1. Basing on the Alan’s interactions with his employees, it is necessary to suggest that the manager’s ability to listen actively is rather a poor one. It is known that active listener is the one who is able not just to listen to someone else’s speech, but the one who also has the ability to pay attention, to comprehend, to analyze, to evaluate, to remember the information which was heard and to give an appropriate feedback to the speaker (Wood, 2010). However, despite, sometimes, it might seem that Alan is trying to listen carefully to the members of his stuff, in fact, he does not make sufficient attempt to apprehend their message. In other words, instead of profound concentrating on the words which are being said by the workers and responding adequately to those words, Alan is building his speech focusing only on the importance of his own comments regarding employees’ performance.
2. It is noticeable that Alan is extremely devoted to his job, and has high demands concerning the quality of his employees’ performance; such an excessive manager’s scrupulousness, supplemented with expressing his thoughts regarding his subordinates’ work in a highly direct manner, affects rather negatively on his approach to the performance reviews. What is more, such Alan’s view of his work leads to negative atmosphere with his employees. Alan is trying to remain abstracted from his employees’ personal issues; such his strategy of behavior is rather wrong. A wise manager is supposed to understand that his subordinates are human beings whose life is being impacted by the variety of factors. It is essential for the manager to be able to hear and respect feelings and problems of his workers in order to provide them with intelligent pieces of advice, help, or support; it might contribute to establishing friendly and constructive relationship between the manager and his subordinates.
3. There cannot be doubt that diversity and multiculturalism have crucial impact on any organization’s success. This is one of the primary manager’s tasks to establish sufficient relationship with the representatives of different ages, genders, religious and culture beliefs. Apparently, diversity and multiculturalism are factors which can be rather challenging to deal with, and serious efforts might be needed to be done by the manager in order to find common language with all the employees. Thus, Alan should pay attention to the quality of his listening skills in order to be capable to communicate efficiently with all the workers.
4. For Alan could fulfill his responsibility to provide employees with critical feedback about performance and, at the same time, to establish a supportive climate in the team, he should improve his mindfulness, pay attention to the development of active listening skills, and try to devote sufficient amount of time for the preparation to the interviews. Firstly, it is recommended for the manager to pay higher attention to the interaction and avoid precocious imposing of his own judgments or thoughts. Secondly, Alan should learn to listen to the interviewers more carefully, to comprehend them, and to respond to them in appropriate manner. Thirdly, it is advisable for Alan to be prepared for the interview; as he is the manager who has to be familiar with his employees’ problems, characters, and behavioral types, it is desirable for him to create suppositional adequate questions towards each of his workers.
5. In order to establish a supportive environment for interaction, Alan should make sure that his employees’ are in positive mood, configured to communicate and cooperate, and feel as comfortable as possible during the interview. In order to achieve such a positive atmosphere, he can try to start the conversation from some neutral topic or the topic which is interesting or important for the workers. The employees might appreciate this and become more loyal to the manager; as a result, a suitable atmosphere for the interaction can be created.
References
Wood, J. (2010). Interpersonal communication: Everyday encounters. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
