Leaders vs managers

‘CASE’ POINT

(1) You are the head of sales at a medium-sized manufacturing company. A little over one year ago, you recruited John to join the company as a sales manager. Since that time, he has been one of your star producers, and his performance has earned rave reviews from senior management and customers. He has generated an enormous amount of business for the company, landing accounts with the four largest retailers in the region. Last year, John was responsible for bringing in additional $10 million in sales revenue. In that same year, full-year revenues increased 15% to $62 million, significantly outpacing all competitors. Gross margins for the year were 42.9%, compared with 38.0% last year, and the selling and administrative expenses were 30.2% of full year-revenues, compared with 29.5% last year.

(2) The CEO credits John with turning around the business and is one of his biggest supporters. Furthermore, the CEO praises you for bringing John to the company. John is viewed by his co-workers and subordinates as intelligent, hard-working, and creative, but they also find him to be arrogant, confrontational, short-tempered, intolerant, and self-promoting. Morale is not good within his group, and earlier this week, two people on John’s team complained to you about how he has been treating them.

(3) John is up for his review. At the time you hired him, you implicitly promised that he would be promoted to national sales manager within one and a half years, which would quadruple the number of employees he supervises. You fear that if he is not promoted, he will leave the company and go to your competitor, taking with him many of the company’s accounts. Likewise, you are concerned about the effect his promotion would have on the rest of the team.

►Case question:

How would you handle the situation?

►Case task:

Prepare a response (typewritten, font: Times New Roman 12, double space) to the following case question:

· How would you handle the case situation? What professional or personal experiences would you draw upon to guide your actions?

The length of your response should vary between 500-600 words.