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"Managing a Difficult Employee" Application of Human Driver Systems (by: G.A.Tan ( DC practitioner )
John is a supervisor at the Production Department. He has worked with the company for the past 25 years, starting as an operator, later to a line leader, a senior line leader and eventually was promoted to supervisor about 15 years ago. He was in charge of one section called Zone A during the first 10 years. In the last 5 years, he was assigned an additional section, Zone C. John is known for his strictness in controlling his operators, his commitment to the job and his good performance.
The original organizational structure was that John, as a supervisor, reported to Production Section Head (PSH) who in turn reported the Production Manager (PM). A separate team of engineers and technicians reported to the Process Engineering Section Head (PESH) who in turn reported to the same PM.
Last year, however, the Production Department was restructured with the creation of a new position called Production Head (PH). The new reporting structure is as follows:
Prior to the organizational change, cooperation between the supervisors and process engineers was considered 'normal", with occasional disagreements about the improvement activities. However, soon after the changes, we began to receive increasing
feedback from engineers on the difficulty in getting John's (supervisor) approval to carry out improvement activities in the production area, despite prior agreement during team meetings. John's reaction to any violation of protocol was also getting more intense. During one recent incident, he shouted incessantly at one engineer for 'back stabbing' him over a report on the cause of machinery breakdown. While his immediate superior, PH, had attempted to calm him down by accessing the Emperor posture in a calm tone, John was not deterred by his intervention. The report was later discovered to be unfounded, it was simply a misunderstanding.
We also received complaints from John about having too heavy a work load, having to take care of two zones during a period of increasing customer orders, which occurred twice a year during peak period. As a result of John's changed behavior, productivity of the entire team was affected with low morale and projects not meeting schedule.
The problem with John's recent behavior finally came to light during John's appraisal review session. We realized that, rising from rank and files as he had, John always had great fear of being replaced by more qualified engineers. The organizational restructuring had indeed placed his need for Control/Security under enormous threat, or so he believed. Our finding was further 'reinforced' by the incidents that he felt offended when protocol was breached and that he was resigned to requesting a reduction in responsibility.
If John's needs ranking was known earlier, we would have been able to address his fears directly by explaining to him the situation and providing him with assurance given his good performance and loyalty. The loss of productivity resulting from this incident is tremendous.
In the incident where John was shouting at and accusing the engineer for "back-stabbing", John's immediate superior, PSH, would have succeeded in 'controlling' John if he had adopted the Warrior posture instead. We believe the implication of accessing the right posture in such an incident is beyond merely getting the situation under control. It is essential firstly to strengthen and reinforce the perception and confidence in the leadership of PH. Secondly, it would have prevented similar incidents from happening, as explained in the next paragraph.
In a second occasion John was in Warrior posture against his immediate superior about some decision made by him. We observed an immediate shift in John's tone and attitude when his boss put up a similar Warrior posture, albeit without knowing it! Although the Warrior posture by John's immediate superior was confrontational in nature, the situation did not escalate, possibly due to his position as John's superior. Nevertheless we can see the effect it has on a person when the right posture for a situation is applied.
