Reference no: EM133350836

Case Study: You are the director of administration for Brewster, Koperniak & Cohen, a law firm with multiple offices across the state. You recently hired a promising staff director, Deacon, who used to work for a competitor. Deacon brings a lot of skills and experience your firm could use, talents your competitors would love to acquire by hiring him away. You notice that he is left out of conversations and company jokes and often sits alone at meetings. You want him to feel more connected and to encourage his long-term employment with the firm. You feel that if he participates in some group activities, he will engage better with his colleagues.
You encourage Deacon to seek out the informal groups you know are positive within the main office, but you know that you might be able to use his talents on one of the firm's formal committees. You choose to have him serve on the business planning committee.
At the next business planning committee meeting, you invite Deacon. It's a disaster: Virtually all the committee members approach you individually within the next week to tell you they "don't appreciate you adding a staffer to oversee" them and say his suggestions were offensive to "the way we do things in our group." Deacon reports that the lawyers were cold to him, deliberately facing away from him and refusing to give him copies of their reports. "That's no way to treat a committee member," he grumbles.
You realize you've made a mistake.

Question 1: According to Chapter 9, specifically Group Properties, what do you think is the situation that Deacon is facing?

Question 2: Applying the information from Chapter 10, specifically what factors determine whether a teams are successful, what might you do to aid Deacon with a) the Business Planning Committee, and b) his general engagement with his colleagues? (e.g. pull Deacon from the committee, etc.)