MEMORANDUM

To: Dynamic Display Senior Management

Subject: Frank Davis and Thomas Green Conflict

Thomas Green and Frank Davis have hit a major snag in their employment relationship
and their respective workplace successes. This was bound to happen from the start because
Daviss superior, McDonald, hired Green without consulting Davis for his opinion. Additionally,
in their first meeting, Davis set what Green believed to be an impossible sales growth goal for his
region. Green challenged this in front of the other employees, making the situation between the
two even worse. To top it off, Davis repeatedly assigned him small tasks that he deemed
pointless in his quest to meet his goal. The conflict between Green and Davis has now escalated
to a dangerous point, and if it is not resolved, Green will likely lose his job. The faults of both
parties must be analyzed in order to effectively come up with a solution that will benefit both.
Using the Managerial Grid, Frank Daviss leadership style reflects high task, low
relationship priorities. He has complete disregard for the realistic abilities of Green and his only
priority is to fulfill the growth measure. Instead of trying to determine Greens sales techniques
and how he is going about doing his job, he is most worried about Green not updating his
Outlook calendar. His concern with the small day-to-day activities overshadows the fact that he
has no plan to accomplish his high expectation for 10% growth.
Green sees himself as needing delegate leadership according to Hersey and Blanchards
Situational Leadership Theory. He believes he has high skill and high will, when actually his
skill may not be as great as he deems. In reality, his high will and low skill shows that he needs
guidance. Davis will not give him the guidance he needs, however. Davis treats him as though he
has low will and low skill, using direct leadership. Davis most likely believes he is giving
guidance, but he is not. His leadership style is solely based on task-related behaviors with no
relationship related behaviors at all. Green makes this situation worse by avoiding and ignoring
Davis without doing anything to appease him.
According to Houses Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, Daviss priority is task
characteristics. It should not be, because closing sales is a complex system that cannot be done
well by only performing simple tasks. He should instead use participative leadership, with a little
directive leadership involved. Since Green sees no point in doing day-to-day tasks, Daviss job
should be to convince him that the things he asks him to do will make him more successful.
Davis does not have a lot of personal power and does not care to use any sort of referent
power. He does not care to be friendly or build a relationship with Green or other employees.
Instead, his focus is on positional power. He is using this power to try to get Green out of his
position because from the start he wanted to choose his own person for that job. By punishing
Green for not following his directions and reporting to his boss that Green is failing at his job, he
is relying solely on legitimate and coercive power. Green is resistant to this exercise of power,
which makes it even less effective. Lastly, neither Green nor Davis are sustaining power. They
are both performing actions that lose power, such as having inflexibility, a lack of empathy for
others, a sense of entitlement, and an inflated view of themselves.
The source of the problems between Green and Davis is the disagreement about how
realistic the goal is. Davis set the goal, and Green challenged it immediately and deemed it
unrealistic. Because of Daviss reliance on positional power, he did not take well to this
challenge. This fundamental disagreement over priorities has caused everything between them to
spiral out of control. There is some interdependence between the two, since Greens performance
reflects on Davis, but Davis does not seem to care about that. There is stronger dependence
asymmetry present. Because Davis is the boss, Green relies on him more than he relies on Green.
Therefore, Davis has all of the power in this relationship. He uses a push style to influence, and
relies on the authority principal while Green relies on the liking principal.
The level of conflict between Davis and Green is interpersonal conflict. They are within
the same office group, but they have fundamental disagreements about how to get the job done.
Cognitive conflict is the source of conflict, which is a better, healthier conflict than affective
conflict. However, this abundance of cognitive conflict has evolved into affective conflict. This
is mostly Daviss fault for reporting straight to McDonald after the first disagreement.
Obviously, the conflict between Davis and Green has been escalated. They need to de-
escalate before something drastic happens, such as Green losing his job. To do this, they must
diagnose the disagreement and then take specific actions to resolve it. This is a two-sided task
and they must cooperate in order to be successful. They could have and should have engaged in
integrative negotiation.
 In order to motivate Green, Davis should use intrinsic rewards, rather than extrinsic ones.
By giving Green simple tasks paired with a nearly impossible sales goal and the threat of losing
his job, Davis has failed at adequately motivating him. According to the Acquired Needs Theory,
Davis is an achievement oriented manager. His primary focus is on self-imposed goals, and this
has led him to be a micromanager using a command and control style of leading. Because the
sales business he is in is a more complex organization, he should instead be a Socialized-Power
Oriented Manager. In addition, Davis follows the Goal-Setting Theory of management. This
corresponds to setting challenging yet achievable goals for the employees. The key to success for
this is that the goals are accepted by the employees. This has definitely not happened, as Green
immediately challenged the sales growth goal demanded by Davis, and is the source of the
difficulty between the two.
In conclusion, if the conflict between Davis and Green is to be de-escalated, it will take
effort from both parties. Davis needs to exercise more personal power and give Green the
guidance he needs. He also needs to listen to Greens feedback, and give him more power to do
the job in the way that he is most successful. Green, on the other hand, needs to understand that
his skill is not as great as he believes it to be. He also needs to treat Davis with more respect,
since he is his superior, and must do the small day-to-day tasks that he deems a waste of time.
While he may have no need for an updated calendar or notes in his selling strategies, it is
important for his superiors and coworkers alike to have an understanding of what he is doing and
how. If both Green and Davis can accept their mistakes and work to resolve these issues, then
they have potential to overcome their difficulties and be successful in their jobs.