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Mathilde Johnsen was a highly motivated environmental systems engineer in the real property branch of Public Services and Procurement Canada. Johnsen advanced a job grade about every 18 months, and in 2016, she successfully applied to the management stream. In 2019, after completing an MBA, Johnsen pursued an opportunity in the executive stream of the civil service. Her past behaviour raised concerns for the selection committee, who decided that, rather than promote Johnsen, they would give her a one-year secondment in the executive position so they could assess her growth. Unfortunately, her inability to deal effectively with subordinates, peers, and superiors resulted in Johnsen’s effective demotion and transfer out of the department. Could this unfortunate career derailment have been avoided?

Supplement for product 9B21C005.

Supplement for product 9B21C005.

In 2019, the development officer at Rowing South Africa was contemplating how to continue the growth of the sport of rowing in a challenging environment. More funding was needed to attain her mandate of extending the sport to previously unexposed communities. Rowing South Africa operated in a complex setting, but the sport had much to contribute to participants. The benefits of rowing were physical and psychological, personal and professional, and often leading to success in many aspects of life. How could she articulate these benefits to increase participation in the sport and attract more funding to support?

Presentation to accompany teaching note 8B20C056.

Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM) is a global mining company that has made its first foray into the Canadian far north with its Meadowbank gold mining site. The case describes how AEM has worked with the local government to gain its support, signing an Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement (IIBA). This IIBA outlines a number of commitments that AEM must meet in order to ensure equal representation of Inuit people within the mine. The case follows the superintendent of human resources (HR). Facing a turnover rate of 83 per cent and high levels of absenteeism among AEM’s Inuit workforce, AEM is dealing with a talent management crisis of unprecedented proportions. The superintendent of HR must remedy the situation while operating within an environment characterized by resource constraints and a diverse workforce.

In December 2018, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carrot Rewards (Carrot), a profitable Canadian social enterprise, was facing a turning point. The company, which had been founded three years earlier, was about to implode. Its single largest client had just conveyed its decision to pull out, causing a sudden 65 per cent drop in the company’s annual revenue. Should Carrot continue with the prevailing model—one day at a time? Should it launch a freemium version of its app? Should it pivot toward new geographies and new locations? Should it begin to focus on new verticals and go after new clients? Should it go on the auction block and salvage what is left of the original company? The founder and CEO wondered whether the future held workable options other than those he was considering in dealing with the enterprise he had founded, built, and nurtured.

On March 20, 2020, in an effort to stem the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic and under the direction of government officials, Canada’s Stratford Festival halted work on its 2020 productions and ultimately postponed the entire season. Additionally, social justice issues had come to the forefront with the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Watching the protests unfold across North America, the Stratford Festival’s executive and management team recognized the pain their black colleagues were experiencing and set their sights on doing something meaningful to champion anti-racism. The executive team offered the Black Caucus and the Indigenous Circle—two informal groups of the Stratford Festival artists and administrators—the opportunity to take over the Festival’s social media channels for a 48-hour period and to conduct a town-hall session on the Stratford Festival’s YouTube channel. The question remained, however, whether turning over the social media channel was a prudent strategy, given the difficulty of predicting the outcomes of activities that start out with good intentions.

Supplement for product 9B21C010.

In 2020, the flagship location of Jamie's Market, a specialty supermarket retailer in California, struggled to hire enough temporary workers to meet the increased staffing demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new assistant manager, who had been recently transferred to the company's flagship store, was tasked with figuring out what had gone wrong and recommending changes to ensure that the store would have enough qualified workers for the remainder of the pandemic (or until store sales returned to pre-pandemic levels, whichever occurred first). The assistant manager looked into the company’s hiring and socialization processes, spoke with both temporary and permanent workers, and identified at least two reasons for the challenges in hiring temporary workers: insufficient advertising of the job listing for temporary workers, and little or no effort to socialize temporary workers once they were hired. Based on these conclusions, what changes should the assistant manager recommend when hiring the next group of temporary employees?

Founded in 2000, with its headquarters in Singapore, BreadTalk Group Limited used a creative lifestyle concept to attract consumers who were accustomed to viewing bread as inexpensive, basic food. In 2003, the company founder and chairman achieved his goal of listing the company on the Singapore stock exchange to raise capital for scaling up operations. By mid-2018, the company had grown to become a regional, multi-brand food and beverages enterprise with 11 brands, almost 1,000 outlets across 18 territories, and a staff of over 7,500 people. In 2018, BreadTalk Group Limited opened a new restaurant in London, United Kingdom, representing its first entry into the Western market. However, the executive team had to engage the company’s employees across continents and inspire them to innovate, especially through the use of technology. The first step was to choose the right management team for the new business unit in London and build a new talent pool in Europe.

The owner of Hailey’s Handbags, a New England-based online business selling handmade products, had successfully grown her company using a limited-release sales model. However, by early 2019, complaints posted to her business’s social media accounts had become abusive and personal. The emotional impact on the owner was severe, and before she could decide how to manage the comments, she needed to first determine whether they represented legitimate complaints or if she had become a target of cyberbullying.

In early April 2020, COVID-19 began impacting trade, commerce, and industry globally. The founder and president of Innovative Automation Inc., a custom machine builder in the small and medium enterprise sector in Ontario, Canada, was facing two main dilemmas. First, how should he ensure that the internal channels of communication at the company remain open as its employees—like everyone in the rest of the province and indeed the rest of the world—dealt with a largely unknown virus? Second, how should the company enforce social distancing—made mandatory by the provincial government in its bid to contain the spread of the virus—at its manufacturing facility?

Isaac Park was only six weeks into the role of leading all technology operations for Primal Leadership Solutions, a global leadership advisory organization that offered consulting services and executive recruitment. The lifeblood of the business was its database, which contained the critical and comprehensive information for all of the organization’s past and current projects as well as its employees, clients, and recruits. The legacy system had to be replaced by a single, efficient, and reliable database. Although implementing a new database sounded straightforward, about halfway through implementation, pandemonium had broken out. The project’s leader was asked to step aside, and Park was asked to step in as the new leader. Park knew that going back to the old system was not the right answer; it was imperative that the company find a way forward. Both Park’s own credibility and the credibility of the project were on the line.

Founded in 1996, Dalian Leasun Food Co., Ltd. had become one of the largest canned food manufacturers in northeast China by 2020. In 2016, it began a digital transformation, adopting digital technologies such as data mining and cloud computing. The company also revised its internal operations and adopted an omnichannel sales strategy. Digital transformation enabled Dalian Leasun Food Co., Ltd. to move beyond the traditional retail and distribution market, which was becoming oversaturated. Its successful transition also helped the company maintain a stable sales growth rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The next stage for its digital transition however, presented a dilemma. One option for the chairman of the company was to develop a customer-oriented platform and create value for customers. The other option was to digitalize the company’s supply chain and internal management system. The chairman had to decide which direction to follow.

An alarming number of leaders have been failing to serve as role models for future generations at a time when positive examples of leadership have never been more important. Like everyone, leaders make mistakes, which we often attribute to bad morals. But in most cases, these mistakes occur as consequences of poor judgment resulting from weaknesses in character. Most organizations fail to understand the key role that developing and maintaining character plays in improving judgment, and fail to seriously focus on character when hiring. In Developing Leadership Character—which offers a deep dive into Ivey’s research on how the interrelationships of various dimensions of character support good judgment—the case for character development is broken down into four parts. First, individuals can work on developing their own character strengths. Second, organizations can contribute to the character development of both individuals and organizations. Third, these processes must occur if individuals and organizations are to succeed in the contexts in which they operate. Finally, the results from character development will yield critical benefits to individuals and organizations, thereby justifying the effort required. While there are long-established selection criteria for competencies, it’s relatively rare for employers to discuss the character dimensions required to succeed in leadership roles. When hiring and promoting in today’s disruptive world, organizations need to ensure that leadership candidates have the essential dimensions of character required to selflessly lead others.

This article aims to help employers implement equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training efforts that can make the difference between meeting today’s elevated expectations and falling short by focusing only on select characteristics like race and gender. Understanding the pervasiveness of biases and how they impact our thinking and behaviour can help us try to moderate how we act and communicate, which is why introspection and implicit bias tests are used to detect the strength of a person’s automatic associations between mental representations. But introspection and implicit bias tests don’t eliminate biases or help us avoid falling into the Judgment Trap. According to the research behind the TRACOM SOCIAL STYLE Model, 75 per cent of people with whom you interact have a different behavioural pattern or “Social Style,” including the Driving Style, Expressive Style, Amiable Style, and Analytical Style. Social intelligence training can help those with each of the four Social Styles make adjustments that can enable people to interact more effectively, empathetically, and transparently. By deploying Social Style training to focus on behaviours, organizations empower people to recognize how their perceived strengths can actually impede their relationships with co-workers, while moving them to appreciate diversity of thought and behaviour. This counters the unfounded judgments that our brains ironically make in the name of efficiency, and thus enables us to interact more respectfully and effectively.

In April 2020, the business head and the human resources head at Apturja Power Limited (APL) were anxious about the rising levels of new-hire turnover across all five power plant locations. Out of 2,000 employees hired in the past two years, half had left the organization within a year of joining. High attrition posed an issue for APL's cost-competitiveness strategy by not only increasing hiring costs but also nullifying the time and energy spent in acquainting and training employees to APL's requirements. Both department heads wanted to identify reliable indicators so that they could develop an appropriate action plan to reduce new-hire turnover and thereby strengthen APL's human capital.

Spreadsheet for product 8B21C001.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B21C001.