Since I work in Emotional Intelligence, I get emails about some pretty awful managers (as well as colleagues, subordinates and peers). Work takes up a lot of our life, and misery at work is chronically stressful. The questions often amount to, “Can I ‘fix’ this if I learn more Emotional Intelligence?”The answer is “yes,” but probably not in
way you’re thinking. Can you make a nasty person nice by using your EQ skills, such as empathy? You might be able to make situation better, but it’s a big “it depends.” Here’s what it depends upon.
As has been said, ‘a problem you can fix; a fact you just have to live with,” and you have to know what you’re looking at. Can you ever control someone else and make them way you want them to be? No. Can you change them? Sometimes, if they have desire to get along. Can you change your viewpoint? Always.
Now how do you tell what personality you can work with, and what you can’t? Narcissistic rage. Get used to that term; you’re going to be hearing it more. It’s known as “the famous narcissistic rage.” You know it if you’ve had it coming at you. It’s a blind, ugly, mindless and virulent kind of rage; an attack.
Now, consider a fairly typical workplace scenario. Your manager is not of highest EQ. The stress is building as a deadline approaches. Suddenly (s)he blows. Something someone did, or said sets them off, and they burst into a fit of rage. It could be yelling, or swearing, or throwing something, or walking out in a tantrum.
So next step … let’s say you decide to try some of your EQ skills. Using your empathy, you realize person was under added stress at time. Still, you can’t tolerate being called a fathead, or incompetent boob, or Captain F-up or whatever insulting epithet was, and this has been last straw in a bad working situation to begin with. After some reflection, when you’ve calmed down and been able to think it over, you find a good time to go in and talk it out with manager.
You bring up what happened. You say how it made you feel, request to be treated with more respect, say “let’s let bygones be bygones but …” and generally try to talk it out.
And reaction? If person is workable with, they show some introspection, remorse, and desire to make things better. They agree they weren’t at their best. They engage in a conversation about it and take a look at what’s going on.
If, on other hand, they fly into a further rage, what you’ve done is further enrage a true narcissistic manager, and there’s your clue.
Such statements as, “I know you were under stress,” or “I’m doing best I can under circumstances and want to make this department shine. How can I…?” or “It doesn’t help me do my best work when I’m called ‘an idiot,’” are phrases which will engender rage in a narcissist, and some semblance of connection from a nice-guy-gone-bad-for-the-moment.
Narcissists have weak self-esteem and also may be control freaks. Those statements bring up feelings in them they can’t deal with, so they rage. To them almost anything you say implies that they, themselves, are at fault (weak, incompetent, out-of-control), which they quickly will turn into being something YOUR fault, and then mindless rage, because it makes them feel better.
And here’s real test of Emotional Intelligence. Empathy and communication skills (interpersonal relationship skills) are competencies, but there are others, such as Personal Power, Intuition, and Reality-testing.
