Stop Sabotaging Your Career: 8 Proven Strategies to Succeed--In Spite of Yourself by Lois P. Frankel

Author:Lois P. Frankel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Self-Help
ISBN: 0446697850
Publisher: Business Plus
Published: 2007-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIVE MOST DEADLY CHARACTER TRAITS

Part and parcel of emotional intelligence is an awareness of how your behavior impacts others—and the desire to minimize pain, unnecessary discomfort, or embarrassment to others. People with insufficient emotional intelligence often possess five character traits that lead to losing the competitive edge at work. Of course, there may be others, but these are the ones that seem to trip people up most frequently:

• Condescension

• Abrasiveness

• Belligerence

• Blaming

• Insensitivity

Each one alone is bad enough, but when one person possesses all five traits (and some people do), it’s deadly. You may wonder how anyone with all five characteristics could survive for long in an organization. It happens in a number of circumstances. The most common scenario is that the person possesses a unique skill set that’s difficult to find or reproduce. The person usually knows this, and it serves only to exacerbate the offensive behaviors. He or she has no reason to change because the behavior gets rewarded along with the valued skills. The obvious problem here is that sooner or later someone with the same skills, but not the offensive behavior, comes along and looks mighty attractive to the organization.

A second scenario is that the organizational culture actually values the offensive behavior. I once conducted a management skills program for a group like this. It was the sales department of a well-known manufacturing firm, and out of a group of twenty-five participants, twenty of them possessed each of the five deadly character traits. These twenty people would ignore the ground rules that the group set for itself, come to group sessions late, talk over one another, one-up one another, and, in general, act abrasive, belligerent, condescending, and insensitive. When confronted with their behavior, they blamed the other five for not being enough fun! I’d never seen anything like it. When I spoke with the department manager over the lunch break, he actually seemed proud of his team. He grinned and said that they were on their best behavior. I’d hate to see their worst!

This particular organization isn’t alone. There are others where specific, inappropriate behaviors are viewed simply as eccentricities of the company and its employees. You find this in many creative and highly technical fields. Their customers and clients are aware of the behavior, as are candidates applying for jobs and others in their industry, but because of some unusual or special service or product that they provide, they can get away with it. These organizations don’t thrive for long, however. The inappropriateness of their actions eventually catches up with them. At some point, another company provides the same services without the offensive behavior.

Here are some examples of how the five deadly character traits play out in real life and people whose careers were negatively impacted because of them.

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