Managing in Organizations

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BUS 38001 Managing in Organizations – Section 81

By Prof. Ed O’Brien

Summer 2019

Thought Paper 4

7/26/2019

Matthew Lemenager (12178269)

I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this case write-up.

1. Do NOT use the $h*t sandwich approach to deliver the message of negative feedback.  This is counter to what I’ve thought and learned before, but the points from the lecture make sense.  If you deliver a piece of positive news, followed by the negative feedback, followed by another piece of positive news, the employee is likely to only grasp onto the positive pieces.  They walk away from the conversation thinking they are doing a stellar (or at least fine) job, when in reality you were trying to deliver a piece of critical feedback and drive change.  

1. Some questions that came to mind included: Why do some people work hard and focus all day long, while other in the same role seems to skate by and do the bare minimum?

How does motivation level fade over time? Meaning, if someone is in the same role for 2+ years, do they lose the motivation that they had on day one? Are there ways to combat this loss of motivation by adding new roles & responsibilities to their daily/monthly tasks?

One of the concepts that I took away from the readings was people makes decisions (and choose their actions) based on what they see as the potential outcomes.  Said another way, they will do things that potentially lead to a reward, and not do things that have undesired outcomes.  In forming a motivation level, aligning the employees incentives and your intended outcomes as a manager is an important component.