Read the following fictitious scenario below and answer the four questions that follow.

Scenario:

Imagine that you are a manager in a medium-sized, tech organization. About 8 months ago, you recruited a new person to work in the marketing department of your organization. In fact, you recruited this employee from one of your competitor organizations. The person you hired is named Alex. You could tell from the moment you met Alex that he was ambitious, intelligent, and talented so you wanted him working for your company.

After Alex left your organization's competitor to come work for you, about a month into his employment, you began to hear whispers and rumors among your friends at other non-competitor organizations that Alex has a reputation for engaging in antisocial behaviors to get ahead in the workplace. However, you take that as mere industry gossip or possibly that competitors are just spreading rumors because they are jealous your organization was able to recruit Alex. After all, you have seen no such improper behavior since he has worked in the organization.

About a month ago, your company announced an opening for a managerial position in the marketing department. Although Alex had only been in his position in your organization for roughly 7 months, Alex viewed this as a perfect opportunity for career advancement and was determined to secure the role, and he definitely let everyone know he wanted that managerial position. He was charming and confident in his demeanor when discussing his excitement about the new role.

Earlier this week, Alex came into your office for a casual chat and mentioned he was surprised and disappointed by Susan's recent behaviors. You ask Alex what he is talking about. You learn that Alex had assigned Susan tasks to complete by a certain date and she missed the deadline. This was surprising to you, the head manager, because Susan had always been a top performer for the department over the last 5 years that she has worked in the organization. In fact, that was one reason why you liked Alex and Susan working together: they were both top performers who challenged each other to perform at the top of their game. Alex eventually returned to his work and later that the day, you stopped by Susan's office. You ask how she's doing and she mentions that for the last couple of weeks, she has been struggling with work-life balance due to extremely tough personal issues. She confided in you that she feels disappointed in herself because she didn't meet one of Alex's requested deadlines. She explained to you that last minute deadlines were normally not difficult for her to meet, but because she was struggling with these personal issues, she was not able to make the deadline. You, as the head manager, asked Susan how often Alex assigned tasks within a short turn-around period. Susan responded with "Well, he always has given me at least 20 days for the turnaround period, but this time, he requested it within 7 days." She continued by saying although she was disappointed in herself, Alex did give her kind words of encouragement. Specifically, Susan said Alex responded with something along the lines of "Don't be upset. I know you've had personal stuff going on lately. We all have times where we can't focus because our minds are dealing with home circumstance. Just try to get it to me when you're able." You encourage Susan to get it to Alex when she can and to not be so hard on herself.

As you walk away from that conversation, something "felt off" to you. You weren't sure why but it was strange that Alex set such a short turnaround time period for Susan to complete her portion of the project. It was also strange to you that Alex was just in your office earlier that day and insinuated he was confused about why she didn't meet the deadline and that he was disappointed in her for not meeting his deadline. Based off of the conversation you had with Susan, it sounded as though Alex knew Susan was having difficulties in her personal life when he assigned the work to her 7 days ago. Why would Alex be confused about her not getting it done on time under those circumstances with a shortened deadline?

As you walk towards your office, you see Daniel, another one of Susan and Alex's coworkers. A few weeks ago, you started working on a project with Daniel that required him to collect data on his computer, along with the other projects he was currently handling. You decide to pop by and see how he's coming along with collecting the data, considering that he will be presenting his files and data to a group of board members the next day. Daniel says its going great and he shows you some of the findings in his presentation that he will show for the board meeting tomorrow morning. You tell Daniel good job and encourage him to consider applying for the new managerial position that is available. You walk back to your office and decide to work on cleaning up your desk, a task you've needed to do for quite a few months.

The end of the work day approaches and you have plans to go to drinks and dinner with a group of friends you hadn't seen in a while when you get off of work. You lost track of time cleaning and organizing your desk so you are rushing to leave to office in order to make it to dinner on time. As you leave, you see Alex is still working at his desk. That is not out of the ordinary as Alex is a harder worker and stays late frequently if he is in the middle of a task so you wave goodbye to Alex. Once you walk down to your vehicle, you realize you forgot your phone in your office so you head back to your office. When you walk in, you are surprised to see Alex standing at Daniel's computer. You startled Alex when you quickly walked in, and you tell him that you were sorry for startling him and that you forgot your phone. As you're grabbing your phone from your office, you call out to him and ask Alex why he's at Daniel's computer. He responds with something along the lines of "I actually just finished the file I was working on and was getting ready to head out but I looked over and saw that Daniel forgot to log out of his computer. You know how forgetful Daniel is sometimes. So I came over to shut his computer down for him." Considering you all work for a tech company and handle private client information, you tell Alex thank you for catching that for Daniel and that you will remind him tomorrow that he has to remember to log out of his computer.

The next morning, you grab a cup of coffee, get settled in your office, and begin preparing for the board meeting where Daniel will give his presentation. Daniel comes into your office, frantically rushing in the door, and explains that his presentation file containing the data and findings were no longer on his computer. You and Daniel both look in obvious places in Daniel's computer for the presentation files but after 15 minutes of searching, you make the executive decision to reschedule his presentation. Due to the importance of this meeting, you call the members and explain the situation. You offer to take some of your friends, other important decision-makers in the company, out to lunch to make up for the inconvenience of rescheduling the meeting.

The friends you go to lunch with are other decision-makers in the company that would have influence in deciding who gets the promotion in your department that is up for grabs. They mention that they were disappointed about the rescheduling of the board meeting and that they were looking forward to hearing Daniel's presentation along with the board members. You apologize and try to keep the conversation lighthearted and tell them "Well, I am sure you all had other more important things to work on during that time than listen to a presentation." With a chuckle they said it wasn't time wasted. Come to find out, they actually met another one of your employees during the time that Daniel should have been presenting his findings to your friends and the various board members. You learn from your friends that Alex had gone to each of their offices and introduced himself, attempting to befriend the other decision-makers in the company. You are surprised to hear that because your other managerial friends would have no reason to be interacting with your employees as their job duties do not overlap or intersect with one another. Further, their offices were on an entirely different floor than where the marketing department employees works. You casually ask your friends what they talked about and you find out little bits of information from each of them but as you put together all of the pieces of information, you realize that Alex has exaggerated their team's achievements significantly and he took full credit for their team's successes when that was not necessarily the full truth. During lunch, the decision-makers were telling you compliments about Alex and expressing to you that it seemed Alex was the most suitable candidate for the managerial position. You even find out that Alex explicitly mentioned Susan's and Daniel's setbacks to your friends (other managers in influential positions within the organization) and Alex framed those setbacks in a manner that made Alex look like the man who swooped in to keep the team from failing.

As you drive home that evening, you begin to think about how strange the last couple of days have been. You begin to get a sinking feeling in your stomach but you're not sure why. You have a vague recollection about what you heard regarding Alex's behaviors during the first month he was working at your organization. You start to wonder if Alex devised a plan to discredit and outmaneuver his colleagues who were also strong candidates for the managerial position. You begin to ask yourself the following questions: Had Alex discreetly gathered sensitive information about his coworkers? Had Alex discovered that his colleague, Susan, was experiencing work-family life balance problems and took advantage of this by assigning her tasks with tight deadlines, knowing that she would be unable to meet them? Had Alex overheard the praise and encouragement you gave Daniel the day before? Had Alex secretly deleted the crucial files and research data from Daniel's computer when he claimed he was turning off his computer? Would Alex deliberately try to make Susan's and Daniel's performance suffer to lower their chances of being considered for the managerial position and increase his own chances for promotion?

As the manager, it is your responsibility to address this workplace dynamic. For this discussion board, please consider the following questions:

1. Based on everything you know from the case above, and working under the assumption that Alex used cunningness, manipulation, deceit, and sabotage for his own self-interest, what dark personality characteristic would you think Alex is closest to displaying? Use your critical thinking skills and the elements of reasoning to justify your answer.

2. Explain how you would go about addressing the problems in this workplace dynamic to keep your workplace from turning into a toxic workplace environment. Describe the issues you see in this workplace scenario and how you would speak to each individual and what you would speak to them about.

3. Think about the various motivational theories we learned about in the beginning of the semester. Choose a motivational theory you would use to influence Alex's behaviors and describe how you would apply that motivational theory to change Alex's behavior. Be specific about the steps you would take, the conversations you might have, and any potential challenges you foresee.

4. How would you measure the success of your strategy in addressing Alex's behavior and improving the overall team dynamics?