John has a bad temper.

John is our production manager. He has a bad temper.

He thinks our salesperson making too much, having easy job but being too lazy.

He thinks our customer service people are stupid and lazy.

He thinks nobody respects him, because a lot of questions people don’t ask him. Although when people do ask him, either no answer, or takes forever, or no we can’t do that…

His perception is his reality.

He has been with us for 9 years.

Our business fluctuates a lot.

When we are light, he is seriously concerned. He complains we rely too much on certain big accounts. Again salesperson are not doing a good job.

His real bad temper comes when we are busy. He will yell at people, throw stuff, not talk to people… In my mind, that’s his way of “telling”: “I need HELP. I have a situation I don’t know how to handle…”

When I step in, first have to calm him down. That’s very difficult though: he will yell, argue, fight, blame, self-defend, finger-pointing… on stuff IMHO are irrelevant. I don’t want him to hide into shell either thus not talking to anybody. This step is time and very energy consuming.

Then we need to gather everything together, analyze, put up a plan, and set up schedules and resources.

Then we need to execute…

Obviously it’s never easy, but every time things worked out, although not without efforts from everybody in the company, including those who he blames all the time.

As an individual, he does a good job.
As a leader, he is not good at training and mobilize team. He is not doing a good job at scheduling and time/people/project management. More importantly, he has communication problem.

He has resigned many times, I lost count. He knows when/if he does this again, nobody will call him back. He (better) knows, if he is ever mad again (and he will) and doesn’t want to listen to anybody, he has to listen to at least somebody.

He has been with us for 9 years.