The Individual Contributor March 2014 | Page 31

Bottom Line, Inc. Individual Contributor - Participant’s Workbook BRING IT ON Case Study Case Study #1 You consider yourself to be a dedicated, hard-working employee, frequently staying late and pitching in to do whatever needs to be done – a real team player. Because you often work on weekends you have no time to schedule personal appointments. In fact, you have put off a long-overdue visit to the dentist. You finally decided that you could no longer put this off and made an appointment for today. When you tell your manager that you are leaving early to go to the dentist, he tells you that you can’t go, and then further chastises you by saying, “You don’t have your priorities in order. What about your commitment to the company?”   What are the various approaches you might take to deal with this situation? What are the potential outcomes of each approach? Case Study #2 You are a fairly new employee, but you have come to the organization with considerable experience. In your present position, you must work with a more seasoned employee of the company, whose behavior is less than friendly. You are anxious to do a good job and realize that your co-worker has a great deal of knowledge and experience, but is unwilling to share that information. When something goes wrong, your co-worker places the blame on you. You, however, believe you are not at fault because your co-worker withheld valuable information that would have prevented the mistake. In order to learn your job, you need to develop and maintain a good relationship with your co-worker. You sense that this person is competitive and territorial and believe that he is deliberately doing things to keep you from being successful.   What are the various approaches you might take to deal with this situation? What are the potential outcomes of each approach? 31 | P a g e