Reference no: EM132684739

The design staff at EC often complains that the team leader, Josh, is hard to work with, but they cannot do without him. He has great ideas and knows how to implement them well but, in terms of getting the work done, the team complains he is a nightmare. "We send him emails and he either gives us one-word answers, fails to edit what he sends or fails to reply. Sometimes he tells two people to do the same thing not remembering he has given the assignment to someone else. The worse problem is that he prioritizes work in an email and then changes things when events interfere, not communicating the change. Last week, two of us edited a design for a custom front carrier basket for a customer whose deadline was this week, only to find out that Josh had changed the deadline to last week. The basket design that was completed by us both had to be adjusted to one design and the rear basket had to be completed in two days. This meant long nights since creating the printer design code takes time. We have tried to talk with Josh about things like this and he gets better for a while, and then things go back to the way they were. He just doesn't listen."

Josh was asked about the team's concerns and he replied "I spend a lot of time prioritizing and delegating job tasks to the team. I always ask people if they are clear about what is expected of them and, ninety percent of the time, no one answers. I have to assume that they are fine with what I have said. I am the first to admit that I could be better about sending emails. However, I often call people to check on what is being done or stop by to see if things are going okay. I don't want to micromanage what they do. The basket problem last week is an example: I went to check up on the front basket design Don was assigned only to find that Joan was doing the same project (and not working on the rear basket as the schedule said). The customer called me with changes to the front basket, including a deadline change, and I saw Joan in the hallway and told her about the changes. I did not tell her that she was to edit the front basket design; she just assumed that was what I was telling her to do because she was wrongly working on the front basket. I went to Dan and gave him the changes. I sometimes think that they are not listening to me."

-What are the communication issues that are causing problems with the team scenario?

-What are six techniques that can be employed to improve the communication between Josh and the team? Why?

-How can all this information be communicated to the people involved?