Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

98 MARIA ROTUNDO
More specifically, John learned the following about Sue ’s performance over the last few
months:
◆ Clients indicate that she is extremely knowledgeable about the project and willing to
respond to their requests for modifi cations.
◆ Has good awareness of “ problem clients ” in the industry and has advised the fi rm
wisely to avoid certain deals.
◆ Always blames others when things do not work out. A month ago a client backed
down on a contract. Sue returned to the office and yelled at the administrator and
team member who helped her manage the contract. She blamed them for the
client ’s decision and accused them of sloppy and slow work. In reality, the client ’s
decision had nothing to do with sloppy work. More recently, Sue noticed an error
on a client report during the middle of her meeting with a client. She went back to
the office and yelled at the team for their failure to notice the error. In reality, the
team did notice the error and warned Sue about it but she did not respond.
John decided that he needs to meet with Sue to discuss these concerns and other
things. It has been about two months since their last discussion. Below are the details of
that meeting.
JOHN: Hi, Sue, how do you feel the last few months have been going for you here.
SUE: There have been ups and downs. I get frustrated by how slow people are in
giving me the information that I need. If I wait for answers, I am afraid that the
clients will get impatient and go elsewhere. We lost a client because of this.
JOHN: I remember that client. What happened?
SUE: I went to visit the client expecting that we were ready to close on the contract
but the client pulled out. They told me that they received a better response and
service from one of our competitors. I knew that this would happen. So, I went
back to the offi ce and made sure everyone on the team knew about this and that
they could have prevented it from happening if they just listened to me and worked
faster and better.
JOHN: I see – but I think everyone here is working really long hours just to keep up.
With respect to that contract that we lost, most of the team worked overtime and
took work home on weekends in an effort to turn it around quickly. I am not sure
that we can expect more of them. The team felt very bad when they were blamed
and told that they worked too slow and were sloppy. It is easy for us to get frustrated
about a lot of things but we cannot take out these frustrations on the group.
We are a team and need to work together on projects and respect each other. They
know that you work hard too and want to help you.
SUE: Oh – I didn’t mean to offend anyone – I was just so disappointed that we lost
the contract and probably over- reacted. What bothers me is that if processing contracts
quicker gives us an edge over competitors, I just don’t see why people can’t
work faster so that we get the contracts done sooner or why there are so many steps
in the process anyway. We could have a much quicker turnaround if we removed
even just two steps.