Problem
Case
Mike Sebastian has been the director of facilities for more than 30 years. Up until the past three years, the facilities department had low turnover. Today, however, the turnover rate is 30 percent, causing concern for Rena Shah, the chief human resources officer at the hospital.
To understand the problem, Rena pays a visit to several of Mike's former employees.
FIRST WORKER. I retired because of him. I couldn't take the constant panic he gave me. He wasn't that bad when he first started-a little temperamental but nothing to complain about. But he changed a lot in my last years there. He would blow his top when he found out something was not done or someone made a complaint about us. It was hard to live with.
SECOND WORKER. I quit six months after he hired me. Mike was a screamer. People outside the department didn't know because he seemed great with everyone else. Behind closed doors, though, he could dress you down. No job was worth that. Even though I needed the money and was really looking forward to being eligible for the pension plan, I decided to leave for my own peace of mind.
THIRD WORKER. Forget about talking to him! He would never listen. He's old school. He thinks it's his way or the highway. I once tried to reason with him to calm down the situation, but he fired me. And I put in the best years of my life in that job. With all due respect, Ms. Shah, you should give him the boot and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Task
• How should Rena address the problem with Mike?
• What do you think triggered Mike's transformation in the past three years?
Exercise
As mentioned earlier, emotional intelligence may be managed through learning and improving both personal and social competencies. Personal competency includes self-awareness, self-control, and self-motivation. Social competency, meanwhile, includes social awareness, empathy, collaboration, and teamwork.
Go to the website of Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations and develop a list of the specific leadership behaviors that characterize emotional intelligence. How do these behaviors match up with your own?