This case study examines how developing management's behavioral skills and styles impacts employee satisfaction. It explores change management theory and the impact that presentations and training in leadership and management have on the job satisfaction of the employees reporting to them. The site for this study is a company (herein called LevelCo) that has grown over the past 75 years from a small company to a worldwide organization in level- and flow-control instrumentation devices and diverse technologies. With that growth has come a need to develop its managerial personnel in order to create a more professional, forward-looking, and sustainable organization that can remain competitive in the future.

This is a mixed-method, multi-phase case study based on action research in which the researcher served as a participant-observer. It was conducted from June 2006 to June 2007 in three phases and used two instruments: an Employee Satisfaction Survey and the Life Styles Inventory™ (LSI) by Human Synergistics.

During phase 1, all LevelCo employees were given the Employee Satisfaction Survey to serve as a baseline. For the purposes of the study, the employees were divided into a Control Group and an Experimental Group. During phase 2, the managerial personnel (MP) from the two groups were given three successive administrations of the LSI. The Experimental Group MP were given an explanation of the study, orientation before the administration of the survey and the LSI, and, intermittently throughout the LSI process, presentations, training, and coaching on leadership and management, and individual interviews and discussions concerning the results of their three LSIs. The Control Group MP also took the LSI three times, but they received no information, coaching, or interviews about the survey or the LSI. During phase 3, all employees again took the Employee Satisfaction Survey.

Results indicate that, even when initial differences between the two groups are taken into account, the management intervention resulted in improved employee satisfaction in the Experimental Group. Examination of the changes in the three LSI results suggests that the improvements may be due to the managers' improved support and involvement with their employees.