When Key Employees Clash - Case Study Example

Solution of the Case: “When Key Employees Clash” The issue of conflict management on a workplace is rather complicated and controversial thing because a wise leader must be prepared not only to work with firm’s financial affairs but also be an excellent psychologist and manage working staff. The situation between the two key employees Ellen and Ronnie, which their boss Matthew is supposed to manage, requires strong leadership skills and communicational abilities. The main problem here is that the head of the Kid Spectrum is constantly not available for his personnel, so it turns out that his key workers don’t have anybody who would help them to solve their interpersonal problems and they need a real director, who would give them wise orders and share responsibilities between them. Thus the best solution for Matthew, in this situation, is to move to Orlando and be present in his company on daily basis in order not only to manage this particular situation but keep things ordered in Kid Spectrum and prevent all the possible future conflicts between employees. The main point of the entire problem is that Matthew must make a wise decision how exactly either to make peace between Ellen and Ronnie or make them both do their jobs qualitatively under his constant control. Considering the most important characteristics of both of the employees Ellen and Ronnie are of crucial importance for Kid Spectrum; Ellen is a great worker, she is precise and keeps things in order, when Ronnie is important in communicational aspect, he is humanist and cares about people. Both of them are currently irreplaceable and needed for the firm. The very first question that comes into mind thinking about the situation is where Matthew has been the whole time? He probably is a good manager, although he didn’t know that there has been a conflict between his key employees, so this might characterize him as a manager who is not aware of what is going on in his firm. Even if Matthew is a good leader, still his leadership skills aren’t applied on his employees and it creates a lot of problems not only for general atmosphere in Kid Spectrum, but also it reduces effective work of his business which probably might lead to losses in his company’s gain. Thus it turns out that Matthew’s presence in the company is crucial for many reasons. First of all, if had he moved to Orlando and took part in Kid Spectrum activities and supervision of employees, the efficiency of his employees would have become better and therefore his company would gain more money. In experts’ testimony part of the article, Peter Kelly suggests Matthew to conduct weekly meetings by Skype or on telephone with Ellen and Ronnie (Grousbeck n.pag.); although the suggestion seems not really a helpful one. The point is that phone and Skype talks might not describe the big picture of what is really going on between the two employees, because lack of in-person interactions between a boss and his employees creates a breach for hypocrisy of the workers. Psychologists have conducted a research on the matter of conflict management strategies, which might be applied by a director, and denoted that hierarchical position can itself be helpful to manage problems between employees. This means that simple presence of a boss might keep workers in certain inner tense so that they would not allow themselves to skip their responsibilities (Samantara 299). If had Matthew been present on the workplace, Ronnie would have been more involved into his work responsibilities, he also would have been present on the field, and probably wouldn’t have delayed the new protocols for time sheets. As far as Matthew wasn’t present in Kid Spectrum Ronnie felt like no one controlled him, so he allowed himself to skip some of his responsibilities. That’s why Matthew would better to be present in Kid Spectrum to control the real state of things in his company. The reason why in-personal communication is way better than management on distance is that Matthew would be able to analyze the situation of his employees’ relationships intuitively by observing their conduct. If Matthew were in Kid Spectrum on daily basis he would have been able to notice the lame relationships between his key employees and also he could have observed who did his job precisely and who didn’t. The point is that being a good person, as Ronnie is with the clinical staff, is not enough to make a good manager. That’s why the presence of Matthew is crucial because there must be a boss in order to make Ronnie not only to be nice with workers, but also do his management job. Jim Southern, the managing director of Pacific Lake Partners, agrees with the solution that Matthew’s constant presence would solve the problem easily. He claims that another Matthew mistake was to promote Ronnie without giving him an adequate guidance for the management job, so he probably wasn’t even aware of his responsibilities (Grousbeck n.pag.); and it is a great point because, as a director, Matthew was supposed to check whether Ronnie was prepared for such kind of job or not. Thus it becomes clear why a precise worker and such a serious about job person like Ellen was irritated by Ronnie’s work. The point noted by Jim Southern was also described in research about relation between team conflict management and increase of team effectiveness among employees in a company. The research revealed that in order to build an effective solid team a director of a company must conduct several trainings along with informative meetings where all the employees would be informed of their work responsibilities and company policy (Somech et.al 359). Experts’ testimonies in the article suggest different ways of the problem’s solutions. Both of them assert that Matthew must talk to his employees, either with each of them or with both, in order to explain and prove to them how important their qualitative work is for Kid Spectrum. Matthew also could invite a professional problem solver who would probably manage the conflict between Ellen and Ronnie instead of him. Another variant could be to teach Ronnie his real responsibilities as a manager or force him to do his job by threatening him with firing. Even though the conversations and convictions, as well as threats of firing, job trainings etc. might be helpful for some time, still they won’t change the essence of the problem and such conflictive situations will probably appear again. Therefore the main problem is Matthew’s absence from Kid Spectrum and unavailability for his employees. The presence of Matthew on the workplace, however, could have prevented the conflict which would have been real “nip this in the bud” solution. Because if had he been there, he would have noticed Ronnie’s incompetence in management and taught him how to work appropriately. Furthermore, Matthew would have been more sensitive about the general situation in Kid Spectrum and could have understood the moods and attitudes of his employees towards each other, which is definitely very useful in making any managing decisions. That’s why if Matthew comes to Orlando and takes the business in his hands, the atmosphere and efficiency of collective body will become much better. As for this particular situation, if Matthew starts working in Kid Spectrum, in some time he will be able to evaluate both Ellen and Ronnie and realize whether they are both effective and useful for the business, or they need some extra training for time sheets management (especially Ronnie and clinical staff), or maybe one of them must be dismissed from the job. Works Cited Samantara, Rabinarayan. "Conflict Management Strategies and Organizational Effectiveness". Indian Journal of Industrial Relations. 39(2004): 298-323. Irving Grousbeck, H. "When Key Employees Clash". Harvard Business Review, June 2012. Web. Somech, Anit, Desivilya, Helena Syna, Lidogoster, Helena. "Team Conflict Management and Team Effectiveness: the Effects of Task Interdependence and Team Identification". Journal of Organizational Behavior. 30(2009): 359-378. Read More