Essay: Manager interview – impressions, personality, motivation

1. Introduction
The manager we interviewed is xxxxx, he is male and 52 years old. Throughout his career he has mostly worked in the insurance industry and entered the position of a manager for the first time around 1995, which makes him a manager for 23 years now. He is now the head of the Dutch part of a company called ‘Guardian Group’. It is a company from the Caribbean, which has chosen to start doing business in the Netherlands approximately ten years ago. After leaving CED, a company specialised in claims, Mr. van den Broek was chosen to start the company’s Dutch part from scratch and since then he has realised massive growth. He now has 90-100 subordinates with an FTE of 70-75. He has been working in his current position for ten years now.
2. Comparison of team answers
2.1 Impressions of the manager
The impressions of the manager are pretty similar for most of us. All of us think that he seemed very welcoming and friendly. The way he welcomed the interviewers immediately triggered a positive first impression. As an argument for that we can use the manager’s score at emotional stability (4.8 out of 5) and conscientiousness (4.3 out of 5), since these personal traits can influence one’s likeableness. His behaviour and answers to the questions made him seem very approachable (relational level score 6.6 out of 7), however we think that within the company he may not be very approachable to everyone, because of the restrictions caused by his high position within the company.  In the interview he emphasized on the importance of considering the ideas of anyone within the company and the results of the survey (team voice consideration 8 out of 9) all tell that he thinks that is really important. Therefore, we consider him a very open-minded manager.
We all agree on the fact that he is very satisfied and happy with his job and answering the questions that we asked made us think that he was very confident about his skills and qualifications required for the job.
2.2 Interviewee’s personality and major job attitudes
Some of us think that he is an extravert person and the survey reflects it as well (4.3 out of 5). However, two of us do not agree with this score and think that van den Broek is more of an ambivert person, since, for instance, he mentioned that he rarely talks to his indirect employees and usually is in contact with just his direct subordinates.
As he mentions in the interview, he is extremely satisfied and well-involved with his job. He was the one who built up the organisation in The Netherlands, so he witnessed every level of this company, which increased his organisational commitment. Apart from that, the manager has low individual level (2.4 out of 7) which is also underpinned by the interview: the manager said that manager’s tasks are similar to employees’ tasks in general which makes him more of a team-player.
2.3 Motivating his subordinates
In the interview, van den Broek tells us that he uses two methods to motivate and reward his subordinates. First and foremost, he gives his subordinates what he calls ‘the package’. This includes elements like salary, company insurance, lease cars, etc. This isn’t very special or unusual, as every employer is legally required to supply some form of this ‘package’, as written down the Dutch CAO, the collective labour agreement, for insurance companies (Wet CAO of 1927). He also told us he likes to give his subordinates enough room to grow, make them feel comfortable and valued, to make sure they work hard and stay loyal to the company. He strives for an extremely close relationship with his immediate subordinates, as he needs and values their input tremendously.
2.4 What makes the person you were interviewing a leader? Which styles of leadership does the interviewee use?
First of all, we all think that being open to new ideas makes him a better leader. This allows him to communicate with his subordinates and end up in better
2.5 The key challenges that the manager is currently facing
He mentioned that the key challenges that he faced when he was starting the company were sustaining the activities in Netherlands, since the headquarters of the company was far away. Also starting a new business in a market with limited experience, communicating with the shareholders were some of the challenges as well. For the current challenges, he did not mention a specific challenge that he is facing with. He said that keeping the honesty and the integrity might be challenging for some people, but he does not have any trouble with that. Furthermore, being a manager might make you put outside the group, as he says. Thus, one should be able to manage this challenge in order to be a good leader.
3. Personality & Job Attitudes
Throughout the entire interview with Mr. van den Broek, it becomes evident that he is very pleased with his job and work life. He seems, and according to the survey he filled in, very emotionally stable. He knows what he wants to achieve and what he needs to accomplish to do so. He is also very conscious of his surroundings and coworkers. It looks like he strives for a balance between being a boss and an equal to his subordinates, taking their suggestions as well as giving them critical feedback and being strict to them when he needs to be. He is greatly involved with his the well-being of the company. Although he feels that he is qualified and competent enough for his function, he claims it to still be challenging and stimulating.
On top of that, he is psychologically empowered by the fact that his position is of great importance to the company as a whole. He is the head of the Dutch component of the corporation, and is the one with the most knowledge of the market in the Netherlands, so he gets to make a lot of big decisions that hugely matter to the business. He is also greatly committed to the company, and this is not only continuance commitment, although van den Broek appears not to be complaining about his salary of fringe benefit, he is also affectively committed. He identifies with the organizational goals and feels a part of the company.
4. Motivation
In the interview, van den Broek mentions that most importantly his subordinates are motivated by having enough responsibilities and wiggle room for personal development and having clear chances of helping improve the company, which clearly indicates that he sticks to theory Y which states that employees like work, are creative and even seek responsibility, assumes that higher-order needs dominate individuals (as in Maslow’s hierarchy). Van den Broek also mentions that he makes sure that his subordinates are valued and listened to. This together can also be linked to a two-factor theory, which states that employees can be genuinely satisfied not with a big salary but with intrinsic factors such as opportunities for personal growth, recognition and achievement.
Turning to contemporary theories, in this case an implication of self-determination theory can be observed. First of all, van den Broek clearly wants his employees to have intrinsic motivation, providing them with enough flexibility and space for feeling in charge of what they are doing.He even said that he values independent employees, what goals to set for themselves and what needs to be done. Secondly, van den Broek mentions that rewards that he gives to his employees are rarely monetary, usually he provides feedback and states that the succeeding employee is valuable for the company and that his or her work is recognized, which, according to the self-determination theory, triggers intrinsic motivation. Moreover, van den Broek mentioned giving his subordinates enough responsibilities and room for creativity in completing his tasks, which is an example of job enrichment.
5. The Leadership Style
6. The Key Challenge
7. Benefits and drawbacks of combining qualitative and quantitative data
For our studies, we used our interview as the qualitative data and the survey conducted with the manager as the quantitative data. Both data types have their own advantages as well as disadvantages, and combining them together helped us to obtain more reliable results.
Quantitative data allowed us to see the big picture on a numeric-based aspect. We were able to see our observations as numbers on a scale, which allowed us to base our results on a scientific basis. With the help of the survey, we were able to measure the main characteristics of the manager and express them in numbers, which allowed us to formulate the actual facts and observe them in a more concrete way. The problematic part about the quantitative data is that we can never be 100% sure whether it represents the reality or not. The survey was conducted in a well-organized way, but it might be affected from several factors, like the way the question is asked or mood of the manager in that day. Thus, the results may not be completely reflecting the reality.
For our research, qualitative data was our interview with the manager. It was a type survey with open-ended questions, like illustrating the quantitative analysis by focusing on individual studies. It has the advantage on actually reflecting the real life with the emotions or current state of a person, i.e. the manager. The problem we had with analyzing the interview is that it was difficult to automate the analysis which made it the time-consuming phase of our research. We needed to listen the interview over and over again to catch all details for our analysis.
Sticking with only one type of data would not bring accurate results for our research since we needed the advantages of both types. On the other hand, combining them might create problems as well. For instance, according to the survey, the manager’s Team Voice consideration is below the average. However, from the interview, we observed that he values the opinions of his team and he is a team-player. These kind of conflicts made it hard for us to reach results, but it was helpful to have the both types of data for evaluation and analysis.