Lisa Benton

Benton was frustrated and dissatisfied about her job in Houseworld, where she started by a lack of responsibility, and poor relationships with her boss, Linton, and a colleague, Scoville. With the reveal of her less-than-promising performance review, Benton was concern of her career in Houseworld, and was thinking of calling her former supervisor, Kingston, of Right-Aways Stores, whom she had previously turned down an appealing offer.

There are three major relationships, with Linton, Scoville, and Vernon, that shaped up Benton’s current circumstances. If Benton had deal with them with different ways, it might lead to a different result.

Relationship with Linton

Because of policy of the Home Care Division, the recruiting practice has emphasized recruiting MBAs from top-notch schools for entry-level marketing positions. This decision makes it difficult for Linton, also Scoville, to be promoted and fosters their negative attitudes toward MBAs. Unfortunately, this had led to Benton’s difficulties in making good impression on Linton. Unlike the previous friendly and enthusiastic welcome in her interview, Benton received an opposite responses which did not fulfill her emotional needs and reduced her motivation in her department.

Because of her dislike to Benton, Linton seemed to ignore Benton's ability on purpose and did not assign challenging tasks to Benton. Linton eventually failed Benton by assuming that Benton’s task maturity was low and blocked her development of her expert power. However, Benton did a great job when she was in her full-time internship at Right-Away, she had qualified job skills to develop her expertise. But she failed to do this due to her intimidating conversations with Linton and Scoville. Benton chose to keep silent when she had opportunities to speak.

Besides blocking Benton from her development, Linton also refused to communicate with Benton and failed to deal with the problems between Benton and Scoville. When Benton complained about Scoville to her, she always said that Scoville is nice, and she doesn't have problems with him. Although Linton promised to assign them discrete projects more than once, she still did not put any efforts in dealing with their problems. There are several times when Benton had questions, but Linton refused to answer her right away.

Thinking and being warned that she is in a learner process, Benton did not express her opinions when the division had meetings. This behavior made her boss, Linton, think that

Benton lacked confidence and strong job skills. Benton should have expressed her intelligent opinions and analysis in any chances she could. By doing so, although Linton blocked her development of expert power, Benton still could have gradually developed and showed her expert to other group product managers and colleagues.

Relationship with Scoville

Scoville has the same attitudes toward MBAs as Linton does, since he did not have his MBA. The relationship between he and Linton is somewhat intimate, and their closed relationship isolated Benton from them.

Scoville often talked to Benton in a condescending way but he never supported Benton in her job. He used his position to ask Benton to do some “gopher” tasks regardless of whether Benton was busy at her own job or not. Scoville's