Sometimes people on your staff aren’t suited for particular roles, and it is management’s job to ensure that their employees are not put in roles that they cannot handle.
In baseball, the 8th inning role for pitchers generally is given to someone who throws hard, can get three outs with ease, and brings the game to the closer to end it with a victory. With Joba Chamberlain, he has continually failed in this role time and time again. Prior to Friday night’s game, he actually had done a fairly decent job pitching in innings other than the 8th. However, for some reason, manager Joe Girardi decided to put him in with disastrous results.
Since Chamberlain has performed well when brought in earlier in the game, it may make sense to still keep him on the team, but not as an 8th inning guy.
Think about situations in your workplace that draw parallels to this; are their shifts that your employees do well on but not on others? For example, do you have a server who does really well at lunch but when they are put on a Saturday night they can’t handle the volume? In retail, do you have someone who does very well with selling to the 18-35 crowd but can’t handle the day shift when older clients are in the store?
What can you do to ensure that situational leadership is effective?
In many cases, the answer is to retrain, readjust your schedule, or move the person to a new role or out of the company altogether.
