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...

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…