What to do about Louie

What to do about Louie

Introduction:

Mighty Muffler & Brakes is an auto-repair services company that offers a wide range of repair and services on vehicles of any model at competitive prices. The company has a store in the Great Lakes Region, which is headed by a manager known as Louie. The store’s financial performance has been good under his leadership, but there is one problem; a few of the customers and employees of Louie’s store have complained about his lack of cultural sensitivity; some of his actions and his comments are brash and offensive. Emma, the human resources and marketing manager of the company therefore needs to find a way to deal with this issue without upsetting him enough to make him leave the job and join a competitor.

Case Analysis

Does Louie have a problem, or are the people who made the negative comments about Louie just being too sensitive?

Louie does have a problem because he is not culturally sensitive. He judges people who he deems to be different from him such as women, gays, old people and African Americans. Through his actions and words, he makes it evident that he holds a lower opinion of them. The people who made the negative comments are important stakeholders to the business therefore if they are hurt or offended by the manager; the customers may not come back while the employees may lose their morale and their work may be affected.

If you were the CEO of Mighty Muffler Brake, would the profitability of Louie’s store influence your decision about approaching him on his ability to relate to culturally diverse people?

As the CEO of the company, I would place more importance on the customers and the employees of the company than on its profitability. If the customers and employees are happy and content with the treatment they are receiving, this will reflect on the company’s profitability. His cultural insensitivity might also ruin the company’s image, since as the manager he is representing the company. Therefore, as the CEO of Mighty Muffler Brake, I would not let the profitability of Louie’s store deter me from approaching Louie about the way he is handling culturally diverse people.

What improvements might Louie need to make to become a truly multicultural manager?

Louie needs to realize and accept the fact that the world’s perspective of different cultures has changed and therefore his attitudes towards them needs to become more positive. In order to change his attitude towards different cultures, he will need to understand them first, since he seems to be making the comments out of ignorance.

What activity would you recommend to help make Louie more culturally sensitive?

In order to become more culturally sensitive, Louie will need an activity that will help him eliminate the stereotypes that he has of different cultures. An example of such an activity is to let him interact with people from different cultures on a more personal level. This will open his mind to the fact that being from a different culture does not make one inferior or strange.

Action Plan

The management of the company should have an appraisal meeting with him, where they will first begin by congratulating him for the good work he has been doing as the manager, and tell him that the only area where he did not score highly was in his personal relations. They will then tactfully tell him that in order to get better scores in the next appraisal he will need to keep an open mind to different cultures, interact with them and hence learn that their beauty is in the diversity.

Conclusion

The world has become a multicultural environment in the 21^st century, therefore in order for a business to succeed its management and employees must adopt a multiculturalism attitude and perspectives. The manager should understand the message he is communicating and the impact that it may have on the person he is communicating with. He must also get rid of all the stereotypes that he believes about cultures that are different form his. It is also important for the manager to keep an open mind, so that he learns to understand a culture before judging it.