Veronica felt a lot of pressure by upper management to make her recruitment numbers for the month. This triggered knee-j
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This assignment underscores the importance of acting quickly without sacrificing critical thought and analysis. A sense of urgency can be highly unproductive and sometimes costly. Short-sighting decisions and neglecting underlying causes create more harm than good. Reacting too quickly to problems rather than thinking them through can be catastrophic to your organization.
On the flip side, if you are too slow to respond, you can miss an opportunity, allow the challenge to consume you, or become unproductive. To balance the two extremes, reflective urgency (the ability to rapidly determine the priorities) aligns thinking to the best courses of action.
First, you must diagnose the urgency trap. Why do you feel the decision is urgent? Is it simply from pressure of too many demands or is the urgency real? Then, apply critical reflection to your sense of urgency. Bringing to focus the right priorities and avoiding extreme tilts (tone down or dial-up the urgency) helps you to shift your mind to the right perspective.
Assignment Instructions:
Please read the following scenarios and questions. Prepare a report, no more than 2 pages, not including a title and reference page with your responses to the questions for both scenarios. Use APA Style, and use one outside resource in addition to information in your textbook. Your textbook is cited just as any other resource.
Your report must address the following questions and points about each scenario.
Assignment Scenarios and Questions
Scenario 1: Veronica felt a lot of pressure by upper management to make her recruitment numbers for the month. This triggered knee-jerk reactions to over-involve herself in delegating work to her employees. Her conversations were short bursts and impersonal, which caused her to not deepen relationships and establish trust with her team. The result was that her team felt increasingly micromanaged and less engaged in their contributions.
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- Explain the cause and effect of the urgency trap in this scenario.
- What changes can Veronica make to stop leading with an acute sense of urgency?
- What are your takeaways from this scenario? Does this sound familiar? If so, what can you do differently to alleviate self inflicted pressure?
Scenario 2: Kale was handed the following layoff schedule by upper management that he had to fulfill by certain deadlines. He adores his team and most of them have families to support at home. He currently has 100 employees; therefore, this is a 50% reduction in his total labor force and team. Kale must manage how he is going to ask the remaining employees to carry additional work due to the lay offs, and how to help these remaining employees cope with additional stress.
Layoff Dates and Quantities
| Layoff Round and Completion Date |
Number of Employees that Must be Laid Off |
| August 25 |
25 Employees Must be Laid Off |
| September 25 |
25 Employees Must be Laid Off |
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- Is this scenario an urgency trap or is this a truly stressful scenario?
- How can Kale manage his stress and think through his communications using critical thinking?
- How can Kale use his emotional intelligence to show compassion to his employees in this challenging situation?
