Leadership and Employee Morale

You value your company's virtual team policy of letting employees live all across the United States
while using technology to collaborate and communicate with one another in order to accomplish the
work. As Marketing Manager, you are responsible for a team of ten employees that live in different
states. You have to meet critical deadlines and often times in short timeframes. Lately one of your
valuable team members, James Dion has been disgruntled and is complaining about everything,
even things unrelated to work. On your weekly team conference calls, his negative attitude is
affecting morale and causing lack of enthusiasm among the team.

There is nothing wrong with the quality of James's work and he meets all the deadlines. He was in
charge of one of the company's latest ad campaigns and was successful in meeting the client's goals.
You have tried to discuss his negative attitude with him but he continues to complain about no one on
the team caring about his contributions even though you have reinforced him several times. Typically,
in a face-to-face work arrangement, you would take him to lunch and talk to him about this issue but
being in a virtual arrangement forces you choose another option.

Task: You have decided to communicate with James Dion to assure him of the importance of his
work, quality of his efforts and value he brings to the team. Let him know he plays a critical role in the
project and overall success of the team. However, his attitude needs to change. When you
communicate with him, you can make up whatever details you need.

Checklist:

? Choose a medium of communication that is most effective in the virtual environment and explain why you chose it.

? Detail in a step by step manner how you would communicate your message using your selected form of medium (e-mail, telephone, video-conference, etc.).

Based on the detailed process you outlined above, write a detailed one to two page response in APA format.