Discussion: Most Entertaining Emotional Intelligence Story

Herman

Between my military service and defense contracting, I've worked with many people over the years. One of the most common questions employers ask during a job interview is "do you work well with others". After many years in the workforce I now know the significance of this question and more importantly the answer given by the prospective new hire. Most places in today's workplace require workers to interact and communicate with each other to get the job done. There's been a few times when I experienced a work environment with poor communications and a lack of team work. Many years ago a had a supervisor who I believe had a lot of leadership faults that need to addressed, like substandard treatment of subordinates and not knowing how to utilize the talents and strengths of his subordinates to improve overall the productivity of our department. Personally I liked my supervisor but professionally we were worlds apart on how to do things to the benefit of the company, clients, and everyone involved. I quickly learned that my supervisor was more worried about himself and how he looked to his superiors then doing the right thing to push our department forward. I had a lot of one on one conversation with my supervisor about this but nothing really changed with his help alone to advance our team work and productivity. Then one day I realized that the only way to effect real change in our department was to feed the assortment of good ideas to my supervisor and allow him to take the credit for the proposals and improvements. Of course this all worked as planned and by the third quarter our department became number one for productivity which continued for eighteen straight months. The funny thing about this is my supervisor was recognized on several occasions for these achievements but eventually our company leadership noticed the talents of our entire department and everyone started receiving awards, bonuses, and promotions for their efforts.

In this case everyone's outcome was better than expected due to a play on my supervisor's emotional intelligence, primarily his social awareness and self management. Because he was more concerned about advancing his own interest and neglecting the interest of everyone else, he was an ineffective manager. But once I realized what he cared about most it was easy to successfully play on those emotions which ultimately taught us all a lesson about what can be achieved through teamwork.

References: Tearle, R.(2014) Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved 14 March 2017 from website https://wwwyoutube.com/watch?v=MepJp7KpaH4