potentially have been resolved through collaboration. The needs of all three men could have been discussed. This would have provided Kalinsky with a framework for getting the needed results out of David. It is only that he allowed David a high degree of autonomy that the latter developed a sense of entitlement to that autonomy. The accommodation style also failed. Kalinsky had attempted to allow David to run things his own way, in part to accommodate a perceived need of Bruce.

Ultimately, this backfired since Kalinsky did not address his own needs. The accommodation phase ended when Kalinsky attempted to force a solution on the Kenworthys. Forcing would have been the ideal method of conflict resolution had.