Victor: All in Good Fun?
Victor has been employed by a software company for over a year. He works in research and development and is extremely good at his job. He is a high potential employee, and everyone is optimistic about his future at the company. Victor is playful and jokes around with everyone. Fortunately, his manager, Daniel, thinks Victor is hilarious and they get along very well. Daniel likes to keep things lighthearted in the department as everyone works hard and appreciates the levity.
A new employee, Wanda, doesn’t seem to appreciate Victor’s humor. She complains to Daniel that Victor’s constant jokes are offensive. Daniel doesn’t agree that Victor is offensive and he asks Wanda not to take Victor so seriously. After a few weeks, Wanda goes back to Daniel to report that things are getting worse with Victor and he is now telling co-workers that Wanda can’t take a joke and that she is very uptight and anxious. The final straw occurred yesterday when Wanda walked into an area where Victor was meeting with a few colleagues and he said, “Oh no, boys, here she comes. Better watch what we say, this one is very sensitive.” Wanda feels increasingly isolated from her peers and asks Daniel for help.
Daniel is not sure how to address this with Victor. He is preparing an evaluation of Victor and is thinking he should just include something in that. Please advise Daniel on next steps. Draft whatever language you think is appropriate, whether as discipline or as part of the performance evaluation.
Allison: Best of Times and Worst of Times
Allison works in the finance department. She loves one aspect of her job – reports and forecasts – but has never been good at providing support to the business development team, which is supposed to be 50% of her job. Allison doesn’t like to work with business development and seems to have adopted the strategy that if she just focuses on the part of her job that she likes and is good at, no one will notice or care that she is not doing the rest of her job. In fact, she is better at running reports and providing accurate and timely forecasts than anyone else on the team and she is hard working and diligent.
The business development group is having a hard time meeting its deadlines without support from Allison. They have a few other people they can turn to when they are desperate, but mostly they just muddle through without getting the information they need from finance. The quality of their work is suffering, but they all like Allison personally and don’t want to rock the boat.
You are Allison’s manager and it is time to evaluate her performance. Draft an evaluation using the Stop, Start, Continue model. How do you rate Allison overall (score of 1 – 5?) What is your plan going forward?
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