50 Case Studies for Management and Supervisory Training

Case 12: Beverly Comes Full Circle

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Case 12 (continued)

Case Discussion:

Beverly Comes Full Circle

Summary

Four months ago, Beverly Wyman, 33, was promoted to the supervisor’s job of a newly formed

sales group. There were seven people in the sales group reporting to her, including Bob Watson

(her boss when she first joined the company). Bob was about 10 years older than Beverly. He had

been the highest performer in the company for a number of years, until Beverly began to equal his

production about 18 months ago. Bob had a long history of personal moodiness and erratic

behavior, though. When Beverly began to equal his performance, Bob’s behavior became more

problematic. He had finally been given a written disciplinary notice. Consequently, some of the

behaviors changed, although the underlying “attitude” problems of apathy, indifference, and hos-

tility did not.

When Beverly was promoted to head up the sales group, Bob Watson was given the job of

supervising three trainees in the department in addition to sales production tasks. Now, four

months later, Bob had developed into a major supervisory problem for her. Beverly currently had

several concerns about Bob’s work:

• He gave up on tougher sales chores.

• He was infecting his trainees with a negative attitude about her and the operations of her

department.

• He ignored her authority and plans and was not a constructive contributor to the department.

• He circumvented new regulations and laws, putting the company at risk.

In short, Bob was consuming quite a bit of Beverly’s time and attention, while performing far

below his potential. He was continually seeking to find another position in the company. It

seemed that the “front office” would be protective of him; Beverly assumed that they would not

allow him to be fired.

Answers to Case Questions

1. Describe the problem(s) Beverly faces as a supervisor. Identify what specific perform-

ance improvement results she should seek.

Beverly’s problem is how to respond to a rather unique problem employee: he is a long-ter

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employee who is very knowledgeable and capable. But his work behaviors are just not accept-

able—and may actually be risky to the business. He seemed to be unreceptive to Beverly’s super-

vision of him.

It is generally unproductive to speculate on what Bob’s “motivation” or “psychological” prob-

lems are. It is difficult to accurately identify those underlying motivations when there is limite

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evidence of what is behind them, and in some ways, using such a “theory” merely “explains”

what he is doing without helping Beverly deal with it.

Instead, it is preferable to identify what kinds of improvements in his behaviors Beverly wishes

to see. These improvements correspond to the problems noted above; they are listed below i

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likely order of importance to Beverly: