Justifying lack of Emotional Intelligence in Desmonds Behaviour - Case Study Example

Emotional Intelligence Case Study Introduction Emotional intelligence enables people to identify, assess and control their own emotions and those of others (Martins, Ramalho & Morin, 2010). Business organisation and institutions comprise of people and groups characterised by behavioural and cultural diversities. Emotional intelligence pervasively influences job performance in diverse career contexts. Reissland (2012) argues that emotional intelligence should constitute the criteria for promotion readiness of middle and senior executives. Lack of emotional intelligence creates several dissatisfactions in organisations, leading to performance failures. The primary elements of emotional intelligence include perceiving, harnessing, understanding and managing emotions. The current case study concerns Des, the CEO of Maritime Holidays, who leads the business to failure due to lack of emotional intelligence. Justifying lack of emotional intelligence in Desmond’s Behaviour Desmond lacks the ability to motivate, inspire and challenge his staff. Walton (2012) argues that emotionally intelligence managers are motivational, inspirational and give challenging tasks to their staff with an objective of developing their competencies. This is because these managers are aware and have a thorough understanding of their emotions and those of their employees. Des lacked flexibility since all phone operators had to follow rigid worded scripts when responding to customer inquiries. Rigidity constrains motivation since the staff members are not guaranteed their autonomy in contributing towards organisational goals (Chulte, Ree & Carretta, 2004). Excessive rigidity also undermines the extent to which the organisation can inspire and challenge workers because there is only one way of doing things. Emotionally intelligent executives are characterised by high level of individual and team performance (Kunnanatt, 2008). Des has portrayed traits of inability to work cooperatively with his staff; his individual performance is also questionable considering the way he handles organisational matters. Kunnanatt (2008) further argues that groups consisting of emotionally intelligent people have superior task performance skills than members with low emotional intelligent. When phone operators express interest in having a more flexible script for handling customers’ inquires, he considers it as a form of insubordination. The reason for summoning phone operators is not to discuss the problem, but to clarify his position on customer calls. Des also portrays inferior task performance skills when the audience moves out of his office near Bondi Beach, Australia. Instead of focusing on identifying causes of retraction and make corrections, Desmond concludes that perhaps the beach life is not for him. Lac of emotional intelligence is also evidenced when one of the employees questions the benefits of sticking rigidly to the script instead giving customer the knowledge of holidays. The young man is actually trying to show Desmond that there is sense in avoiding the current rigidity and institute flexibility that can ensure customer satisfaction through information they offer. Des ends up sacking this young money because of his superiority feeling. This indicates that Des lacks empathy in his feelings and approach towards his staff that could make them feel understood, involved, empowered, listened to, rewarded and helped (Kunnanatt, 2008). Des advertises a job vacant position entitled “Call Centre Guru” in a local newspaper. The employees criticises the advertisement based on inappropriateness, but Des does not consider the criticisms. According to Hess and Bacigalupo (2011), less emotionally intelligent people do not take on board criticisms from their subordinates. Des does not possess the capability to diagnose and monitor the internal emotional environment of his employees. If Des was emotionally intelligent, he would be skilful in managing his dealings and relationships with the staff. This would produce a winning and mutually productive outcome for both parties (Reissland, 2012). During the recruitment interview, the panel felt that the single mother is the most suitable candidate for the job. The panel did not cast any vote for the elderly gentleman named Bernard. Des criticised the selection of the single woman for the job. His criticism arguments were characterised by insensitivity and focused on sexism. Des ignored the panel’s recommendations and hired Bernard. His reasons for choosing Bernard were based on membership to a local golf club and the positions that Bernard held, although these positions were irrelevant to the call centre position. His criterion of selecting Bernard is biased, sexist and insensitive; biasness, sexism and insensitivity contradict the emotional intelligence requirements (Choi, Kluemper & Sauley, 2013). When Bernard was hired, Des held a welcoming party in the company, but did not invite the members of the call centre staff. The primary objective of the party is to please Bernard and other classy people, particularly close friends. The staff members could see the progress of the party through a partition that separated his office from the call centre unit. Des did not care about the feelings of the staff concerning lack of recognition for internal parties. He did not order for them even a bottle of beverage since his low emotional intelligence did not show him the feelings that the other members of the staff were undergoing. The worst indicator of lack of emotional intelligence occurred during the best employee award. Des had identified Hugo as the best employee because he had sold the most holidays. Increase in number of sales had resulted from a deal between a shrewd staff and Bernard to interpret the telephone scripts in his own way. Des overheard this during the gift presentation through Bernard’s phone call. He regarded this as an act of subterfuge and began throwing abusive words in front of the audience. Des knocked the Bruce Forsyth’s statute, which was the gift of the day, and knocked its leg off. Bernard was finally sacked from Maritime Holidays. The event indicated that Des was poor in self-awareness and self-regulation particularly to emotional reactions. He lacked social sills, empathy and motivation to perceive, capitalize, understand and manage his emotions when he realised the collaboration trick behind business prosperity. When the business failed to work, he moved to Australia, but he could not go far due to lack of considering others’ perception to his mode of dressing. Recommendations for improving emotional intelligence Des’s emotional intelligence is actually low and needs to be adjusted. Improving emotional intelligence requires a thorough understanding the attributes of emotional intelligence (Austin, 2008). According to the mixed model, emotional intelligence consists of four attributes: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management (Kunnanatt, 2008). Desmond should consider improving his emotional intelligence since it could help him navigate social complexities of his workplace, manage his physical health, control emotional swings and develop feelings for other people’s emotions. Improving emotional intelligence and decision-making abilities requires developing key skills for managing pressures and communicating effectively. Desmond needs to seek the services emotional intelligence practitioners. The practitioners developed several emotional intelligence programs. The participants in the emotional intelligence programs go through four progressive stages (Kunnanatt, 2008). The first stage is emotional mapping; this stage will enable Des to gain insights into how various emotions interact to bring actions. The exercises of emotional mapping train people to capture their own emotions and feelings. Multiple emotions that people experience on their daily lives include joy, anger, sorrow, hope, surprise, resentment, eagerness and fear (Kunnanatt, 2008). The second stage is the mapping process. The mapping process will enable Des to learn and understand the operation of multiple emotions within the mind and their influences on thoughts, feelings and actions. The third stage, diagnosing emotional patterns, will enable Des to acquire true and deep self-knowledge of his emotional world and give him an awareness of his emotional status and management techniques (Kunnanatt, 2008). Emotional authentication stage will help Des to assess to productivity and losses caused by his emotions from experiences, and their effects on others. The emotional intelligence programs will expose Des to a series of supervised exercises that will provide him with opportunities to experience a true feel of his hidden emotions and feelings. The second step in improving emotional intelligence constitutes understanding the importance of emotional intelligence in all aspects of life (Martins, Ramalho & Morin, 2010). Desmond needs to understand that emotional intelligence is a critical requirement for success in his daily endeavours. Emotional intelligence enables people to act rationally and calmly when dealing with difficult situations. Rational actions imply that an emotionally intelligent person has clear reasons based on facts for taking a particular course of action instead of another. Calmness is the ability to avoid violent actions when one experiences undesirable feelings. For example, Des lacked rational background for hiring Bernard instead of the single-parent woman. Similarly, Des acted violently when he realised the collaboration between Bernard and Hugo that led to increased sales for Maritime Holidays Company. Emotional intelligence also ensures self-management skills with the behavioural components of self-control, trustworthiness, initiative, and adaptability (Hess & Bacigalupo, 2011). Thirdly, Des should be able to recognise stress triggers and ways of dealing with them. Life is actually filled with difficult situations caused by environmental constraints (Chulte, Ree & Carretta, 2004). Des main cause of stress could be over-ambitious business goals that he wants to achieve too fast, but using methods that are suitable elsewhere. Various stress triggers may make issues seem much more challenging than their reality. The vital part of improving emotional intelligence is the ability to identify stress triggers, recognise their existence and seek the feeling of calmness and relaxation (Austin, 2008). Desmond lacks the ability to identify factors that trigger emotions; therefore, it is difficult for him to control emotions that he is not aware of their causes. Des should also consider the effects of decisions on other people; Des has portrayed inability to consider effects of emotions on his employees. For example, he failed to recruit a single woman who succeeded during the interview, knocked down Hugo’s statute gift and Sacked the young employee and Bernard. Desmond can improve his emotional intelligence if he assumes the positions of those he mistreats and feel the pain they undergo. Fourthly, Desmond needs to be conscientious and be prepared to deliberate. Thinking and actions characterised by rationality and abundance constitute the primary components of emotional intelligence (Harms & Credé, 2010). Des needs to understand situations accurately and develop clear ideas of those contexts to build analytical comprehension of situations. Conscientiousness refers to the act of analyzing situations with a critical mind in order to understand why people behave the way they do; deliberation is the act of responding accordingly to situations in a rational manner (Grandey, Fisk & Steiner, 2005). Desmond, thus, needs to develop a critical mind of seeing situations, analyzing them and acting upon them in a positive manner. Through rational thinking and deliberation, Des will find himself making better decisions and enhancing his ability to survive hardships. Fifth, Desmond should consider developing optimism in his business prospects. People with optimistic minds tend to live happily with the little success they realise at a time Cropanzano, Rupp & Byrne, 2003). Desmond, by being optimistic, will develop an open mind; an open mind is a critical element of improving emotional intelligence. The current problem with Des is the negative outlook on every contribution from the staff members, which hinders development of his emotional intelligence. Negativity encourages Des to stay wrapped up in himself, focused only on his personal interests rather than building his resilience and shoring ourselves against the vicissitudes of life. Optimism results in emotional well-being and greater opportunities that will attract specialised people to build additional connections for mutual success. Des will achieve optimism through identifying and appreciating good features of the organisation, using hardships as a fuel for improvement and recognising and accepting flaws. Differences between emotional labour and emotional intelligence Larson and Xin (2005) defines emotional labour as a form of emotion regulation mechanism that creates a publicly a desirable facial expression during communication. Emotional labour characterises most service sector organisations as they are required create a publicly visible facial and bodily display in the workplace. For example, a television presenter in the studio is expected to perform emotional work through actions such as smiling and expressing positive emotions (Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2008). Emotional intelligence is the process of perceiving, harnessing, understanding and managing emotions of an individual and those of others. Emotional intelligence is primarily concerned with self-regulation while emotional labour involves acting using emotional expressions to attract guests at service centres. Emotional intelligence, for example, occurs when a person is able deal with difficult situations without compromising relationships with others. Measurement of Emotional Intelligence The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) is the most comprehensive and widely used measures of emotional intelligence. TEIQue conceptualises emotional intelligence in terms of personality (Harms & Credé, 2010). The test comprises of fifteen sub-scales that are organised under four factors; these factors include well-being, sociability, self-control and emotionality. The psychometric properties of the TEIQue have been reported to be globally normally distributed and reliable (Wilk & Moynihan, 2005). Researchers have found out that TEIQue scores are positively related to a subset of the Big Five Personality traits of conscientiousness, extraversion, openness and agreeableness. Conclusion Emotional intelligence is critical in survival in society as it protects people from ramifications associated with emotional actions. Managers should avoid poor managerial actions characterised by low emotional intelligence. Desmond failed in business because of lack of emotional intelligence; therefore, he needs to learn proper ways of enhancing his emotional intelligence to achieve improved results. The TEIQue is a measure of emotional intelligence that primarily focuses on personality. Emotional labour focuses on service centres where workers have to display visual and bodily gestures that are welcoming. References Austin, E.J. 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