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Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
Case 14.2: Team Crisis Within the Gates
Case Synopsis and Analysis
A giant oil and gas company, Axis Global, owns nine refineries worldwide, each with its own
IT team “within the refinery gates” that reports to management. The company has a
centralized IT team located in Paris that makes standardized decisions for all IT teams in the
company. The Paris IT team concluded that the IT services company wide should be
outsourced to a third party, which means the current employees’ jobs would either be
retained, replaced, or terminated. This decision by the centralized team did not sit well with
Learning objectives:
• Students will be able make a decision using the Hill Model for Team Leadership
• Students will be able to determine the internal or external leadership actions that need
to be taken in order to increase team effectiveness
Answers to questions in the text:
1. Should Russ Saffold intervene to help his team handle this crisis? If so, what type of
leadership action should he take? Internal task? Internal relational? External
environmental?
Yes, Russ Saffold should intervene to help his team handle this crisis, since it is
affecting the performance and development of his team members. Since Russ does
2. What leadership actions, if any, should team members take?
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
The two team members who are worried about their current positions, Samantha
Umbia and Todd Greengold, should take external environmental action to find out if
3. What should Russ Saffold do (if anything) to mitigate the two opposing positions
regarding outsourcing of IT (Axis Global versus Tappan Refinery)?
Since Russ is the manager and his position is not at stake, he needs to take internal
relational leadership action with Axis Global to find out more information regarding
4. What characteristics of team excellence are currently lacking in this team?
This team is lacking:
• Clear, elevating goal since they are unsure if they will still have their jobs
• Extreme support and recognition and unified commitment since Axis Global is
Potential teaching approaches:
Below is a way to structure a class based on Team Leadership and case study 14.2:
• Hold a lecture on Team Leadership.
• Ask students to read 14.2 and answer the questions.
• Discuss questions in the case study as a class.
• Finally, the professor may choose to conduct an in-class exercise listed below.
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
Exercises for this case study:
1) Students assume the role of a leader for this team. The leader understands the team’s
dysfunctions and wants to develop a plan to turn the team around.
In small groups, students work together to create an action plan for the team. How
2) Role-play: Students play the parts of Russ Saffold, Todd, Samantha, and Alejandro.
Together, they discuss what needs to happen in order for the team to run more
