Motor Parts Corporation

1. Overview

Motor Parts Co is a company led by Bob Marvin, its CEO, whom is said to be tough, perfectionist, who is sometimes perceived as cold and distant, who masks his shyness with formality. Over the past few months, Bob has felt a great deal of conflict and frustration as his executive V, Al has been facing a severe personal problem that hasn't allow him to be 100% committed to his job, which is affecting people working around him and that sooner than later would have an effect in the company's performance. So the CEO shared his concerns with Mike, a person very close him who has been a consultant for MPC on planning issues. Among his concerns were regarding Al's job position which required considerable travel to regional offices, now regional managers are not getting enough guidance and are not performing well and has been delegating supervisory chores to the two senior staff people in his department. At the same time Bob said little to Al because he wanted to be supportive and did want to be perceived as not caring or putting his job ahead of this family. So Mike decided to take Al out to lunch in order to gain an objective opinion. Mike later spoke to Bob about his lunch with Al and tried to be descriptive and non evaluative, urging Bob to speak to Al directly.

2. Major issues and analysis

a. There was not an effective communication process between Bob and Al. First of all, there were many things in Bob's mind regarding Al that he needed to share with him, but didn't because of his type of personality and leadership style. Also, Bob didn't want to be perceived as not caring or putting his job ahead of this family but what he did was constantly send reminder about unresolved issues, press him for dates and urged him to make trips to the field. So the way Bob encoded the message he wanted to translate to Al, was not effectively codified or decodified by Al. Bob wanted to communicate that he cared about the personal situation that Al was going through but at the same time, he wanted to communicate and remind Al that he had many responsibilities that were necessary to keep the company performing well.

b. Bob and Al's interpersonal communication was not the best as it didn't involve a lot of face to face contact which was needed to handle this type of situation which was critical to the firms well being. Instead, Bob decided to use medium such as email to communicate with Al. It is worth mentioning that email and written communication is not as rich as face to face communication.

c. Different perceptions and personalities. Bob thought rules and regulations were meant to be followed, while Al was inclined to overlook the rules, both for himself and other if the job was being done. So this difference in perceptions caused a bit of stress in the relationship very early on.

d. Inefficient