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Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
Case 4.3: We Are Family
Case Synopsis and Analysis
Betsy Moore is the new director of marketing and communications for a college. She works
for Marianne, the vice president for college advancement, and is tasked with developing an
aggressive new communication and marketing plan. Four people work under Betsy. Two of
these individuals have a strong, personal relationship with Marianne and turn to her for
support, advice, and counsel on work-related matters. This makes it difficult for Betsy to
develop and implement the new plan. To make matters worse, Marianne has recently taken
the other two subordinates under her wing and is serving as their personal mentor.
Betsy is task driven and feels that she is not able to execute her plans or build a cohesive
team because of Marianne’s relationships. Marianne is relationship focused and does not
seem to notice how her meetings with Betsy’s subordinates may undermine Betsy and inhibit
her ability to execute the new plans.
The case study demonstrates the weaknesses of being either task driven to the exclusion of
relationships or being so relationship focused that it ultimately undermines organizational
objectives and other opportunities to lead.
Learning objectives:
• Students should be able to apply the principles of the behavioral approach to a
leader.
• Students should be able to apply Blake and Mouton’s grid to a set of leaders.
• Students should recognize some of the complexities of task or relationship
behaviors, particularly when there are multiple levels of leadership.
Answers to questions in the text:
1. Marianne and Betsy do indeed have different leadership styles. What style would you
ascribe to Betsy? To Marianne?
Based on the information, it seems as though Betsy is task oriented and Marianne is
relationship oriented. Betsy wants to achieve strong results but is willing to
socialize with her team and so appears not to be solely driven by tasks. She
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
2. Does Betsy need to change her leadership style to improve the situation with Bridget
and Suzanne? Does Marianne need to change her style of leadership?
Bridget and Suzanne seem to thrive on strong relationships. They do not respond well
to negative feedback and appear resistant to change. Betsy may find it easier to
3. How can Marianne and Betsy work together?
Marianne and Betsy need to discuss the problem openly and develop new
communication procedures with the subordinates. Marianne can use her own
strengths to help advance the team and project, while also helping Betsy be a bit more
Potential teaching approaches:
Below is a way to structure a class based on skill theory and Case Study 4.3:
• Hold a lecture on the behavioral approach and the Blake and Mouton grid.
• Debate Exercise 1 below.
• Read Case 4.3.
• Discuss case study questions as a class.
• Finally, the professor may choose to conduct in-class exercises listed below..
Exercises for this case study:
Northouse, Leadership 8e
SAGE Publications, 2019
1) Debate: It is better to be relationship focused versus it is better to be task driven.
2) Role-Play: Students are broken into groups of three. One student is the leadership
3) Reframe the debate above to concentrate on situations when leaders should focus
