MGT 514 Module 4 Working Relationships With Supervisors and Coworkers Example

A New Boss and Two Cold Shoulders: Building Working Relationships After a Promotion in a Central Kitchen

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Aspen University

MGT 514: Human Relations Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A New Boss and Two Cold Shoulders: Building Working Relationships After a Promotion in a Central Kitchen

I develop menu items for Prairie Table Group, a composite restaurant company in Kansas City, Missouri, that runs eleven restaurants, from barbecue to Mexican, supplied by a central kitchen that prepares sauces, doughs and marinades. For three years, I worked alongside two other menu developers as equals. We shared ideas, tasted each other's dishes and went for tacos after long tasting days. This spring, two things changed. The company hired a new culinary director from a national restaurant chain, and the director promoted me to lead menu developer, with the other two reporting to me. Both coworkers had more years at the company, and one had expected the promotion. Since then, lunches have stopped, and tasting days are quiet. My relationship with the new director is polite but distant. This paper reflects on both.

How Relationships With Supervisors Grow

Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) described leadership as a relationship that develops over time. In the stranger stage, exchanges are formal and limited to the job's requirements. In the acquaintance stage, the leader and member test each other with offers of extra effort, information and trust. In the mature partnership stage, the relationship rests on mutual trust, respect and obligation, and both gain from it. High-quality relationships were associated with better performance, satisfaction and commitment. My relationship with the director is still in the stranger stage. We talk only at weekly meetings, and I have not offered ideas beyond what he asks.

Managing the Boss

Gabarro and Kotter (1980) argued that effective managers take responsibility for the relationship with their own boss rather than waiting for the boss to build it. They advised understanding the boss's goals and pressures, strengths and weaknesses and preferred working style; understanding one's own needs and style; and building a relationship that fits both, with clear expectations, good information flow and dependability. I know little about the director's pressures. From company meetings, I know he was hired to cut food costs by 8% while keeping guest scores, which explains his focus on recipe costing that I had read as indifference to flavor.

Coworkers Matter

Chiaburu and Harrison (2008) combined studies of coworker effects and found that support from coworkers was associated with higher job involvement, satisfaction, commitment and performance and with lower intention to leave, while coworker antagonism was associated with withdrawal. Their review showed that coworkers influence work outcomes about as much as supervisors on several measures. The tension with my former peers is not just uncomfortable; it is likely to affect our work and whether they stay.

Mapping the Relationships

What the Director Values

Two conversations with longtime staff who worked with the director at company events filled in his style. He prefers short written updates before meetings, makes decisions quickly once he has numbers and dislikes surprises. He tasted every dish personally at his previous company. My habit of bringing dishes to tastings without costing them first, and of raising problems only when they are urgent, runs against each of these preferences. Gabarro and Kotter's advice to understand a boss's style is not flattery; it is how to make my work easier for him to support.

My Own Style

Gabarro and Kotter also advise understanding oneself. I work best with freedom to experiment and dislike being asked for numbers early. With a cost-focused boss, that preference could become friction. Naming it helps me decide when to adapt, such as costing dishes before tastings, and when to explain why experimentation needs room.

Building the Boss Relationship

Following Gabarro and Kotter, I will ask the director for a thirty-minute weekly one-on-one and come with a short update and one idea that supports his cost goal, such as reworking a sauce to use a less expensive chile without losing flavor. Following Graen and Uhl-Bien, I will offer extra effort, like costing every new dish before tasting, that builds trust over time.

The Conversation I Avoided

For two months, I avoided talking with the coworker who expected the promotion, hoping time would ease things. Instead, silence let her draw her own conclusions, including that I thought I had earned the job over her. When I finally asked for coffee, she said the hardest part was not losing the promotion but hearing about it in a group email. I apologized for that and asked how she wanted to work on the fall menu. The conversation did not fix everything, but it ended the silence.

Repairing Coworker Relationships

I will speak privately with the coworker who expected the promotion, acknowledge that the change was hard and ask what would make working together better. I will make sure both coworkers present their own dishes at tastings to the director, so credit is visible. And the three of us will co-lead the fall menu project, with each owning a restaurant concept.

What If a Coworker Leaves

It is possible that the coworker who expected the promotion will leave regardless. Chiaburu and Harrison's findings suggest that a cold team pushes people toward withdrawal, so repairing the relationship matters, but I cannot control another person's choice. If she decides to go, I want her to leave on good terms, with a reference from me and credit for the dishes she created.

Signs of Progress

Three months on, I will look for progress by whether the director seeks my views beyond weekly meetings, whether coworkers bring ideas to me and whether we eat together again.

Conclusion

A promotion changed my relationships in two directions at once. Graen and Uhl-Bien and Gabarro and Kotter show that the relationship with a new boss must be built deliberately, and Chiaburu and Harrison show that repairing coworker relationships matters for the work, not only for comfort.

References

Chiaburu, D. S., & Harrison, D. A. (2008). Do peers make the place? Conceptual synthesis and meta-analysis of coworker effects on perceptions, attitudes, OCBs, and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 1082-1103. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.5.1082

Gabarro, J. J., & Kotter, J. P. (1980). Managing your boss. Harvard Business Review, 58(1), 92-100.

Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(2), 219-247. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(95)90036-5