Tom, one of your employees, has worked in the office for ten years. He is well liked and knowledgeable about the history of the office and University systems. There is no past history of performance issues that you can see from looking at past performance reviews. What you have observed is that Tom regularly shows up late, (office opens at 8:30am, Tom usually comes by 9/9:15am), takes longer than an hour for lunch, and often is heading out the door by 4:30pm (office closes at 5pm). You notice that this type of behavior seems to happen once in a while for other employees in the office, but seems like a daily practice for Tom. He never records any of this time on his time card as official time off.
Take a few moments to think about the situation.
What would you do?
What would be your first step?
What do you feel is the reason for Tom’s actions?
What are going to be your actions?
How do you motivate Tom to stick to the schedule of his peers?
Do you feel he is stealing from the company since he isn’t documenting his time?
You have been promoted to the position of manager of the department. You’ve worked together with most of your direct reports for many years. As a peer, you have had good working relationships with everyone in the area. At least one of your peers also applied for the manager position. Because of the department’s relatively flat organizational structure, employees have not had many opportunities for promotion. Most of the employees have worked in the same area for most of their work history. As you are settling in to your new role, you feel that some of your former peers, Sydney and Alex, are not taking you seriously as the new supervisor. You have given some directions about how you want certain projects handled, only to see some of the staff ignore you and complete the projects in other ways. When you have addressed this, they both have given reasons such as, “The old way is better,” “What’s the big deal?” and “With the equipment we have, we had to do it that way.”
Take a few moments to think about the situation.
What would you do?
What would be your first step?
How do you get your employees to change?
Why do you feel they don’t want to change?
How can you motivate them?
You have been newly hired into your supervisory role. You have six direct reports. Three have worked for the University less than five years; the other three have more than ten years in the department. Overall, you have been impressed with the staff’s dedication to serving the department’s administrative needs and responding to requests from professors and students. However, you have observed that one of the long time staff members, Marie, seems to take a long time with any of her assignments and is avoided by most of the students and professors requesting services. Her behavior strikes you as unwelcoming and you have overheard her raise her voice a few times. When you bring up the issue with your boss, Noah, he says Marie gets the job done and is known for being hard to work with. This has been a long standing issue and the last supervisor did little to change the situation. Noah is also new to his role and wants to have a high performing office. Noah wants you to address Marie’s behavior.
Take a few moments to think about the situation.
What would you do?
What would be your first step?
How would you address her behavior?
Should you have documentation?
What support items should you have with you when you address her behavior?
How do you motivate her to change some of her behaviors?
Why do you feel it is important to modify her behavior?
