The environment in Trident nuclear submarine was quiet and calm which indicates that there was a satisfactorily good working environment for the members of staff as no one felt oppressed. Good working environment where members of staff feel valued is essential in motivating them to perform well no matter how difficult the task is. This fact is confirmed where the organization had a policy in which the employees were praised in public and penalized in privacy. Praising employees in public assists in raising their self-esteem thus encouraging hard work while penalizing in privacy is important in covering embarrassing situations an employee may face as a result of underperforming thus giving room for improvement. After Michael Alfonzo took over the organization’s leadership, he started showing dictatorial tendencies in his leadership. For example he stated that he was going to be harder on the members of staff thus employing fear tactics in his leadership. When members of staff develop fear in organization leadership, they become less motivated towards work and concentrate on how they can avoid situations and actions that may put them in trouble thus reducing their general productivity. Employees who work under fear lose interest and love for their jobs and the leadership thus increasing the chance of conflict and poor job performance.
Several issues may have contributed to Alfonzo becoming a dictatorial leader. One of the factors is that Alfonzo wanted to show other members of staff that he was the boss and so they should obey and follow his command without any question. The use of fear tactic was to silence members of staff so that he would remain the sole decision-maker and ward off any criticism. Alfonzo might have wanted to achieve fame through high performance and so he used oppressive tactics to compel members of staff to work as hard as possible. Through his leadership tactics, USS Florida achieved the best grades assigned for inspections and certification but he left his members of staff highly battered as a result of emotional and physical intimidation.
A leader should be more concerned with high-quality interpersonal relationships than high grades and so the decision by Admiral Sullivan to fire Alfonzo was justified. Employees play a major role in the success of an organization as it is through the input of their skills and physical effort that assist an organization to achieve its goals. High-quality interpersonal relationships assist in motivating the employees who in turn perform well which is important for a long term success of the company other than giving priority to grades which is a short term prospect for the company because employees will be forced to perform well through intimidation thus putting an organization in a long term danger of not achieving its goals. Admiral Sullivan did the right thing in firing Alfonzo as he considered the long-term prospects of the organization which can only be achieved through good relationship with the staff.
The five major components of emotional intelligence are self-regulation, self-awareness, internal motivation, social skills and empathy. Alfonzo’s emotional intelligence in terms of empathy is that he did not understand emotional make up of the staff he was leading and this resulted in his firing of Chief Petty Officer Macarthur as a diving captain simply because he used to react angrily when he missed his folk during mealtime. Alfonzo lacked social skills and that is why he intimidated members of staff thus affecting them emotionally and physically. He stated that he was going to be harder on the members of staff which strained the relationship between his leadership and members of staff. About the component of self-regulation, he did not show any openness to change by incorporating the views of his staff and so made decisions by himself. Alfonzo lacked a sense of self-awareness where he did not understand the effect of his decision on others. He decided to become harder on his staff thus affecting their morale negatively.Alfonzo lacked a strong sense of internal motivation where his passion for work was to achieve status of high grade at the expense of the welfare of employees whom he exposed to much suffering so that he could achieve his goals.
To improve interpersonal relationships which is essential for the growth of any organization, Alfonzo was supposed to be understanding as people have different emotional makeup and so simple mistakes should not be penalized heavily. He needs to involve dialogue and consensus-building especially on contentious issues that affect the staff directly to understand where there are problems that need to be addressed.
References
Daft,R.L.(2006).The leadership Experience.5th edition. New York: Cengage.