We all love to be the leader of a group or organization when things are going great. How do you react when things are going not so hot? Unfortunately, many leaders don't take personal responsibility for their company. I know of a fairly large gift company that had a situation which displayed terrible leadership. Let's call this company XYZ, INC. They produced a product which was a runaway success. Production couldn't keep up with demand. What happened was instead of having the resources in place to handle the demand, they would backorder tons of the product. For example, if you wanted 50 of these items for your gift store, you would order 1000 in hopes of getting 50.
8 months down the road, the company finally caught up with demand and filled these orders from months previous. Guess what? The shops refused shipment. Now they are stuck with hundreds of thousands of these items. Instead of throwing a great sale, he berated the sales staff and told them that they are not measuring up. Guess what will happen soon? HE WILL LOSE ALL OF HIS GOOD PEOPLE! Great people don't put up with juvenile temper tantrums like this.
On the flip side, President Ronald Reagan and Colin Powell were discussing a policy idea that Colin Powell had. Reagan went along with the idea. After a year, the policy was deemed an failure. During a press conference when asked about who's idea this crazy policy was, he simply said, "I take full responsibility for this policy".
Colin was seen talking to another man in the room, saying, "I would do anything for that man." A great leader takes responsibility for good times...and bad.
If you would like to see a great program on leadership, email us at Sheffield Development Group info@theshef.com for information about my award winning Unleashing the Leader Within program.
