Management Skills: Are You the Strong, Sensitive Type?

CIOs who cultivate a sensitivity to others’ needs are better managers and lead more effective organizations.

By
Sat, March 01, 2003

CIO — Like you, Alan Hughes believes employees should check their personal problems at the door when they enter the office. But Hughes, CIO of GE Commercial Distribution Finance in St. Louis, also realizes that doing so is not always realistic. "We all go through different crises in our lives. They're distractions. You can't help but bring them to work, either consciously or subconsciously," he says.

Hughes injects this understanding into his work, and it pays off. Recently, one of Hughes' direct reports—a valued employee—knocked on his office door and told him that she was going through a divorce. She said she didn't think it would affect her performance. But she was late for work. She missed meetings. Her performance slipped. Hughes talked to her. "I said, 'I know you're going through a difficult time right now. One thing that I ask is, if you're not going to be in a meeting, please let me know,'" he recalls. He also worked with her and other members of the department to lighten her workload and lengthen some project deadlines. In so doing, Hughes and his team were still able to meet project milestones.

 
Test Your Emotional IQ
 
Try this tool to assess your emotional intelligence.
 

"As a leader, it's important to know those things [going on in people's personal lives] so you can make adjustments," says Hughes, who is 43 years old. If you don't, he adds, "projects will fail. Things won't get done on time. If you know what's going on and you can manage around it, chances are you can help them through their problems better too." Not to mention retaining a proven performer. Hughes incorporates what psychologists call emotional intelligence (E.I.) into his management style, and experts say CIOs would do well to follow suit.

The term emotional intelligence refers to a person's ability to take control of situations by tuning in to and managing one's own and others' emotions. The approach can mitigate the emotional toll personal problems and organizational changes like layoffs and mergers can have on those involved. It can help managers keep employee turnover low and projects on track.

It may sound touchy-feely, but it's not, says Wendy Alfus Rothman, president of The Wenroth Group, a human resources consultancy in New York City. "E.I. is not just for women. It is not for people that are into harmony and peacefulness. In fact, it is a real intelligence," she says.

Experts argue that E.I. directly impacts productivity and profits. For example: Richard Boyatzis, professor and chairman of the organizational behavior department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, assessed the senior partners in a multinational consultancy and found that those who exhibited E.I. competencies more frequently delivered over $1 million more in annual profits from their accounts than did other senior partners.

Similar to this Article

Continue Reading

Are you ready to diversify? The business needs of companies are changing often and rapidly. Open virtualization offers compelling business advantages and shows even greater potential as companies choose diversification over proprietary vendor lock-in.
Find out how your IT department's IT asset and services management strategy compares to that of your peers by using this unique tool. Click on the link below to begin our 10-minute assessment and see how your IT organization measures up!
Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools that provide immediate alerts. This white paper has been brought to you by NetIQ, the leader in solving complex IT challenges.
This white paper describes the business challenges and opportunities that are driving interest in Identity Governance while discussing considerations your organization should make to help achieve project success.
This paper explores the concept of content-aware IAM, describes the integrated architecture for this new approach, and highlights the benefits that this approach provides.
One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.
End User Experience, 30-Min Webinar
Wed. Feb. 22nd ~ 11 AM ET

Are you ready to gain the proactive ability to rapidly respond to end user problems (before they call the help desk)? Then you won't want to miss a webinar that will show you the latest innovation in end user monitoring.
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.
VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment
IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center