What Does Richardson Think Makes a Good Manager - Essay Example

Growing Managers What does Richardson think makes a good manager? According to Richardson, a good manager is the one who has the interests of both the employees and the customers at heart. Having the customers’ interests at heart involve satisfying their needs and demands. 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 personality of each and every member. Setting individual goals for the members may lead to effectively building the team on top of having frequent mandatory meetings and team building exercises. In your opinion, who is at fault for Richardson's poor performance? Richardson’s poor performance can be attributed to herself, her team members and her regional supervisor Campbell but not the fault of only one person. Richardson failed to assert herself with her team the first time and this therefore led to them not performing to their best and even ignoring her suggestions on improving sales and team building. Campbell just inquired when things went wrong and when she wanted the reports done but did nothing to help Richardson with writing the report (a task which she had never done before and which took most of her time leaving little time and room to interact with her team), she also never appreciated the effort by Richardson even when she brought to new big clients on board and this is demoralizing. The team members were determined to shut Richardson out and even failed to heed to her advice, suggestions and even efforts to team build and open communication channels with her. They made no effort to increase their sales and wanted to maintain the status quo. What other forces are at play in ColorTech's Phoenix office that may be affecting Richardson's ability to lead and motivate her team? Individual interest forces are the ones dominating her team members and they therefore only work thinking about their benefits and losses and not about the overall effect of their actions towards the company. This is the reason Vega fails to always report to work on time and even fail to turn up completely to work at least once a week due to flimsy personal reasons. Hoffman on the other hand sees no point in trying to sell the new long stem plants because they are not bringing in money as much as the other products. In order to be able to lead her team, Richardson needs to spend a lot of time with them giving them tips and holding meetings, but this does not happen because of the much paperwork she is needed to complete including the monthly report she is expected to be sending to Campbell after every three weeks. What should Richardson do right now? Richardson needs to strategize on how to motivate each member of her team and especially Peterson and Vega whose performance is low and not steady and they show signs of lack of interest in their work or the current positions they are holding. Other than that, she needs to manage her time in such a way that her days will not be occupied with paperwork only bit find time to interact with her team and hold meetings or training sessions on how to improve performance and sell all the company’s products without choosing some and leaving others. This is possible through role allocation to her team members about paperwork. The last thing which is probably the only thing that will work is being assertive and authoritative. She can use her powers as the sales manager to ensure that the members of the team listen to her attend meetings, report to work on time daily and give target to the monthly sales. What should ColorTech do right now with regard to Richardson? There are several things that ought to be done with regards to Richardson’s problems. One of those is to retrain her especially now that she knows the challenges of her role as a manager, the training will prove to be effective in solving some of her problems and especially those related with empowerment, assertion, authority and power usage. The other is to hire an assistant manager whose role will be to take care of the paperwork while she is left with the fieldwork only. This will free her time to interact with the team and tutor them even through experience on how to increase sales. She will also have enough time to seek new customers (supplementing the work already being done painfully slow by her team) also to ensure that the monthly sales of the company continue to increase. Lastly, her regional supervisor should assist her in her report and other duties to provide guidance and orientation (which was never done in the first place) and hence opening up communication, reducing animosity and providing Richardson a chance to work without pressure or fear of her supervisor’s remarks if and when the work is not perfect. Work Cited Booth, Brenda and Karen, Cates. “Growing Managers: Moving from Team Member to Team Leader.” Kellogg School of Management. Illinois: Northwestern University. Read More