Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

ARE YOU A STAR PERFORMER OR JUST AVERAGE? 33
her own in politics. She has secured a total of $2.7 million for her
campaign to replace California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer
in the 2010 election.
Fiorina’s desire to serve and give back in politics will test her
Emotional and Social Intelligence. She demonstrates many of the EI
competencies across the personal and social clusters. She was the first
woman to head a Dow 30 company and the first “outsider” of HP in 60
years to take the reins of the computer giant. Hewlett-Packard today is
a $72 billion company and Fiorina helped orchestrate the biggest tech
merger to date, with Compaq. She set her initial objectives on building
a new vision for HP as an Internet company—jump-starting its innovation
and recalibrating HP’s vaulted culture. Fortune magazine said
Fiorina is “a world-class risk taker.” 30 Her strategy failed, though, in
the eyes of her board. The stock price during her tenure was down
50%, where Dell was only down 9%. 31
In Fortune Fiorina was rated #1 of the 50 most powerful women
in American business. 32 She is a charismatic leader known for a
personal touch. A standard practice of hers is giving balloons and
flowers to employees who land big contracts, which inspires intense
loyalty and appreciation. (Developing Others/ Empathy)
The Wall Street Journal said, “She was an alluring, controversial
new breed of CEOs who combine grand visions with charismatic
but self-centered and demanding style.” She was decisive and had
crisp presentation skills and was “accused of valuing boldness over
precision and follow-through.” 33 Her overused confidence may have
turned into a weakness. Inside HP she was a polarized fi gure who
could be abrupt and autocratic. Many high-level executives had quit
recently and that concerned the board. Fiorina was becoming more
irritated and defensive about her strategy. She failed to empower
others as much as she could, and in January 2005 the board wanted
to distribute her power and she initially disagreed.
Before HP, Fiorina was at Lucent Technologies, a spin-off of
AT&T. She took them public and launched a flashy marketing cam-