Learning Activity 1 Theme One: We said earlier that crafting the strategic plan is not enough a leader has to sell the story to others. Trust is the building block of the leader-follower relationship.
Reading the course readings for the week. What would you suggest Lane do to protect his relationship with Kent and his staff? Include in the answer a description of what trust means to a leader, and how it creates followers and loses them. What suggestions would you give Kent to help him fix and rebuild his relationships? Be specific and practical with your suggestions to both questions.
Lois Lane is the head of the Marketing Division at GDD. GDD is caught in a competitive pricing squeeze with Fed Ex on small packaging deliveries. Lane hired a consultant to study the branding of GDD's product to see if they can create a broader buyer base for the service; thereby, reducing the price to make it more competitive with Fed Ex. After the consultant's recommendations were received and Lane evaluated the results, she spoke with Social Media Manager, Clark Kent. Kent, asked Lane if he could implement the consultant's recommendations immediately. Kent thought the company would see an immediate result. Lane worried that in Kent's rush to implement, he may not have considered the time required to create quality work.
The campaign designers would be under great pressure to make what Lane considered unrealistic goals. Lane vocalized this point to Kent who assured her that it would work and that her employees could "see the vision". Against her qualms, and anxious to empower Kent to make his own decisions, Lane did not act on her concerns and gave Kent the green light. Lane did watch things and soon realized that her fears were not unfounded. A handful of workers resisted the new work because they felt they could not produce a strong social media campaign without more time.
Today, a delegation has come to Lane's office with concern that the new goals are not working and that Kent is refusing to change the deadlines. "Kent claims," they reported "that they are not using the recommendations properly and if they did, the campaign would be ready by now." The group says that Kent is untrusting them to do their job. They also said that they do not want him to know that they went over his head by coming to Lane. They are afraid it will make matters worse.
Lane has a couple of other concerns with Kent. Lane recently spoke with another colleague, John, who was complaining about Kent's lack of dependability. Kent had asked John to attend an operations conference, and at the last minute sent another supervisor instead, without any explanation. Kent has made other promises of supplies and equipment, and then never followed through. Lane thinks Kent makes promises he cannot keep probably, out of a desire to please. The result is that he acts too quickly without adequate implementation and follow-up. Lane can see that Kent is developing serious trust issues. Worse yet she feels that if she doesn't do something about things soon people will not think her as well as Kent trustworthy.