From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
I have been following the past few days where you have been talking about Time Span. Yesterday, you talked about the four elements of success. I am interested in the last element. The one, where you talk about negative temperament. What is that?
Response:
We have all known people with a specific negative temperament. It is not something observable all the time, but it is there and almost predictable in its display. In his book Executive Leadership, Elliott Jaques describes those personality traits that might have significant impact in disabling a manager from being effective. Here is how the list begins: “obsessive, joyless, hopeless, heartless, frigid, frenzied, destructive, anti-social, gluttonous, bigoted, paranoid, dishonest.”
So, while Jaques endorses no personality profile for success (because there is an unlimited variety of successful profiles), it is these negative personality traits that are most predictive for failure in the role of a manager. -TF
Are we takening about behaviour or emotion, or behaviour as a result of emotion? Behaviour is almost always a result of what’s going on inside. Although human as all of us, a manager should have enough Emotional Intelligence to act with the appropiate behaviour that sits the situation. A quality often appreciated by employees and collegues.