Thus, the organization can set certain financial benchmarks that it desires the director to meet, and encourage the individual to meet such benchmarks. Variable pay is a possibly powerful incentive system for a potentially disinterested individual, who might be content to be a figurehead. However, the leader of a nonprofit organization presumably is motivated by something more than pure financial gain. Nonprofits traditionally cannot pay the largest salaries in the executive salary marketplace, certainly not as large as the salaries of the major for-profit corporate organization. Leaders are drawn to these not-for-profit entities for a chance to give back to the world, to fight for a cause they believe in, and to gain exposure, good publicity, and media recognition. Thus making financial compensation the main motivator for success seems counterproductive. If the individual in question was solely motivated by financial gain, he or she would have looked elsewhere for a position. Giving the new director some additional leeway in terms of cultivating pet projects, or added opportunities for media exposure might be a better way to encourage the new director to feel a strong personal investment in the organization and to fight for its future success.

Question

You supervise a group of 10 people in a manufacturing environment. One of your direct reports, Mitch, has confided in you that his wife has left him and has filed for divorce. He has seemed depressed, often a few minutes late for work, low-energy.

One of Mitch's coworkers mentioned to you that Mitch told him he "just wanted to blast everybody," and at another time he "just wanted to close the door and turn off the...

What should you do?
It must be remembered in situations such as these that a supervisor is not a professional counselor or a therapist, and should not strive to act like one. Divorce is a difficult time in an individual's life, and Mitch's depression is natural, and not necessarily pathological. However, the comments by his concerned co-workers indicate that action must be taken. First, the supervisor must meet with Mitch to get a sense of Mitch's own personal state of mind. Mitch could be offered at-work counseling. However, if Mitch is truly depressed, at-work counseling, which is traditionally designed to minimize workplace conflicts and deal with minor emotional distress, is unlikely to be intensive enough to ease him through this difficult transition into a new life. A meeting with a counselor at work might be useful, if a record must be established of Mitch's employment history for the organization's legal purposes. But once this is done, it would likely be better to offer Mitch the option of taking some 'personal time off' and encourage Mitch to seek psychological counseling. A member of the HR staff could provide Mitch with some assistance in navigating the employee health plan, to find appropriate mental health counseling.

If Mitch refuses to seek counseling or take time off, and continues to make violent threat, retributive action might need to be undertaken, depending on the level of violence of his words and/or actions. Regardless of the difficulty of Mitch's situation, he cannot be allowed to become a threat to his fellow workers on the job, and the company could be liable if they ignored his inflammatory and dangerous behavior.