1. What behaviors by Alex are having the greatest impact on the 360° data provided by coworkers? Which of these behaviors are positive and which are negative? Alex is a very motivated and intelligent individual.
He is a high performance individual, with tremendous commitment to his job. He demands a lot from himself and his coworkers. His 360° evaluation and performance feedback highlights both his positive and negative traits. He functions as a natural born leader, ready for challenges, with a drive for leadership.
He quickly grasps complexities and makes quick and decisive judgments.He “takes charge” of people. Alex is very career-focused and fits into the corporate world quite naturally. He sees things from a long-range perspective, is successful at identifying plans to turn problems around, driven to leadership, and tireless in his efforts on the job.
Alex sees in himself a tremendous amount of personal power and presence. This will work as a force towards achieving their goals. However, this personal power is also an agent of alienation and self-aggrandizement. The positive traits that show up in multiple reviews are commitment, hard work, initiative, knowledge and intellect.
The performance review of Alex demonstrates that he is a very intelligent, high achievement individual with outstanding motivation and commitment. There is not much room for error in the world of Alex. He dislikes seeing mistakes repeated, and has no patience with inefficiency. He has difficulty seeing things from outside his own perspective.
He is viewed as forceful, intimidating and overbearing individual. This, in turn, can be a real problem as can lead to a deprivation of important information and collaboration from others. The negative traits are arrogance, lack of maturity and absence of “people skills”.The second characteristic is described in a variety of different ways.
Some described it as being very critical (and not being sensitive to others), others as “not praising others often”, being “a Lone Ranger”, and controlling. Carl Jung’s psychological topology would classify Alex as an ENTJ (Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging). 2. What does the 360° data tell us about Alex’s likely career success? If you were Sam Glass, would you invest more time in helping Sander progress at Landon? Alex is an example of an individual with outstanding motivation and intelligence.
He is a very committed individual, focused and driven to succeed. Unfortunately he does have some troublesome negative traits. He suffers from a lack of people skills, which impacts his ability to function even better as a motivator and team manager. The feedback from Alex’s 360° data indicates that there are serious inter-personal issues.
In addition, he seems to be not sure of what his future job direction is. He has done well and is confident of going in a direction appropriate for his future ambitions. He does not believe that Landon is his only option for the future; therefore he could very easily explore other options.As Sam Glass, my approach to a subordinate like Alex would be to invest time and mentor the individual.
There are various people skills that Alex needs to acquire and it is Sam’s responsibility to make an attempt in trying to educate/help mature Alex. That attempt might be futile but that attempt is necessary towards a subordinate. The major fact that needs emphasized is that Alex could mature and learn to nurture the members of his team. As the manager of a team, he needs to learn how to spot and respond to talent, how to encourage it to grow, whilst gently directing the course of his team.
As a manager of the team, he needs to understand that team members also play a role in the team’s success, communicate that subtly, but effectively, and learn to delegate and trust. As a manager, he needs to create a situation in which team members respect him and are inspired by, and happy to be led by him. In addition, he needs to cope with the fact that certain members of the team may in some respects be brighter and more able than him; he needs to be comfortable about that too. Individuals such as Alex typically have limited life spans in companies.
They are there to meet specific goals/ turn-around companies; once that is accomplished they need to move on and face their next challenge. This is due to 2 reasons: one is their need for challenges; secondly their work-style is consistent with an environment needing drastic/immediate change. They do not function very well in a harmonious environment. Based on the above, I think that Sam’s efforts to mentor Alex will not yield any short-term positive results.
Alex might imbibe some of Sam’s advice; however it will take a few more experience for it to sink in, if it ever does.Alex’s continuation at Landon would depend on the job requirements. Challenges like establishing markets for new products would be appropriate and motivating for him and fit his style of working. On the other hand, sustaining and increasing market share might not fit his work style and be adequately challenging.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Sander’s tough-guy approach? Alex is a highly talented individual with very different values and motivation from the majority of people. In his perception, more is expected of him and he expects more in return.He is obviously high-impact, but his style is high-maintenance too.
He needs to be continuously challenged. He can deal with more complexity but gets frustrated more readily and expresses this frustration readily. The advantages of Alex the style of approach are many. He is a natural born leader, who likes surmounting challenges and wants to be the one responsible for surmounting them.
He sees things from a long-range perspective, and seems to be successful at identifying plans to turn problems around. He has a drive for leadership, complimented by a quick grasp of complex issues.He demonstrates significant abilities to learn and absorb large amounts of information. He is tireless and driven, with tremendous work-ethics.
He has the requisite intellect and decision-making skills for quick and decisive judgments. They are “take charge” people. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of Alex’s style of approach are also many. He is not considerate and there is no room for error.
He does not have any patience with inefficiency and can be quite harsh in his criticism of errors and inefficiencies. He does not believe in being considerate of people’s feelings.He also has a difficulty time seeing things from outside his own perspective. He also comes across as being forceful, intimidating and overbearing individual.
In the corporate world, team building and leading is also a critical skill. Alex will be a great short-term manager but will have long-term issues in one environment. He will be an individual who changes jobs frequently. 4.
How well would you do working with a person like Alex as a teammate? As a boss? As a direct report of yours? The personality of Alex provides different challenges in these different settings.Teammate: As a teammate, Alex would be willing to do a lot of heavy lifting on a project. His commitment would be outstanding. He would also bring to the table novel ideas and innovative approaches.
However this would be counter balanced by an attitude of knowing everything and being superior. He might not be receptive to ideas of other team members, if those contradicted his opinions. There will be personality clashes also if he were to be inappropriate/ inconsiderate with colleagues. Boss: Alex would be a good person to learn from.
Alex himself puts in the time and effort to have a deep knowledge base of the work and related issues. He is intelligent and innovative and would be able to provide interesting perspectives for problem resolution. He has long-term vision and would be a good teacher. This is counter-balanced by the demand that this relationship would impose.
He would need one to be totally committed (have “no life”) and immersed in the job. This learning process would also proceed well only if the subordinate has a sharp intellect; otherwise Alex will shred you to pieces.Finally one needs to walk into this learning experience with a thick skin; it is important to realize that there will be “insulting” situations. The goal is to derive maximum benefit; sensitivities should therefore be left outside the door before embarking on this experience with Alex as the mentor.
Direct report: This relationship would create its own issues. Alex has intellect and work-related skills; he will deliver the goods. However he needs to be mentored on “people skills”. He needs to learn to be a motivator and to extract the best from every employee.
Maybe these are skill sets he will never acquire.As a person above Alex in the food chain, he presents a different problem. He is critical of other individuals for a variety of reasons (failures/ pace of work/ knowledge etc. ).
This can create a situation where Alex is critical of “me” (his boss) for justified/ no obvious reasons. This creates a morale/respect issue with people reporting to me as well as serves to under-cut authority. This could also escalate with negative feedback to people higher up in the corporate ladder. He would therefore need to be dealt with carefully and could potentially generate unrest for me and the general work environment.
