Managerial Interview Research Paper

Dr. Burt Reynolds

Dylan Crovo
11/20/2022
Introduction
My stepmother, Laura, is a business owner in the same industry, she owns Elle Medical

Aesthetics as well as Recovery Room, Both in Portland Maine. Elle is also a medical spa,

specializing in Botox, micro-needling, and facial treatments. Laura also owns a drip bar called

Recovery Room. Drip bars offer IV hydration, from basic packages that include a saline IV, to

vitamin cocktail IVs that are designed to maintain overall wellness or prevent vitamin

deficiencies. Drip bars are also often used to recover from hangovers. Laura manages both

businesses and all her employees on her own. She always carries three phones with her, one

personal and one for each business. When the pandemic first hit and businesses were shut down,

Recovery Room didn’t yet exist, and Elle temporarily shut down the office and survived by

selling their skincare supplements via mail. Every day Laura would sit at the dining room table,

packaging products and making and receiving calls. Being a less established business, the

pandemic hit her harder, but she was able to keep Elle afloat seemingly by willpower alone.

Managing Staff
Laura describes the majority of what she does as HR, she puts an emphasis on

communication. She assigns particular importance to the harder or negative conversations she

might have. Whether it is giving negative feedback to employees, having difficult conversations

with staff, or negotiating with outside reps or the landlord, navigating these conversations

professionally and effectively is vital for the business to survive and thrive. Although she

utilizes many forms of communication to effectively manage her employees, Laura recognizes

that each method of communication has its benefits and drawbacks. For these more serious or

harder conversations, she prefers a face-to-face approach. Synchronicity is crucial in these

environments, “Synchronous communication is better when the information is required quickly

(high immediacy) or where the issue is complex” (McShane and Von Glinow pg. 194)

Whether she is acutely aware of it or not, Laura is a master at creating norms and

promoting team development. Firstly, she establishes team norms quickly and effectively.

“Norms are the informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the

behavior of their members” (McShane and Von Glinow pg. 173). This begins with the hiring

process, Laura likes to hire employees who are much like herself, people who are ambitious and

driven well beyond the average person. She wants to hire people who strive to someday be

business owners themselves. “Two of the best ways to establish desired norms upfront and to

select people whose values are compatible with those norms” (McShane and Von Glinow pg.

173) Although Laura doesn’t necessarily explicitly state what the norms are, she makes an effort

to show a new hire or prospective employee what the norms are from the first interview. She

then selects candidates based on how compatible their values are with these norms. Due to this

selection process, her employees are already predisposed to look up to her. She then takes care

to conduct herself in exactly the way she expects them to conduct themselves. She leads by

example and quickly creates a sort of “corporate culture” of employees consistently taking

initiative and going above and beyond to improve how the business operates.

Creating these Norms is one of two major factors in the incredibly high employee

engagement that exists at both of her businesses. The other major factor at play is her natural

ability to effectively build team cohesion within her businesses. “Team cohesion refers to the

degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members.”

(McShane and Von Glinow pg. 174) Laura manages to create high levels of team cohesion

through team development “Team Development tends to improve cohesion because members
strengthen their identity to the team during the development process” (McShane and Von Glinow

pg. 174) She accomplishes this team development through her own brand of team building.

While team building generally “consists of formal activities to improve development and

functioning of a work team” (McShane and Von Glinow pg. 172) Laura takes a more informal

approach. She hosts many work parties. Sometimes to celebrate something work-related, the

opening of Recovery Room for example. Other times simply to celebrate a big event that has

happened in an employee’s or her own life, this could be an engagement, anniversary, pregnancy

any life milestone. But in the time between these parties, she spends an incredible amount of

time outside of work with her team. She’ll bring whoever wants to with her to the beach every

weekend in the summer. Laura also loves to cook, and most nights after work she will make a

big meal of some kind. Her employees are frequently invited over for dinner, and some will

come straight after work to hang out while she cooks. By doing all of this she has developed

legitimate friendships between her and the employees as well as amongst the employees

themselves. Thus, creating an incredibly cohesive group.

It should be mentioned, however, that creating a work team that is this close has its

drawbacks. It becomes far more difficult to let an employee go, Laura emphasized this as one of

the hardest things she’s had to do in her professional career. She discussed the importance of

divorcing herself from emotion in these instances while also trying to remain empathic. She

learned to develop a detailed planned exit strategy for her employees and their clients. Having a

detailed plan helped her to reduce stress and fear among her other employees and clients.

With the super tight-knit group that she has developed, a critical problem has come along

with it. When your employees are all friends with each other it is easy to interact as friends
rather than coworkers while at work. This can lead to an unprofessional work environment.

Laura is still learning how to straddle the fence most effectively between boss and friend.

Although she clearly embraces a people-oriented leadership style, Laura also employs

Task-oriented leadership when need be. Studies have found that effective leaders employ both

strategies. “Each style has its advantages and disadvantages. In fact, recent evidence suggests

that effective leaders rely on both styles but in different circumstances” (McShane and Von

Glinow pg. 263). Because her business is young, change happens frequently and rapidly. This

makes conventional task-oriented leadership more difficult as tasks such as sales goals may

frequently become irrelevant week to week. The products offered or pricing may change for

example. In the instances that Laura employs task-oriented management, she must keep the

duration of these tasks short. Under these circumstances, a task frequently cannot be longer than

a few days to a week.

An aspect of task-oriented management that is less time-dependent is the ability to

evaluate and provide feedback. This is another area that Laura is proficient in. She makes sure

that she provides regular feedback to her staff about how they are doing, and how they can

improve. This helps to clarify employees’ jobs; it allows them to better understand exactly what

they are supposed to do. It also helps employees to understand what areas of their work they can

improve, and how to best improve them. Laura also makes sure that she assigns work and

responsibilities in a clear way to avoid confusion about what must be done and by whom.

According to the textbook, “Leaders are task-oriented when they Assign work and clarify

responsibilities” and when they “evaluate and provide feedback on work quality” (McShane and

Von Glinow pg. 263)

A VUCA world

VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity (Berinato) -This

acronym is designed to describe the “uncertain” times we have been living in for a few years

now. One of the largest factors contributing to the VUCA world we currently live in was the

COVID pandemic. According to many, the pandemic is over, however, according to the US

government it is still a public health emergency (Kimball). This leaves an avenue open for

regulatory and legal changes and restrictions to be enacted, it is always possible that due to some

mutated strain the government could shut the business world down once more. With this in

mind, it is advantageous, if not necessary for Laura to operate with a great deal of caution

surrounding the pandemic and all the possible futures of operations.

When people are in a state of stress or anxiety, they have a tendency to sort of decrease

the time scale that they think on. For example, I have struggled with anxiety in the past and

when having a panic attack, I found myself “living” minute by minute. The time frame I was

able to think about was reduced to essentially just the present. In a VUCA world businesses are

forced to do much the same thing. It is no longer useful to plan years into the future because

there are so many drastically different things that could happen In the near term that future plans

become irrelevant. The business is reduced to survival mode, taking operations day by day.

This was the most prominent change brought onto Elle Medical Aesthetics during the

pandemic. They were forced to transition from operating in a world of abundance to one of

scarcity. Laura was forced to adopt strategies that would allow her to transition to a skeleton

crew on extremely short notice. This was necessitated by a sudden increase in both client

cancelations and in employee call-outs due to illness. Without being able to pivot to and from a

skeleton crew at a moment’s notice, Laura would frequently find herself either losing money due
to overstaffing with few patients or suddenly being understaffed and providing a subpar

experience to her clients.

Summary

This interview was but one of many extremely informative talks I’ve had with Laura

about business ownership. I am sure there will be many more in the future as I seek her advice

while starting my own business in the coming months. This interview with Laura has taught me

a lot about effective management. Specifically, the importance of People-oriented management

but also the drawbacks. I learned that team building is important to creating a positive work

culture, but without structuring that teambuilding you risk losing control of exactly what kind of

culture you create. I also learned the importance of effectively managing the friend-boss line, it

is fine to be friends with employees, but it is vital to maintain boundaries. You will also need to

occasionally “lay down the law” when employees are exhibiting behaviors that may be harmful

to the business. Without keeping employees in check occasionally you risk allowing them to

walk all over you, and thus losing their respect. I also learned the importance of maintaining the

ability to quickly pivot, especially in a VUCA world. In financial terms, you need to maintain

liquidity or you could be wiped out by a sudden market move. I really enjoyed my conversation

with Laura and I am excited to continue it at Thanksgiving.

 Works Cited

Berinato, Scott. "A Framework for Understanding VUCA." Harvard Business Review, Harvard

Business Publishing, Sept. 2014, hbr.org/2014/09/a-framework-for-understanding-vuca.

Accessed 20 Nov. 2022.

Kimball, Spencer. "U.S. extends Covid public health emergency even though Biden says

pandemic is over." CNBC, Oct. 2022, www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/us-extends-covid-

public-health-emergency-.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2022.

McShane, Steven Lattimore, and Mary Ann Von Glinow. Organizational Behavior. 4th ed.,

Dubuque, McGraw-Hill Education, 2019.