Gabriel Huerta: Hiper Bank

1. Which advices would you give to Gabriel in order to obtain a good management for the future of his group?

Gabriel Huerta has been director of the department of the planning and management control of the Hiper Bank for two years. Right now, Gabriel Huerta is facing a new challenge: to become the director of the whole financial area. He thinks this promotion is the result of his excellent job, since the department has achieved all the key performance indicators established. In fact, he wants the new challenge.

Gabriel seems to be a person with a strong personality and a continuing need to progress in his professional career. His motivation is essentially based on autonomy, mastery and purpose, and not focus on monetary things, although sometimes people in bank realize that they could get more money for their extremely efforts. But, Gabriel is not looking for more money. Like two years ago, Gabriel wants recognition, esteem and self-actualization. He is at the top of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

On the other hand, Gabriel is a leader of a group of four people: María, Jesús, Beatriz and Eduardo. All of them have different personal motivations. Therefore, as a leader, Gabriel must hold himself accountable to build meaningful and purposeful relationships that matter with his team. Additionally, Gabriel must apply an appropriate communication style according to the team member and also depending on the context. He must be able to have an assertive style as well as a submissive style, for instance.

This can be apply to María, in the interview that Gabriel wants to do with her. Effectively, an assertive style seems to be more appropriate in almost every situation and this is the scenario with María. Being assertive means respecting everyone and it is the ability to clearly express the thoughts and feelings through open, honest and direct communication.

In fact, María seems to be an exceptional team member. She is always protecting and helping other team members and she is a person that Gabriel can trust on. But, sometimes, María has a direct communication style. She doesn’t have barriers to express what she feels. And this can be a serious problem for an eventual career promotion, since the political dimension exists in organizations and it must be “respect”.

Furthermore, the relationship between María and Eduardo is a challenge. Gabriel defines Eduardo as a friendly and nice person, although with a performance lower than expected, even after getting an MBA. But, it seems that María doesn’t fit with Eduardo. In fact, they are facing a conflict. She thinks that Eduardo doesn’t have the appropriate skills to develop correctly the job. But, the problem may not be in Eduardo in particularly. Perhaps he just doesn’t have the correct monitoring and just need some orientations, and this could be done by María.

So, since Gabriel is extremely motivated