Situation 1: First-Line Supervisor Kate Shalene has been a first-line supervisor for six months. She was proud
Question:
Situation 1: First-Line Supervisor
Kate Shalene has been a first-line supervisor for six months. She was proud of her new promotion, but surprised to discover she felt increasingly powerless. Instead of being a stepping
stone, this position was feeling more and more like a dead end. Managers above her were about her age and the hoped-for company expansion never materialized. She was not a central part of the organization, and she felt no one ever noticed her unless she messed up.
She was expected to be supportive of her subordinates, but they never returned the favor. She was expected to absorb their flack without support from above. In general, she felt as though she was constantly “getting it from both ends.” Her job was extremely rule-bound, so she had little discretion in what she did or how she did it. She had only modest control over the pay or benefits of her subordinates, because their union agreement left very little flexibility. So she felt powerless to reward them or punish them in ways that really mattered.
As a result, she found she was more and more apt to impose rules to get subordinates to do what she wanted. She became increasingly jealous of any successes and recognition
achieved by her subordinates, so she tended to isolate them from people higher up in the organization and from complete information. She lost her penchant for informality and
became increasingly rigid in following standard operating procedures. Predictably, her subordinates were becoming more resentful and less productive.
Situation 2: Staff Professional
Shawn Quinn came to the organization a year ago as a staff professional. He believed it might be a way for him to achieve considerable visibility with the top brass, but instead he
felt isolated and forgotten. As a staff officer, he had almost no decision-making authority except in his narrow area of expertise. Most of what went on in the organization
occurred without his involvement. Innovation and entrepreneurial activity were completely out of his realm. While some of the line officers were given opportunities for professional development, no one seemed to care about his becoming more experienced and capable. They saw him only as a specialist. Because his job didn’t require that he work
with others, he had little opportunity to cultivate relationships that might lead to contacts with someone near the top.
What hurt was that a consultant had been hired a few times to work on projects that were part of his area. If consultants could be brought in to do his work, he thought, he
must not be very important to the organization.
Shawn found himself being more and more turf conscious. He didn’t want others encroaching on his area of expertise. He tried to demonstrate his competence to others,
but the more he did so, the more he became defined as a specialist, outside the mainstream of the organization. Overall, he felt he was losing ground in his career.
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