Exercise Overview

Interpersonal skills include the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate both individuals and groups. Communication skills refer to the managers abilities to both effectively convey ideas and information to others and receive ideas and information from others. This exercise will help you develop both of these skills as they relate to implementing a change.

Exercise Background

Assume that you are the manager of a retail store in a local shopping mall. The store is part of a large major retail chain that owns several different brands. Your staff consists of seven full-time and ten part-time employees. Each full-time employee has at least three years of experience in your store. They all like one another and work well togetherthey often refer to themselves as a team. Your part-time employees are all local college students; a few have worked in the store for more than a year, but there tends to be a lot of turnover among this group.

Your boss, the regional manager, has just informed you that the retailer plans to open a second store in a new section of the same mall. This store will carry similar merchandise at similar prices as your store but under a different brand name. She has informed you that you must implement the following changes:

1.	You will serve as manager of both stores until the sales volume of the new store warrants its own full-time manager.
2.	You are to designate one of the full-time employees in your present store as the assistant manager, since you will be in the store less often now.
3.	In order to have experienced workers in the new store, you are to select three of your current full-time workers to move to the new store, one of whom should also be appointed as assistant manager of that store.
4.	You can hire three new people to replace those transferred from your existing store and three new people to work at the new store.
5.	You can decide for yourself how to deploy your part-timers, but you will need a total of ten in the existing store and eight at the new store.

You expect that many of your employees will be unhappy with these changes. They all know and, as noted earlier, work well together. However, the new store will be in a new section of the mall and will be a very nice place to work. You are now contemplating how to proceed.

Use your interpersonal and communication skills to answer the following questions.

1. Which step in the comprehensive approach to change are you about to address?

a) Evaluation and follow-up

b) Planning for implementation of the change

c) Recognition of the need for change

d) Selection of appropriate change technique

2. Assuming you decide to communicate the impending change to the seven full-time workers as a group, how should you most effectively do this?

a) Send them an email or a text message

b) Tell them one-by-one as you see them.

c) Schedule a special meeting one day either before or after store hours.

3. Your managers plan is designed to have the greatest impact on which of the following aspects of the organization?

a) Organization structure and design

b) People, attitudes, and behaviors

c) Technology and operations

d) Business processes