Scenario:
Fameit Inc. (FI) is a manufacturing company that produces customized frames using all sorts of materials to create frames for certificates, pictures, paintings, etc., all over the world. There are 100 employees that are divided between manufacturing and sales representatives with about 20 staff assigned to managerial/administrative positions in the various departments. About two months ago, the head of production, Roger (in his position for the last 5 years), was in a meeting with several members of his staff when the following conversation occurred towards the end of the meeting:
Production Manager Roger: At the end of a half-hour meeting to review the production schedule results he says: Does anyone have anything to add concerning operations today?
Production Employee Jenna: Well, we are having some problems in production because some of our vendor acrylics are changing composition and are not resulting in the best quality of product when they come off the line. Someone needs to speak with our vendor right away.
Production Manager Roger: Anyone else have that problem? (He waits for three seconds for any response and then continues.) Thanks everyone, I guess that wraps up this meeting. Now back to work!
After a week the production manager began to receive reports from the database system that quality control was rejecting some of the final products off the assembly line, customer complaints and returns now had gotten to the critical point, and executive management had been alerted.
The production manager had a special meeting of his department that same day and admonished the production team saying: “It is your responsibility to see that these products pass quality control. If there is a problem you are to contact me. I hold you all responsible for this lapse in reporting this problem. I will decide shortly who will be working with me to resolve this issue.”
Production Employee Jenna just looked at her colleagues and said: But boss, I did bring this up at the last meeting.
The Production Manager Roger responded: Well, if there was a problem as important as this one, you should have sent a follow-up memo to everyone. Someone will have a report submitted to their personnel file and a bad quarterly performance review as well for this oversight! Then he adjourned the meeting.
Production Employee Jenna speaking to another employee after the meeting:
I absolutely should not be blamed for this; I told him there was a problem. I am going to lodge a complaint with Human Resources right away.
Checklist: Respond to the following items regarding the scenario:
Analyze the problems at this company as portrayed in the scenario.
Describe the leadership style demonstrated by the manager.
Describe the steps of the communication process that were not addressed or completed, and in what manner they were not completed or addressed.
Explain the aspects of the leadership process that were neglected by the manager.
Examine and explain how the manager could have used the communication and leadership process to (1) build a better relationship with the employees in his department and (2) make employees more effective on the job.
Sample Solution
