1. What did Betty do wrong prior to the meeting, and what could have been done to avoid missing the deadline?
a. Betty didn’t set the proper expectation for Don’s execution. Providing a due date and the elements she has included in past reports are not enough. When she delegated the report to Don she should have set up a meeting to specifically go over the details of the report, the source material to populate the report, where it was derived from and jointly arrived at what the expected outcome needed to be. She should have used the meeting as an opportunity to answer any questions or address any concerns he may have had.
b. Set dates for progress meetings to follow up on report progression and any hurdles he may be facing. Had she done so, Betty could have potentially identified any hurdles to get over and helped her subordinate be successful in completing the report by the deadline.
c. She could have met with her direct reports to encourage and facilitate self-management techniques. She could have explained the rationale for self-management, explaining how to use behavioral and cognitive self-management strategies , encouraging effort to use these techniques, and providing enough autonomy to make self-management feasible.
2. What did Betty do wrong in the meeting itself, and what could have been done to make the meeting more effective?
a. She immediately went on the offensive and set herself up for failure in the exchange relationship with her subordinate. The exchange relationship here seems to have been set previously by Don’s inability to meet timelines. Betty’s attributions to Don’s performance are probably influenced as well by his lack of organization and tidiness. She immediately put Don on the defensive and created an adversarial atmosphere from the outset. She resorted to sharp criticism and implied threats to get her point across.
b. She could have set a more positive tone by communicating to understand what the impediments to timely...