EQ Scenarios

Fadi Hashem, Ph.D.

 Scenario 1
A brilliant physician-scientist with an international
reputation in research displays extreme
narcissistic behaviors; staff quitting; those who
challenge him are shunned and dismissed; he
accepts no responsibility for the problems he
causes; resistant to coaching. What do you do?
 Scenario 2
Your division chief of nephrology asserts his
authority to develop new protocols for pediatric
kidney transplantation; won’t listen to others,
alienates physician colleagues, staff, hospital
administration; rejects your coaching and
professional help. What do you do?
 Scenario 3
You had an awful day at work today. You worked for two weeks on an
important funding proposal which is going out shortly for a big project.
The organization is counting on this project and wants to win it. You had
a meeting with your boss today and having gone through the proposal, he
completely dismissed it as inadequate, full of confusing remarks and
irrelevant. You thought your proposal was well written and was going to
stand out from the competition. Your boss is younger than you and seems
to have rejected your proposal based on a political motive rather than on
a technical merit.
 Scenario 4
He did it again today! It seems every time you have an audience, and you are
talking in a group, your colleague speaks over you and interrupts all the time. He
literally steals your story and carries on telling others about it as if you don’t even
exist. He is rather loud, and you have found it difficult to compete with him when
he talks over you. Besides, you have a calm personality and cannot be bothered to
participate in a shouting match in front of others. Nevertheless, his behaviour is
really annoying you now. Maybe you should dramatically shout back and show
your anger, but you don’t really think that’s the right way to approach it.
 Scenario 5
You just heard that one of your colleagues has been talking to the
management behind your back and has been saying negative things
about you. You have always been an exemplary team member and you
are passionate about your work. Lately, your colleague seems to think
that the only way to go up the ladder is to make you or your role
redundant and seems to be on a campaign to ruin you. You are worried
about this but are not the type to talk behind people’s back. You feel
hopeless but you know you need to do something about it.
 Scenario 6
As part of a restructuring of the organization, you were asked to relocate
to a different branch. This means you need to move to a different city
about 200 kilometres away. The alternative is to quit your job, but you
don’t want to do that as you are happy in this company. This is proving
to be an awkward situation as it means you will probably need to sell
your house and will not be able to interact with your friends as often as
you do now. You feel you have no other choice but to follow with their
plans.