Question 1
What are the apparent advantages and potential disadvantages of focusing your self-development on
achieving excellence in a specific technical or professional specialty? How does this focus impact your
coworkers?
Question 2
George did not look forward to going to the staff meetings that his middle-manager boss convened once
each week. He did not always feel this way about the meetings; in fact, up until 3 months earlier he rather
enjoyed what he believed were productive and congenial gatherings. What made the difference was one
change in the membership of this group of six supervisors: the addition of Charlie, who replaced a usually
silent supervisor.
Unlike his predecessor, Charlie was anything but usually silent. In fact, it seemed as though Charlie had
made it a point to become conversant with every section of their boss’s territory, and he almost always had
something critical to say about the other supervisors’ weekly reports.
What bothered George most was Charlie’s approach to getting his issues or criticisms on the table. Charlie
seemed to focus exclusively on problems and weaknesses. As if that in itself wasn’t bad enough, what
George resented most was Charlie’s way of introducing a problem or concern in a way that ensured
maximum embarrassment for whoever’s area he was commenting on. It was Charlie’s practice to openly
drop his little bombshells in the staff meeting, where the supervisor whose area was in question first heard
of a so-called problem or weakness at the same time the others learned of it.
It seemed to George that Charlie’s practice of blindsiding the others in the group was coldly calculated to
make himself look better by making others look worse. And George found it even more frustrating to note
that their boss did not seem to recognize what Charlie was doing.
• What do you recommend that George do about Charlie’s staff meeting behavior?
• Should George take up his concerns directly with Charlie? And if so, should he do it one-on-one or in the
context of the staff meeting?
• Would you recommend that George start addressing this problem by taking it up one-on-one with their
mutual middle-manager boss?
Sample Solution