“That sounds like honest and tough feedback,” Paul said. “Were you able to share with Jared what people generally said?”
“I did more than provide general feedback. I met with Jared and shared the very specific feedback with him. I told him that I had met with his team and they had some concerns about his management of them. I shared all that I’ve just said to you, about listening, taking people seriously, treating people as competent, and so on,” Tom said.
“How did he respond?” Paul asked.
“He was embarrassed that I was confronting him with that data, and he wants to do something about it,” Tom said. “But this is where it gets confusing. He said that he had no idea that his team felt this way. He told me about regular one-on-one meetings he has with the members of the team and how he frequently invites their feedback to him directly. He showed me a survey he did of the team and the written feedback they gave him as well, which was filled with positive comments. He was right that none of the concerns I brought to him had appeared on any of the feedback he had received directly,” Tom said. “It just seems like such an odd disconnect between a group that has consistent negative feedback about his behavior but where Jared says he has absolutely no idea why people are saying those things about him.”
“Thinking about the feedback you heard, have you ever heard similar points about your other managers? Is this type of feedback widespread throughout the organization?” Paul wondered.
“No. I’ve never heard anything like this about any of my other managers. This is a pretty friendly department, overall. This is the kind of place where people throw foam footballs around the cubicles at lunchtime and have summer picnics with each other’s families,” Tom said. “But with Jared, it seems like some kind of mob mentality is forming, where the group is nice to Jared directly but they spiral into an angry crowd that feeds off of one another when he isn’t around. At first I was thinking that maybe it’s just growing pains since Jared has a very different style than the former manager of this group, Brad.”
“Tell me about the former manager,” Paul asked.
“Brad got promoted and left the group, but he’s still around the company. In fact it was from him that I originally started hearing about the complaints because the team was going to their old boss and he was sharing their feedback with me. I told him that he needed to get out of the team dynamic now and leave it to me. I don’t think that’s healthy. But he was popular with the team, he’s laid back but insistent on high-quality work, and the team respected him, so I can see why they were trying to get him on their side,” Tom said.
“How would you describe Brad’s style?” Paul asked.
“He treats people as equals. He doesn’t assume that he always has the answers, and he’s open to suggestions if his team members think they have a good suggestion or innovation to propose. He’s described as open, warm, and friendly. It’s probably due to him that we have the friendly collegial atmosphere that we have here. At the same time, you can’t get away with anything like slacking off or quality mistakes if you’re a member of his team. Brad really works to develop a team mentality where everyone is in it together and not out for their own personal achievements at the expense of the group. If someone has a problem on Brad’s team, they generally turn to the whole group to ask for input and not just assume that Brad will solve it. Frequent communicator, positive, team-oriented,” Tom concluded.
“In hindsight, is Jared able to identify any time when he had a feeling or intuition that something might be going wrong? And is the team able to look at a specific example and point out why they felt like they weren’t being taken seriously or being listened to?” Paul asked.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Tom admitted. “Maybe we can ask the employees to share more specific examples. And that’s a good action for Jared, too.”
“Have there been any other performance-related concerns with Jared or his team?” Paul inquired.
“The thing is, I can’t emphasize enough that Jared is a very smart individual. He’s always in my office sharing progress on the team’s work, he knows the content of the job really well, and he always has an answer to every question. I have a great deal of respect for his knowledge and expertise. That’s why I hired him. But now that you mention it, there is another unusual situation we had. It’s not a performance concern, but there was another situation. There was a big problem with three of our suppliers that took everyone’s work to address. After the team got the supplier back on track and quality concerns diminished, Jared took the three employees who were assigned to those suppliers out to lunch to celebrate their success. It caused some hurt feelings among other members of the team because it was widely recognized that everyone participated on the project, not just those that were assigned to the supplier,” Tom said. “Jared told me later that he wanted to hold up those three as role models in working with their suppliers. And then there are the gifts.”
“Gifts?” Paul asked, puzzled.
“Around the holidays, Jared’s team started giving him gifts. They started out as nominal sorts of things like pen and pencil sets or a desk clock,” Tom said. “Then someone gave him a generous gift card, another gave him a new briefcase, and another gave him an expensive bottle of wine. It turned into some kind of competition. Jared pointed to that as an example of his good relationship with the team, but we finally had to ask employees to stop. It’s strange because we don’t usually share gifts like that here. It’s never happened,” Tom said.
“That really sounds like an odd situation. Why would employees give lavish gifts to a manager they reportedly dislike?” Paul wondered.
“Agreed. When I asked them about it, they said they felt obligated and actually complained about that, too. But I can’t figure out how they would feel obligated when no employees across any of my other groups have ever given a gift to a manager. I don’t really want to open up that whole gift situation again with employees, but I mention it just as background. You see how confused I am,” Tom stated, exasperated. “My gut feeling is that there is some element of truth on both sides or some kind of deep misunderstanding. I need your help figuring out what that is and what to do about it.”
“Let’s start with Jared,” Paul said.
Meeting With Jared
“Hi Jared, I’m Paul.” Paul introduced himself and sat down at the table in Jared’s office.
“I can’t thank you enough for your time on this project,” Jared said. “I am really hoping that you can help me understand how I can improve my relationships on this team and my management skills.”
“I’m glad to help,” Paul said. “I’d like to learn a little more about your transition to leading this team and how that went from your perspective.”
“Absolutely. I have worked for the company for the past five years but only for the past six months on this team. I transferred from our east coast office to take over for Brad after his promotion,” Jared said. “When I began, my first order of business was to improve productivity on the team. I took a look at the projects per employee as well as the weekly hours spent per employee with suppliers. Both of those were significant metrics for me to look at, and both were about 20% lower than I would have expected based on my experience. In my first few weeks, I had a meeting with the team where I asked them to identify initiatives that would help us improve our numbers. We came up with four initiatives as a group, and we chose project teams and team leaders for each initiative. Employees volunteered for the initiatives, and I have always said that the team owns them.”
“Tell me how those initiatives have been progressing,”