Introduction to the Situation
Bill is a young manager with a good salary. Bill leads a team of salespersons, but he is unhappy in his job and has difficulty finding contentment at work. There is a high degree of competitiveness between his employees, and often his team seems to work against each other competing for their commissions. Bill needs help on how to be a better leader and find happiness in his work.
Several elements require attention in the case study. First, Bill is unhappy and lacks contentment at his work. Second, Bill’s team of salespersons compete among themselves for higher commissions.
From coaching perspectives, two critical problems exist that any coach should tackle to help Bill and his team of salespersons. A lack of motivation at work affects Bill’s happiness while negative and unproductive competitions for commission affect employees’ performance because they cannot work as a team for the benefit of the organisation.
Background Information
A coach requires a balanced perspective to solve Bill’s problems successfully. It is imperative to identify problems, which are within and outside one’s control. This process challenges one’s perception about a problem.
The current crisis that Bill experiences has changed his priorities about work. Bill shows that he is less interested in salary. Instead, he shows that getting self-fulfilment, pleasure and meaning from work have become imperative in organisations. In this context, psychologists and coaches must focus on addressing employees’ happiness at work. Thus, the company must support Bill’s happiness and personal fulfilment at work.
Positive psychology can address challenges that Bill faces at work. A lack of motivation in an employee can lead to negative outcomes for the employee and an organisation.
One must recognise that competition in an organisation can drive business and results. However, competition among Bill’s salespersons has affected their teamwork and collaboration efforts. The incentive program has created unproductive situation in the company in which employees do not work as a team. An organisation can overcome this challenge by introducing a reward and acknowledgement system that supports teamwork alongside individuals’ contributions. This may encourage employees to share relevant information and work toward a common goal.
Thus, there is a need to create teamwork and collaboration among salespersons in the company. At the same time, a coaching perspective must account for employee motivation and the need to help each other for the overall benefit of the organisation.
Recommendations & Action Plan
Positive psychology should enhance happiness at work. In this context, the organisation must understand the present situation of Bill and adopt coaching perspectives that motive and promote employee happiness at work. First, Bill must assess his strengths and engage in productive activities. Coaching can help Bill to utilise his strengths effectively in innovative ways. However, Bill must experience positive outcomes from his strengths in order to derive happiness from his work. The coaching strategy should encourage the following:
- Employees should be significantly involved in their roles. This would help them to derive positive meanings, experiences and happiness at work.
- Employees should engage in challenging tasks to utilise their strengths and skills for optimal balance between tasks and outcomes.
- Most managers get self-fulfilment if they can notice changes in their staff and the organisation. In this case, Bill does not understand what needs he meets among his sales team. In addition, Bill may not recognise how he contributes to overall goals of the company. Thus, a coaching approach should allow Bill to notice a greater good beyond individual achievements and completing personal routine tasks.
- Employees should derive positive emotions from their work in order to be happy in their career lives. Positive thoughts and emotions can enhance an employee’s response capabilities to tasks, be productive and resilient in job performance.
- Employees should be optimistic about the future. In this regard, an organisation must set positive goals and assist employees to achieve such goals.
One major challenge that the reward system has created among Bill’s salespersons is competition. Consequently, teamwork and collaboration among employees who compete on a commission basis can no longer work in the organisation. Therefore, the organisation must focus on rewarding team efforts alongside individuals’ efforts. A coaching approach must address the relevance of teamwork in the organisation. In this process, Bill may assign tasks in the following manner.
- Assign tasks to a team rather than individuals. This would facilitate sharing of responsibilities among employees based on their strengths.
- The team should work together to brainstorm and generate ideas. Consequently, employees may end up with various alternatives that meet their needs in different ways.
- The reward and compensation system should recognise excellent performance and teamwork. In addition, an organisation should develop a metric for recognising individuals’ contributions.
Self-fulfilment and job satisfaction will drive Bill to achieve happiness at work. Thus, Bill may get positive outcomes from his roles if he understands how he contributes to the team effort.
Individual recognition is likely to motivate employees to accept changes. However, the organisation must relate compensations and rewards to its goals and policies. This would enhance fairness among employees. In addition, Bill must also demonstrate his commitment to the change process as a way of motivating employees to support the process. Otherwise, employees would fail to support change initiatives in the organisation.
However, Bill may encounter challenges with employees. Conflicts may occur when employees work as a team. Therefore, it is imperative to have management skills for handling conflicts without creating any negative impacts a collaborative relation among employees.
Employees are most likely to resist any changes, particularly with regard to their compensation systems. In this process, some of the employees may leave their jobs for other organisations.
Therefore, any realistic expectation must account for possible resistance to change and employee attrition.
Conclusion
By offering psychological and coaching perspectives on competition among employees and failure to be happy at work and leadership strategies, coaches can assist executives and their teams to maximise their strengths and build a motivated team. Employees would find happiness and motivation when they are able to work together, balance their self-interests and support organisational goals.
Therefore, the main aim of a coach, when helping a client with problems, is to identify, clarify, solve and support a client to overcome his or her challenges. In this process, the coach must help the client to develop realistic expectations about the process.
Coaching perspectives and decisional strategies of coaching are suitable for developing effective intervention programmes for inter-connected problems. In this case study, the coach must develop interventions that promote happiness at work and motivate employees to work together. Thus, managers need to be engaged in their roles, derive meaning from work and experience positive emotions as they strive to meet their personal interests, organisational interests and assist their staff.