ROLE PLAY BOSS-SUBORDINATE

The brilliant technician

Brief for the manager

You are ROHIT VERMA Vice President of a division in ASK SOFTSOL LTD. The
company has business all over the world with an annual turnover of 138 crores approx.
Your division is responsible to the main company for the specification, writing,
production and commissioning of software for use in production control and
automation system.

You have a team of 12 staff engaged on anything up to 10 separate projects

simultaneously. You operate in small project teams using people with the necessary
skills for each separate project. Most of your staff are involved in 3 or 4 projects at once.

One person, MAITRI, is involved in them all. She is, quite literally, invaluable to
your and the rest of the team, as her ability to recognize and diagnose problems in
software programs is amazing. The mistakes and inconsistencies seem to jump out at
her ad she is able to construct ways of making programs sit up and beg in remarkably
short periods of time. She is used as trouble shooter and any project with gremlins,
glitches or bugs in the system is passed to Maitri to sort out.

Unfortunately,after some time her manner towards the rest of the team is very
condescending and off hand. She manages to put the back up of everyone who comes to
her with a problem. She appears contemptuous of anyone not able to follow her
reasoning, which she insists on spelling out at great length on every possible occasion.
Her ability to communicate effectively is poor. Not only can she not seem to relate to
others but she also seems incapable of explaining anything in any but the most complex
way. She has shown that she posses an attitude problem with others. The result is that
people are reluctant to go and see her with a problem until they have spent many hours
trying to resolve it themselves in an attempt to avoid using her skills altogether. This, of
course, delays projects. So, inspite of her trouble shooter Skills ,people don’t want to
take her services.

You have to keep things with you, since many problems would be either
insoluble or extremely costly to solve without her. You would like to use her to pass on
some of her diagnostic skills to other in the team but her current attitude and lack of
communication skills doesn’t allow you to succeed much.

MAITRI is able to get through huge amounts of work and happy when
engrossed in a really complex problem.
 Her results, accuracy and success in producing first-time solutions are first class.

TASK ON HAND

You have 15 minutes to study the case and come up with a cascading solution of people
ignoring her for her interpersonal skills and attitude.Prepare a action plan to handle
Maitri in this situation because you are due to see her for her appraisal in your office
shortly .

Prepare the plan so that appraisal includes the appreciation and as well as a gentle
reminder for the fineness with the interpersonal skills .

You are also expected to handle the issues with which she comes up and give a handy
solution to her problems.

Subordinate
You are the MAITRI SHARMA working in ASK SOFTSOL LTD as asstt.software
engineer. The company has business all over the world with an annual turnover of 138
crores approx. You work for a division of a large company whose task is to
specify ,write ,produce and commission software for use in production control and
automation systems. The rest of the 12-strong team operate in small project groups,
formed of people with the relevant Skills for the project .

You tend to operate alone as the overseer of the software programming .Any problems
arising during the commissioning phase ,or difficulties in writing programs to achieve
particular results, are brought to you to resolve .You have demonstrated time and again
your ability to recognize or diagnose errors and problems very quickly .In addition, you
have always been able to see ways round problems that others have found great
difficulty with.

The rest of the team may be good at selling ,good production engineers or analysts but
they are certainly not good programmers .You keep trying to tell them where they are
going wrong but they seem to resent it. You used to get involved in all the projects at
an early stage to advise on programming but this is happening less now and you seem
to get only the really difficult problems that the others have tried to solve and failed .
You now seem to spend your time digging them out of the mine .

You are very proud of what you have done and of the time and money you have saved
the company with your problem solving skills. You really enjoy the challenge of a
difficult problem to solve and have excellent powers of concentration that help you to
arrive at better solutions quicker than everyone else. You could reduce the errors in
programming and speed successful commissioning if people would consult you earlier,
but they seem to resent your abilities.

Task on hand

You are given 15 minutes to study the case and your Vice President has called you for
the appraisal.

As you approach for your appraisal with your vice president you have decided that
you would like to tackle this problem and try to get involved more in the early stages so
that you can keep a closer eye on the programming. This way, when programs and
systems are being commissioned, you will not have to spend so much time, under his
pressure, trying to get them to work properly. Prevention is; after all, better than cure
and this should reduce project length .

You want your boss to recognize the contribution you make and to formalize the special
position that your skills entitle you to.