Leadership skills and development

Leadership and Teamwork Issues

Mary Tarkington, Chief Executive Officer:

Mary has the right intention as far as hoping to improve the health of her employees. However, her manner of speaking and referring to her employees as having "stomachs bulging out of their pants" is demeaning and inappropriate for the workplace, particularly in the context of motivating employees positively. Mary's delegation of the responsibility to a team by forming the Wellness Task Force was appropriate, but her failure to appoint a team leader was a mistake. Doing so would have empowered the leader she selected more than the selection by group vote. Mary should also have remained a bit more involved, such as by meeting with Kristine separately for an update before the group presentation.

Brent, Systems Analyst:

Brent's conduct was clearly passive-aggressive and designed to undermine Kristine's authority as group leader. His first comments were inappropriate, condescending, and unnecessary. His conduct during the second meeting was even worse and inconsistent with establishing the teamwork necessary for an efficient working process. Finally, his statement that he was "only doing what I considered best for getting our mission accomplished" indicated (1) that he knew his conduct was inappropriate, and (2) that he is relatively ignorant of the fact that his role within the team is no more important than anybody else's.

Brent's behavior during the meeting requires that the team leader address it to prevent his overbearing approach from detracting from the team unity and from undermining Kristine's authority as team leader.

Kristine, Human Resource Specialist:

Kristine made several mistakes that may have allowed Brent's purposeful (or ignorant) disruption from undermining her authority as team leader. Her failure to address his inappropriate take-over of the presentation session until her comment to Jennifer during the presentation to Mary was partly responsible for the fact that Brent was able to purposely embarrass her in front of Mary.

Kristine was right not to respond to Brent in front of everybody when he made the first comment demeaning Kristine's appointment to team leader because that might have been premature and because the comment did not necessarily suggest what Brent was going to do at the next meeting. Likewise, Kristine was also right not to respond to Brent in front of the team when he took over the first team meeting with his presentation, mainly because doing so would not have allowed Brent to save face and might have made things even worse. However, by then, Kristine should have realized that the situation required a direct response on her part and she should not have allowed another team meeting (much less a team presentation to Mary) without first addressing the problem with Brent privately. Depending on Brent's response, Kristine might have wanted to involve Mary in those conversations.

Had Kristine addressed the situation sooner, Brent could never have purposely embarrassed her during the presentation. She made the situation worse with her remark to Jennifer, because it reinforced the impression to the team that she was not in control and may have created the impression (especially in front of Mary who was not privy to earlier team meetings) that Kristine was engaged in a petty personal conflict with Brent. Had Mary realized what was going on, she could have helped empower Kristine and re-establish her leadership authority by responding directly to Brent as follows: