I was forwarded this soon-to-be infamous email exchange between a spurned hiring lawyer and an uppity law school graduate today. It’s remarkable how little emotional intelligence is displayed on both sides. Sometimes it takes a little effort and common sense to be polite, but it’s usually worth it – and especially so when you’re a want-to-be member of a small professional community.

It reminds me of all the times I’ve encountered such things in my own professional career. I once had a boss who was so generally offensive for lack of emotional intelligence that her staff was a constantly shifting grouping of people who rotated into her department hesitantly and out of her group as quickly as possible. Vendors would refuse the company’s business once they understood who they’d be required to work with. But this company had no formal performance management or 360 process that would have enabled the feedback that may have had a chance to fix things. The result was a largely ineffective group.

Changing people’s behavior is one of the most difficult challenges there is, but without an infrastructure for providing feedback, it’s virtually impossible. Hank Paulson, the CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs delivered a memorable quote that I picked up somewhere:

“One of the things we have done for years is 360-degree reviews.  It’s amazing when you go to a leader and say, “There are 30 people who reviewed you, and 30 of them trust you.  But all 30 say you don’t listen well.”  It has an impact.”