EQ in Action

Susan is a pessimistic manager. Her key drive is to make sure that things do not go wrong. When things do go wrong, it makes her even more pessimistic and gloomy. When subordinates make suggestions, she seldom responds with enthusiasm and instead is quick to point out what can go wrong. Although her intentions are good, Susan generally brings a negative energy to the team and this rubs off on them. They are afraid to take initiatives and are hesitant to share ideas because they know Susan's first reaction will be to pour cold water on them. Some are frustrated because they feel Susan holds them back. Others are demotivated because there is little enjoyment at work. The atmosphere is gloomy and the team as a whole lack passion and drive because Susan is holding them back. It goes without saying that this team will not perform to its potential and is likely to experience a high staff turnover.

Stan is a highly optimistic leader. This Sales and Marketing Director of a company selling luxury goods, he always focuses on the bright side. His favourite sayings is "No problem, how hard can that be?" He makes an important announcement to his team: “We’re doubling the amount of clients we’re taking on over the next year and it’s sure to generate major profits for us.”

Stan however is ignoring some important facts. Due to a global economic slowdown, the demand for luxury products has decreased by 30% over the last year. Furthermore, a few new competitors have entered the market and have gobbled up 25% market share during this period in a shrinking market, with low cost products that Sam and his team can't compete with. He is also completely ignoring the fact that a number of his team members are new, inexperienced and still on a learning curve. Finally raw material costs have increased significantly and are eating into profits. Clearly Stan's goals are unachievable.

When some of the team point out some of these facts, Stan typically replies, "No problem, how hard can that be?" Team members feel highly pressurised to perform according to Stan's expectations. The rookies are particularly nervous because they know they are not ready for challenges. If they try to discuss this with Stan, all they get is "how hard can that be?"

It is not long before the team is overstretched. Targets are not being met. Stan's optimistic predictions and forecasts are not being realised. He is frustrated with the team. After all, how hard can it be todouble your client base? Some of the rookies are fired for non - performance. Some of the experienced team members are burning out and can't handle the pressure anymore. They have also lost faith in Stan.They opt for other jobs. The team is further weakened by this, creating another obstacle which hampers their ability to deliver.

Eventually Stan concludes the team is at fault. "No problem" he thinks to himself, "I'll find a job where I can work with a team that is highly motivated. How hard can that be?"

Mary is plant director for Korbury. She has a quality background, and has been very much at home dealing with the world of facts, figures, numbers and data for most of her career. Her team of senior executives has undergone a high turnover during the last 18 months. Only 2 of the original executives she started with are still on board. The other 6 have all joined in the last year. They are all new to each other and have very different personalities. The 2 original executives are having some trouble adjusting to the change in the group's dynamics. At this stage, the team has also moved past the "forming" phase so typical in the initial stages of new team development. The honeymoon is over, and executives are now beginning to assert their true personalities and views. Differences have been emerging over the last while which have sometimes spilled over into open disagreement and confrontation in Executive Team meetings. The team is well and truly in the "storming" phase of new team development.

Mary picks up that all is not well with the team. She is oblivious though as to what is driving the growing conflict in the team and puts it down to some of the new team members just being difficult. She does nothing to address the qualitative issue of new team formation and the accompanying dynamics. In meetings her conversations are exclusively focused on productivity, goals, efficiency, waste reduction, costs, profits, carbon footprint measurables etc. One team member in particular, Brian, is annoying her and she regards him as being insubordinate. She has a private meeting with Terry the HR executive and makes it clear that Terry must do what it takes to get Brian off the team.

Conflicts continue to play themselves outside of the Exec meetings. Some execs do their best to avoid one another. One chooses to deal with conflict by being passive - aggressive and pretending to co - operate with the other execs while quietly sabotaging them. Another simply withdraws and becomes depressed. Not only does the individual performances of the execs suffer because of the negative team dynamic, but the overall ability of the execs to integrate and co - ordinate the efforts of the various departments is hampered. In the meantime, Mary struggles to understand why plant efficiencies are declining, as are profits, while scrap and waste are on the up.

Jonathan's profile shows that he is very intuitive. Because of his good "gut feel" he is able to pick up easily on people's deeper feelings and sense their unspoken emotions. As a result he is well liked for being an empathic and supportive manager who is "tuned in" to people.

Jonathan's plant is facing a challenging time. With globalisation the plant is finding it difficult to compete with manufacturers in the East who have much lower labour costs. Furthermore unfavourable exchange rates mean that there is further pressure to contain costs, improve efficiencies and above all improve productivity.

Jonathan has two members in his team of 8 who have not been performing for quite some time now. This is affecting the overall performance of the production line that he manages.

Jonathan has made extensive efforts to help them raise their performance, even to the extent that he got into trouble for neglecting some of his KPA's. The fact is, that these two individuals have been over - promoted. Jonathan in fact is the one who appointed them. Pushing aside concerns raised by HR about their suitability, Jonathan appointed them because they had long service with the company. Jonathan felt that their loyalty had not been adequately rewarded and was also aware that they were struggling financially. These were his key reasons for appointing them in the first place.

Despite clear evidence that these employees are not performing and lack the capability to lift their performance to the required standard, Jonathan cannot bring himself to institute a performance management process which may lead to constructive dismissal. He keeps thinking about their loyalty to the company, their personal circumstances and how they will be affected emotionally if they lose their jobs and he continues to struggle along with them.

In the meantime, the situation is causing problems for the other team members. They feel angry at Jonathan's soft approach and the fact that it is bringing down the whole team's performance.

Celia is the Recruitment Manager for CVN, a niche cell phone operator doing business in various countries in Africa. She has been looking for months to recruit a suitable candidate for a Country Marketing Manager position in Rwanda. This position is absolutely critical in order for CVN to establish a meaningful input in this country. The successful candidate's key task will be to spearhead the official launch of CVN in Rwanda.

Despite an extensive search, CVN have not been able to recruit a suitably qualified local candidate. Celia has decided to open the position to expats. Applicants however seem to be put off by the country's violent past, and the fact that CVN is a niche operator that is not very well known.

Despite its turbulent past, Rwanda is a potentially lucrative market for a niche operator like CVN. The demand for internet services is huge and backed by government incentives, with smart phones being the primary platform for accessing these services. Larger competitors see better opportunities in other African countries.

A headhunter contacts Celia and tells her that he has the perfect candidate for her. Jacky is a single, ambitious and dynamic senior marketing manager for one of the big players in the industry. She has a great resume. Jackie feels that there are no immediate prospect for advancement for her with her present employer, and has indicated that she sees CVN's position in Rwanda as an exciting opportunity. She has had another great offer though, and has to accept by close of business.

Celia discusses this with Lionel, her MD. Lionel is a highly practical person who is attuned to practical realities. So much so, that this has cost him opportunities in the past. He asks for Jackie's CV and comments:

"Her CV looks good, but she looks inexperienced with social media. Before doing anything, we have to find out how effective Jackie has been in integrating social media into a marketing plan before we make a decision about interviewing her. Please do some reference checks and get back to me. I'm not willing to take a risk."

Celia knows that it will be impossible to do this before Jackie's offer expires. Another good opportunity has gone lost, and it's back to the drawing board for Celia. CVN's launch into Rwanda will have to wait.

Kyle is a senior laboratory technician for a large beverage company. Kyle's job requires him to be very hands on, practical and grounded. Much of his time is spent analysing samples and writing up detailed reports. A key responsibility is to alert manufacturing to quality problems with the microbial media and growth as this can result in poor quality batches which cannot be bottled.

Kyle's profile shows that he has a very high score on the creative dimension. Although he has at times come up with novel solutions to problems that have proven to be valuable, Kyle has also shown that he can be absent minded and "head - in - the clouds." He has at times been forgetful and overlooked important routines in his analysis. This has also resulted in him being slow to deliver reports to the brewers which has slowed up the brewing process. In turn, this has had a knock - on effect as both bottling and the warehouse have had to reschedule their activities as planned and volumes have not materialised as scheduled. Furthermore, this is draining resources, as Peter the lab manager, is having to spend time coaching and micro - managing Kyle in an attempt to ensure that there are no major omissions on Kyle's part which could bring brewing to a standstill.

Gordon is the warehouse manager for Listless, a large FMCG distributor. He has always believed that rules and procedures are there to be followed. He is uncomfortable with change and new suggestions. He proudly remembers the time he refused Jennifer ,the sales manager's request, to release an urgent customer order for beverages that were to be sold at a national sporting event that evening. Jennifer's explanation that the customer, Sportbev, could not complete all of the details on the on - line order because of a IT system failure was not acceptable to him. True, this was a very loyal customer who had never defaulted on a payment, but, rules are rules. When Jennifer asked whether the customer could fax through the missing details for them to be uploaded on the system later, Gordon replied:

Jen, you know that is not procedure. I'm sorry I can't help you.

Sportbev made a phone call to a competitor FMCG distributor who were willing to pull out all of the stops to fill Sportbev's order. When Sportbev's GM heard of this incident, he instructed his procurement team to only use Listless as a last resort in the future. They nearly lost a lot of money due to Gordon's unwillingness to cut through red tape, even though the situation warranted it.

Warren works for a company called Virgil. He is a highly innovative manager who places a premium on finding new and better ways to do things at work. He is highly inquisitive and gets bored very quickly. He loves to speak the language of "cutting edge", "pushing the envelope", "out - of - the - box thinking", "continuous improvement", and"entrepreneurial spirit". Up until now Warren's region has been performing well. They have the bulk of market share, and are also outperforming Virgil's other regions.

It is a new year, and Warren decides that this is the year that he is going to completely "ramp - up" and "re - design" his sales department. Sales rep job descriptions are re - written to make them more "entrepreneurial". Sales territories are re -divided between reps. Route to market is changed with more emphasis placed on small outlets than before. Sales orders will no longer be taken manually but via hand held point - of - sale devices to be used by reps. This requires significant investment in technology. The department is restructured. A layer of management is removed, span of control is widened and decision making power is pushed down to lower levels. Reward systems are changed to make them more performance based.

Warren is excited about all of the cutting edge changes he is going to make and rolls them out. There are however many unforeseen consequences. Staff are bewildered by all of the changes. There is confusion and serious communication problems. Customers are unhappy because long established relationships with reps have been broken with the re - division of territories. Large outlets are being under - serviced because of the emphasis shift to smaller outlets. The point - of - sale devices required a major capital outlay. It has not resulted in significantly increased efficiencies and sales volumes and so far there is no pay - back for the investment. Managers are overstretched because of the wider span of control. Poor decisions are being made because decision making power has been put in the hands of inexperienced staff. Due to these problems, sales are declining and several reps have left because they are earning less with the new pay - for - performance system Warren has introduced.

Warren is shocked to see that the "old system", which had been working perfectly well has delivered superior results to his new one. He realises that many of the changes he introduced were not essential. He did not foresee their destabilizing consequences and not having a change management plan in place only made matters worse.

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