Interpersonal skills include the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate both individuals and groups. Communication skills refer to the manager’s abilities to both effectively convey ideas and information to others and receive ideas and information from others. This exercise will help you develop both of these skills as they relate to implementing a change. Exercise Background

Assume that you are the manager of a retail store in a local shopping mall. The store is part of a large major retail chain that owns several different brands. Your staff consists of seven full-time and ten part-time employees. Each full-time employee has at least three years of experience in your store. They all like one another and work well together—they often refer to themselves as a team. Your part-time employees are all local college students; a few have worked in the store for more than a year, but there tends to be a lot of turnover among this group.

Your boss, the regional manager, has just informed you that the retailer plans to open a second store in a new section of the same mall. This store will carry similar merchandise at similar prices as your store but under a different brand name. She has informed you that you must implement the following changes:

1.You will serve as manager of both stores until the sales volume of the new store warrants its own full-time manager.
2.You are to designate one of the full-time employees in your present store as the assistant manager, since you will be in the store less often now.
3.In order to have experienced workers in the new store, you are to select three of your current full-time workers to move to the new store, one of whom should also be appointed as assistant manager of that store.
4.You can hire three new people to replace those transferred from your existing store and three new people to work at the new store.
5.You can decide for yourself how to deploy your part-timers, but you will need a total of ten in the existing store and eight at the new store.
You expect that many of your employees will be unhappy with these changes. They all know and, as noted earlier, work well together. However, the new store will be in a new section of the mall and will be a very nice place to work. You are now contemplating how to proceed.

Use your interpersonal and communication skills to answer the following questions.
Is the change you will be making a result of external or internal forces?
A. Internal forces
B. External forces
Assuming you decide to communicate the impending change to the seven full-time workers as a group, how should you most effectively do this?
A. Send them an email or a text message
B. Schedule a special meeting one day either before or after store hours.
C. Tell them one-by-one as you see them.
Which of these options would be reasonable for selecting the two new assistant managers from among your current full-time employees? Check all that apply.
A. Base the choices on seniority.
B. Base the choices on performance.
C. Base the choices on who you like the best.
Write each person’s name on a slip of paper, put the seven slips of paper in a box, and then select two at random.