Case Study
Solution 1 Overview:
 
You have just been hired as the General Manager at a large inner-city organisation, Solution 1.
Solution 1 sells business solution packages to businesses of varying types.
The business packages include different areas and are aimed to provided solutions to organisational inefficiencies. The packages include training, consultancy, human resource management or a combination of these.
You have been put in charge of a team of 18 employees.
Two of the employees are managers who report into you.
They each work in separate divisions (business development and marketing). Please see the company structure below:
General Manager - Business Development manager - 10 Business Development Employees (B to B sales)
General Manager -  Marketing Manager - 6 Employees ( design, branding, IT, social media, web development)
 
Both managers and their teams are performing okay, however there have been some issues between them which is now starting to affect their team members negatively.
The previous General Manager was constantly finding faults and created a work environment which was over-competitive. She would ridicule each team in front of one another at team meetings, and highlight the work done by marketing constantly.
Many staff members from other divisions have warned you as the new General Manager, that the previous manager ‘favoured’ the marketing team. They felt that her approach showed unfairness between the teams. Also, she would focus so heavily on the sales targets with the Business Development Team that she never listened to their issues and roadblocks to help them to improve their performance. 
 
As a result of the previous leadership of the teams, this has created a very unstable working culture, and has led the Business Development Manager and Marketing Manager to be in constant battle with one another about the marketing collateral.
The Business Development Manager is complaining that the marketing team are not listening to what the actual products are about and what the clients need. The marketing team are arguing that they are the marketing professionals and the development team need to leave the collateral to them.
 
The CEO is concerned and has hired you as the General Manager to pull the team back together.
They firmly believe in Daniel Goleman’s 5 areas of competencies and skills that drive leadership performance.  They have tasked you to come up with a strategy to incorporate Daniel Goleman’s model and have stated some clear objectives.
This includes specific objectives for you (the General Manager), the individuals and team objectives to achieve.
 
Marketing & Business Development Manager Individual Objectives: (from Daniel Goleman)
·      Self-Awareness: Develop self-awareness and show understanding of the impact of own emotions
·      Self-Regulation: Manage and regulate own behaviour and emotions
·      Empathy: recognise and show consideration of other staff member’s feelings
·      Social Skills: help to manage the team’s emotions to re-direct them to more positive and engaging behaviours
·      Motivation: motivate self and others to achieve success
Team Objectives:
·      Consult and collaborate with all stakeholders positively
·      Discuss and provide solutions to problems in a team approach
·      Respect and celebrate each other, diversity and culture
·      Be present when communicating with one another
 
Below you will find an overview of the staff members of Solution 1:
 

STAFF PROFILES:
Gillian (Marketing Manager)
Gillian works fast and efficiently. She always makes deadlines with marketing campaigns which is her mission. She doesn’t like to let her managers down with deadlines and bases her performance on timelines.
Gillian’s team talk about her behind her back and don’t feel comfortable approaching her. Gillian is very passive-aggressive and will sound happy to everyone’s face and in team meetings and will then run off and complain about everything agreed to in the meeting.
Her body language often says she doesn’t agree; however her words agree. She shrugs and rolls her eyes often in frustration. Her neck will sometime go red. Gillian often agrees to make changes to marketing material, and then doesn’t make the change as she believes her way is the best. She doesn’t have the confidence to voice her opinions and is not the best public speaker.
Overall, Gillian is very talented in her role, however her leadership and emotional intelligence is lacking in many areas, and she needs someone to help her boost her confidence.
One on one with her team members, Gillian is compassionate and understanding to their needs. She is always available one on one- and spends-time sharing skills and helping staff. When it comes to team leadership however, she lacks the ability to get her team to work cohesively.
Hence, her team works in ‘silos’ and they do not connect well with each other and have to run to Gillian all day for help. Gillian is also afraid to address the group as a whole team which makes her tired and stressed.
 
 

David (Business Development Manager)
David is straight to the point, and you always know where you stand with him. He voices his opinions at team meetings, and ‘what you see is what you get’. He struggles with new staff as he gets really frustrated and irritated if they are slow to learn.
He has been in this role for many years and has built some extremely close business relationships which highlights how important he is to the company. He also gets annoyed if he doesn’t have quality marketing collateral at hand, so he and his team can hit the ground running. He is embarrassed if material doesn’t reflect the suite of products that they sell, or if there is a ‘sales’ comment on a brochure which makes the product look cheap.
As a long term and valued member of the company, David is considered pinnacle to operations. David is really getting very annoyed that the marketing team are not listening to what his team need to sell, and what the clients are looking for.
David and the previous General Manager did not get along very well, and David has lost faith in the company since, and doesn’t trust management and feels unsupported.  
 
Rahman (social media coordinator) 
Rahman comes from Bangladesh and is a practising Muslim. He migrated to Australia over ten years ago now, and still practices some areas of his faith. He loves Australian culture and participates in Australian celebrations also. He practices a daily prayer, which the CEO welcomed when he was first recruited. When he first started a year ago, Rahman was permitted to practice his prayer in the staff room between 12:45 – 1:00pm.
The staff were never made aware of this practice and have started to make fun of Rahman behind his back. If their half hour lunch break fell during prayer time, they had to go elsewhere for their lunch break.
When the previous General Manager was around, she stopped the prayer time and informed Rahman that he needs to go to the park to do the prayer as staff need to have access to the staff room.
Rahman works hard, professionally and is a great communicator with the team. He is implementing some effective social media campaigns so far and enjoys his job.
Since not being able to practice his prayer, he has been unhappy in silence. He is becoming withdrawn from the team as he no longer feels valued or liked.
 

Now please refer to your Assessment Tasks and refer back to this Case Study as needed.