Growing Managers - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages As for employees who are now her team members, Richardson thinks they need to be constantly motivated and appreciated in order to improve performance. This is reflected by her thoughts on sharing ice-cream and pizza with her team members on a Saturday afternoon while celebrating their success (Booth and Karen 3). She also has the idea of having an open communication channel with them when team building and even during office hours’ time to remove animosity. What is the difference between an account or sales representative and a sales manager? A sales manager is the overall head in charge of the sales team which may comprise of even account or sales representative. The sales manager oversees all the sales operations of the area she or he is managing including even the communication with customers and the greenhouse and acting as their liaison. An account or sales representative on the other hand is the one who looks for customers and persuades them to buy their products. They in turn report to the sales manager with their sales for accountability purposes and to get further instructions, clarifications among other guidance tips from the sales manager. What did Richardson do right when she started new job? Richardson was right to make early preparations and arrangement of her office and even getting acquainted with the files on her team early enough even before meeting the team in person. This made her avoid wasting time to start on her new responsibility. Reporting to work on her first day (Monday) early and before the others in order to personally welcome them and make them feel comfortable with her (Booth and Karen 5). The other thing was to hold a meeting with her team immediately and letting them know her goals for them and for the office in general. Finally, she made a tour of the greenhouse hence getting to know what to expect and meeting with the rest of the workers in that flower farm and even the other managers. What mistakes did she make? She made the mistake of copying her predecessor’s figures of the previous month which had been falsified (although she did not know that) and hence her report was not an indication of what had actually taken place in that period she was writing the report on. The other mistake was not addressing Peterson’s desire to become an accounts representative which led to her lawyer complaining about gender disparity (which may lead to a lawsuit if not properly addressed). What might have helped Richardson get off to a better start? Richardson landed a big client and other clients (Lowes and grocery chain customers) and this helped increase the sales of the month (Booth and Karen 10). She was also determined to make it work despite the lack of cooperation from her team members and this determination is what made her persevere and hence making it to a good start. Critique Richardson's first meeting. How could she have made a stronger impact on her team that first day? Richardson confronted her team and called for a meeting without even letting them get acquainted with her first. She did not seek their opinion or way forward on how they expected her to work or even about their schedule which made them form an opinion about her leadership authority and power and this made it difficult to get along with her. Richardson should have sought the opinion of the team members and even asked them about how they related or worked with her predecessor in ensuring the organization moves forward. Describe some ways Richardson might effectively build her team. One of the ways is by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each of the team member and capitalizing on that. The other is to look for different motivating techniques that can match the ...Download file to see next pagesRead More