Diana’s Disappointment : The Promotion Stumbling Block

Case Overview

Diana is a General Manager who wants to become a District Manager. But she was failed to get
promoted at the last district manager interview. She was so shocked and upset about not getting
promoted.

Diana thought she is qualified for the position due to her performance at work. She manages her
restaurant completely by the operational manual book, meticulously adhered to policies and
procedures and rigorously controlled expenses. In result, her restaurant sales are growing -in spite of
new competitions in the market and she received relatively few costumer complaints. The only
things that is little out of the line was the higher turnover among her staff.

Diana not too concerned about this. However, the reason for this situation is because she had a high
standard for both herself and her employees. She didn’t think she should bend the rules for anyone,
for whatever reason. It was her responsibility to make the restaurant was managed strictly in
accordance with the operation manual, and she could not allow deviations. Even, Diana was called
as “ice maiden” by her employees because of her way of management.

Case Analysis

We will start to examine Diana’s case within the framework of emotional intelligence domains -
which is form hierarchy from the lowest to the highest, of self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness and relationship management.

Emotional intelligence (EI), as we know is a set of competencies that allow us to perceive,

understand, and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others. EI can be organized into four
dimensions representing the recognition of emotions in ourselves and in others, as well as the
regulation of emotions in ourselves and in others.

The first dimension from EI, the lowest dimension, is self-awareness. It refers to having a deep
understanding of one’s own emotions as well as strength, values, and motives. In Diana’s case, we
can see that she have a high self-awareness. She knows what she wants ; being a district manager. A
desirable position for any general manager, like her, and was her goal since she began working in the
industry.

She knows, or thought, that she was even more than qualified for the position due to her
performance and track record. Growing sales, well managed restaurant, few costumer complaints -
she was technically competent ! It is no doubt that Diana knows her strength (ability to manage the
restaurant), values (hard working, loyalty), and motive (being a district manager) very well.

The second dimension is self-management. It represents how well we control or redirect our internal
states, impulses and resources. It also involves an inner conversation that guides our behavior. Diana
have capability to manage herself in order to reach her goal. She already prepare herself to be a
district manager since a long time. She also able to not let her feeling take over the control of her
performance. She only focuses on how to run the restaurant and become a district manager. She
even named “ice maiden” by her staffs.

She is a loyal employee for her company. She was display integrity between herself and the
restaurant, and able to maintaining the drive to perform well. She gave her best performance and do
it strictly. She also sets a high standard for herself to push her work harder and better.
However, at the end, when she was told that she would not be promoted to be district manager, she
can’t control her emotions and left the meeting room before the meeting is finish. Her self-
management was collapse, left her in a crushing disappointment.

The third dimension is social awareness ; it is mainly about empathy -having understanding and
sensitivity to the feelings, thoughts and actions of other. This includes understanding another
person’s situation, experiencing the other emotions, and knowing their needs even unstated. At this
dimension, Diana wasn’t good enough.

Diana rarely paid attention to what her employees said. She never think about her employees feeling
toward their overload work, their tight ship, until the unfriendly work environment. She always think
that everything’s just fine since her restaurant always met it’s target finance. The interactions
between Diana and her employees happened mechanically because she seemed aloof from them.

Diana was too focus on her goals and the restaurant that she put aside the importance of paying
attentions to her staffs. It seems like she only use the employees as her “helpers” to reach her own
ambition. She even never try to talk and listen -she keep a distance from her staff, to what her
employee feels and needs. For her, it is no need to do that because it is not connected -directly, to
the work.

The fourth dimension, and the highest in hierarchy of EI dimensions, is relationship management. It
is refers to managing other people’s emotions, linked to a wide variety of practices ; inspiring others,
influencing people’s beliefs and feelings, developing other’s capabilities, cultivating relationship, etc.
And because of Diana was bad in social awareness, she also bad in this dimension.

The high number turn-over among her staff is a clear indicator that shows Diana wasn’t able to
manage relationship between she and her staff. She fired three employees because of they decide to
try a new costumer service tactic -which is she called innovation they dreamed up, rather than
complying with the established process. She wasn’t about to let anything to change her successful
management strategy. Here, we can see that she wasn’t able to allow her staffs develop their new
capabilities.

Until here, we can infer that Diana’s Emotional Intelligence isn’t good enough. We can say that Diana
have a middle to low EI, because her interpersonal relation wasn’t good and she couldn’t give a good
performance in jobs requiring emotional labor. It is no wonder that Diana have a good capability to
manage herself. But when it comes to manages relationship between she and her staff, we couldn’t
say that she did it well. She isn’t able to manage her staff’s emotional aspect. It is because she never
try or care to really “touch” them.

In result, there is a gap between Diana and her staff. Creating a situation where finally her staff feels
no longer can’t stand with her and decide to leave the restaurant. That’s why the turnover among
her staff is high. Other good manager would think what was wrong, is it really because of the
employee’s mistake or it is pure from his or her own mistake, their leadership style for instance.
Otherwise, she looks at this situation as “personality differences” or “miscommunications” over her
directives.

Then, if Diana want to be promoted in the future, she had to develop her ability in managing the
relationship. She must learn how to be more emphatic to the other’s feeling, in this case her
employees’ feelings. She had to pay more attention to her staff’s feelings, their wants, need,
emotion. Perhaps, she also have to changed her leadership style, which is also influence by her lack
of ability to manage other’s emotions.
The company should help Diana’s developmental effort. It is to waste if at the end a potential, hard
worker and loyal employee like Diana only hold the responsibility as a general manager. And so, they
should send Diana to the Emotional Training Program.

But the homework doesn’t finish here. After Diana followed the training program, she must be able
to perform her new ability in managing other’s emotions. Therefore, Diana should be given others
effective way to improve her EI trough personal coaching, plenty of practices, and frequent
feedback.