Surface Ripples

Typical Leadership Mistakes

Some time ago, I watched a saga involving a candidate for a position of City Councillor. The candidate challenging for the position needed help in their campaign to canvass their ward. This wasn’t forthcoming for a number of reasons, namely lack of: vision, leadership and selling.

Vision:
• Difficult to say what the vision was. It seemed to be extinguishing the controlling party’s majority. Good idea, but what else, like “This is what we could do if we got the seat.”

Leadership:

• Team: The candidate needed a campaign manager and a team, but seemed to be organising everything on their own, as well as getting out there to canvass. This may have been due to the suddenness of the by-election, but the sooner a real team could be set up, the better.

• Purpose: There was a plan in place with deadlines, but no sense of who did what as there was no team.

• Timeline: There was no indication originally of when the all-important by-election would be, so no idea of how “urgent” this was. This came out one week later announcing “5 weeks to go”.

• Timing: The candidate was canvassing on two working days in the evening – a difficult time to get support from people who work all day. At least all the other contenders were in the same boat.

Selling:

• Some potential helpers received only a “Round Robin” email from their Area Coordinator saying that the candidate needed help and to contact them direct. No endorsement, request for help or suggestion that the Coordinator was really on board. There were a lot of people on the list and perhaps everyone thought that “someone else” would take up the cudgels.

• Support From The Top: The candidate didn’t seem to have the support or endorsement of those who could influence helpers (i.e. fellow councillors, district chairmen, personal friends, the local MP). If those “in authority” weren’t on board, no one else would be.

• “Hearts And Minds”: There was no effort to win people over. No personal message from the candidate, just their “plan”. If you’re asking a bunch of strangers (even members in a common cause) to assist, better win them over.

• Empathy: Follow up messages from the candidate were to the effect of “If we don’t see more people helping, we’ll lose”. Hardly surprising, considering how little effort was made to plan and win people over. Threats usually don’t get people to participate willingly.

In short, this was a text book case of not leading people by:

• Having a common, shared vision;
• Getting support from the top and from peers;
• Winning the hearts and minds of potential supporters;
• Getting the right information out to those who needed it.

Suffice it to say, the candidate wasn’t successful.

I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.

Labels: Crisis Management, Productivity, Selling, Teamwork

posted by William Martin @ 17:23