Introduction
Falcon University recently hired Amandeep as Vice-President to oversee the fundraising and alumni services. Amandeep has an impressive resume with an impressive marketing career where she has spearheaded many fundraising programs for major national charities. Using your Organizational Behaviour concepts, you will describe what is happening in this case.
Scenario 1: Perceptions, Values, Personality, Emotions, and Attitudes
Amandeep started her role as Vice-President 6 months ago and feels that she inherited a team that she wouldn't have hired. They are all Millennials (Generation Y) who are Falcon alumni that
started working at the university immediately after graduation. She could tell that the team was quite close and social with each other, which caused her to be suspicious of their work ethic. Now she is sure that this turnover is a result of her expecting hard work and loyalty to her direction and they are just too lazy to work under her leadership. She knew from the beginning she was dealing with poor hires from the previous VP and so she had to treat them with strict rules. Until she could figure out how to restructure, Amandeep had to closely watch over their work. Already her team is confirming for Amandeep that they cannot be trusted to complete their
work effectively.
Amandeep also couldn't believe how quiet an unwelcoming her team was. She was their new boss after all, and they should want to please her. She was expecting that they would be so excited about her significant fundraising experience and achievements and not one team member
has asked her about her impressive background. Her team has some significant fundraising goals to, and Amandeep is determined to drive them hard to achieve these goals. Amandeep needs to demonstrate her capability in fundraising and her team needs to land some big donors to help her
look good to the President. In her previous executive role, her team knew how important it was to make sure that she looked good to her CEO. She has ambition to one day be CEO and this mess that she has inherited is going to cause her issues with that goal if she doesn't take swift action.
By month 4 two of her directors had quit and then her Director of Marketing, Mohan, told her that he needed to take stress leave. What he didn't share is how much anxiety it caused him to pretend to be friendly to Amandeep when she treated so many people so poorly. In each team meeting he felt that Amandeep responded best to praise of her ideas, and she has repeated her expectations of positivity. His challenge has been mustering the energy to smile and deliver praise to Amandeep when deep-down he is angry and distraught about her behaviour. He cared about the team members that he had worked with for many years and couldn't believe that her leadership style was causing people to burnout and quit. She responded to him in shock and anger "You call this stressful? You should have worked at my last company! Well, you will have
to talk to HR then because I don't have time to deal with this. This team keeps leaving me with more and more of a mess to clean up!"
