Take one of the strips and answer the following questions:

a. Is the key player a manipulator or one who empowers others?

b. Does the key player encourage or control others?

Several employees in your patient-billing section of CMC Health Center have complained about the hygiene problems of two fellow employees. In one case, to state it bluntly, this is not just some hot summer body odor; this is from not bathing. In the other, the employee goes too far in masking body odor with heavy cologne. To address these earlier complaints, you had put up a general notice, asking people to be more considerate of their fellow employees and patients and (1) to shower more regularly and (2) to refrain from bathing in perfume and cologne. But apparently this notice has not solved the problem.

Today, a group of four employees, including your very best, told you that the smell from two employees is overwhelming and that they will no longer work in the same area. Transfer or relocation is not an option. You must now sit down and have a conversation with each employee and resolve this conflict.

Role-play # 1: Meet Molly. Molly is a good worker but she is a throwback to the

“hippie era” of the 1960s. To her, cleanliness is not important. She does not appear to bathe, brush her teeth, or wash her hair. She often wears the same clothes for several days in a row, and on a couple of occasions you were able to smell her from a couple of cubicles away.

c. How good a listener is the key player?

d. How sensitive to other people’s feelings is the key player?

e. Is this a situation where the key player should show empathy to others?

f. If you were the key player in the strip, what would you have done differently? p-635