It was one of the most telling moments in Thursday night’s mayoral debate. Defending his temperament following e-mails revealing that he had reamed out community activist Valerie Burns, Mayor Tom Menino likened himself to a corporate executive.
“Hey, ask any CEO out there. Who, once in a while, doesn’t have a little conversation with some of his people who work with him? I think that’s healthy. Then we work on some of the issues that are out there.’’
It’s no secret that, for all of his strengths, the mayor has more than just little conversations with people who displease him. What he has are tirades. And sometimes those tirades conclude with the mayor slamming the phone down in somebody’s ear. That does not exactly qualify as conversation.
“An unhappy Mayor Menino is a torrent of abuse on the other end of the telephone line,’’ Douglas MacDonald, a former executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, recently told the Globe.
During the debate, the mayor downplayed the temperament issue as minor. If that’s the only criticism people have of his administration, he said, “I don’t have a problem with that.’’
But it isn’t minor, and here’s why.
Burns heads a terrific nonprofit called the Boston Natural Areas Network, which promotes community gardens and open spaces.
She doesn’t work for Menino, Menino works for her. Yelling at Burns isn’t like a CEO losing it with an employee. It’s like a CEO losing it with a customer - and in this case, a loyal one. What kind of leadership is that?
Not the kind that encourages dissent, that’s for sure. In an e-mail to another city official, Burns said she was worried the outburst would affect not only her relationship with Menino, but the important work her organization does.
Now, she just wants the whole thing to go away.
“The mayor and I have been friends for a long time,’’ she told me on Friday. “And we continue to be friends. We absolutely are fine.’’
But is that the end of it? Or does a mayor who loses his temper affect a city in fundamental ways? For answers, I turned to some experts on corporate leadership.
A CEO who loses his temper often makes his employees more insecure, less smart, less creative, and more interested in keeping their jobs than advancing a company’s mission, said Douglas McKenna, a psychologist who heads the Oceanside Institute, a leadership development outfit in Washington State.
“When people are feeling very sensitive and insecure, their thinking gets more narrow,’’ McKenna said. “They can’t see the big picture anymore. They go for quick fixes: ‘Let’s relieve our tension, make our CEO happy by doing something, anything, that looks like it might be directed at the problem.’ ’’
One of the key qualities of leadership is handling your emotions, said Richard Boyatzis, coauthor of the book “Primal Leadership’’ and a professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University.
“I spent 17 years studying leadership in the military,’’ he said. “You don’t yell and scream. Command and control is not effective. Ask and inspire is effective.’’ He cites studies showing that CEOs who regularly fly off the handle affect employees’ brain circuitry, making them more likely to conform rather than perform, and less receptive to ideas.
And how can a city truly thrive without lots of new ideas?
It would be one thing for the mayor to admit he has a temper problem, and to apologize for it. Instead, he justified the altercation with Burns and passed it off as a modern management technique.
Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, he dismissed his outbursts as inconsequential.
They’re anything but.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail address is Abraham@globe.com 
