Andy Prescott hired Ron Ventura, who had a prestigious standing throughout the country and was thought to be an outstanding fit for the Mitchell Memorial Hospital Chief of Vascular. While Ventura’s hands on work is flawless, his adverse behavior is negatively affecting employee morale and Prescott must decide whether to renew Ventura’s contract.
Hypothesis 1: Andy Prescott did not know how to effectively handle Ron Ventura’s abrasive personality. Being that Prescott’s approach was ineffective, it caused the current predicament. If Prescott was adequately skilled in handling abrasive personalities perhaps this predicament wouldn’t have elevated to its current level. Individuals with abrasive personalities have a strict devotion to excellence, correctness, and getting the job done in its entirety. These individuals will push themselves to the extreme to do a great job. Often, they do so in spectacular fashion. While Ron Ventura’s hands on work may have been near flawless, it was very difficult for him to work in an effective manner with others. Staff characterized Ventura as conceited, domineering, apprehensive, and flippant. When Prescott hired on Ventura, Ventura’s prize was to develop the vascular surgery unit as the strongest unit within the cardiovascular center. For Ventura, he was willing to throw aside proper consensus for the change he felt needed to be made to achieve his goal, no matter what rift it may source. This abrasive approach unquestionably caused a rift with staff in their views of Ventura. Prescott’s initial plan of action when he caught wind of these developments was to be nice and give advice in an understanding way. Prescott confessed that no one, including himself, wanted to confront Ventura head on. Subsequently, because of Prescott’s failings to adequately address this predicament the issue was never solved and apparently became worse. In The Abrasive Personality, Harry Levinson goes into great depth on how to handle these abrasive personality types. Rather than being passive, Prescott needs to be candid with Ventura and communicate precisely what types of problems he is seeing. In doing so, Prescott will make it simpler for Ventura to recognize what behavioral characteristic he needs to correct.
Hypothesis 2: Ventura’s first professional job was working for someone with an abrasive personality and Ventura modeled his VABE’s based off this individual. At the onset of his professional career in vascular surgery, Ventura worked for a man who was a surgeon in the Army for fifteen years. This Army Vet had a very authoritarian demeanor and sought out nothing less than perfection from Ventura. Even though Ventura acquired many great skills from the Army Veteran his authoritarian demeanor stuck with Ventura and is evident that he is unreasonably demanding of the staff at Mitchell Memorial Hospital. Being undeveloped a malleable, the Army Vets behavior is what shaped Ventura. In the article Why People Behave the Way They Do, it is explained that human beings start to comprehend the distinctness between right and wrong along with behavioral attributes at birth. Since the Army Vet was Ventura’s teacher, Ventura exhibited his surgical procedures from him along with the way in which he worked with his colleagues. This atmosphere formed Ventura’s VABE’s. Because Ventura’s VABE’s were formed so early in his career, it could be challenging to adjust to his colleagues VABE’s.
