A520.2.3RB_SeabournBeau

For my example, I want to focus on a situation where I was the supervisor however, the subordinates were changing day to day and the work environment stayed the same. Each day our facility would staff itself based on the qualifications that each person had and were each person was training. For the situation I'll be referencing, I was almost always one of the supervisors on shift.

Like I said, each day I would have a new set of trainees and they rotated every two or three days back and forth. Although this is okay, the trainees had a hard time grasping the leadership style and approach I was using. I ran into a lot of resistance when I would demand hard work and dedication to getting these trainees qualified. The problem I ran into is that the trainees did not want to work outside work and they did not want to put in as much work as I was expecting them to. I was trying to push them to get qualified fast so my personal workload was smaller. Some where in the process, I became the leader and they became the subordinates. I did end up having to negotiate with them for a couple of reasons. First, I had to because not everyone wanted to go home and spend all their free time doing work related stuff. Second, not everyone learns the same way and everyone processes information differently. The negotiation between us came from a third party (my boss). He suggested that is the trainees were to apply themselves fully at work, that not much would be expected of them outside working hours (studying). Although I didn't gain that much, it took some stress off of the others. The catch for them though was that whoever showed the most promise or determination to learn, had first priority at the opportunity to move up. This made things interesting because they all then realized they had the same shot to get the same job regardless of tenure.

The result was some what mixed. Some of the people who saw this as an opportunity to move up faster, grasped the concept and took full advantage. Others decided that since the pressure was off of them to HAVE to try hard, they simply applied themselves less and less. Eventually (years later), those people who decided to not try hard at that time found themselves being passed by the people who did. The fact that I was making them ALL try hard was something I thought I was doing for all of them. The way some of them viewed it was as if I was pushing them to hard. I think there was a win win for both me and the facility and perhaps maybe the people who tried hard. It was ultimately a learning situation for all of us. 

Can you see any room for improvement to how the conflict was handled.

I look back at this job/leadership role and I sort of regret not being a better leader. I didn't have any formal leadership training at the time and I didn't know how to handle people's outside influences in any decisions I made. Had my upper management understood that, we could have bi-passed all of this to begin. Overall, I learned a lot from that facility, mostly about how to handle those type of situations and how to look into young leaders.