Mario Salerno is a small business owner who owns a number of apartment buildings in Brooklyn, NY. Like many property owners, Salerno has recently faced a crushing problem: tenants who said they could not afford to pay their rent. After giving it some thought, Salerno did something big to help: He waived his tenants' rent for the month of April, 2020. That's somewhere between 200-300 tenants, in 80 apartments. Although Salerno declined to share how much money he would lose due to not collecting rent in April, the NYT estimated he was likely foregoing hundreds of thousands of dollars in rental income. Some may take Salerno's gesture for granted. "Great that he has enough money to do that," they might think. After all, Salerno, a life-long resident of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, also owns a gas station and body shop, which his father opened in 1959. But Salerno's gesture is more than a kind deed. It's a lesson in emotional intelligence--and we can all learn from it. (Read more in today's column.) #leadership #management #EmotionalIntelligence #coronavirus #COVID19 #NYC #MakeEmotionsWorkForYouNotAgainstYou …see more