I have said it before and I will say it again: Leadership matters and it matters a lot. No family, no business and no nation can experience direction, improvement, achievement or success without good leadership.
I do not believe that leaders always achieve the results for which they aim. I also don't believe that not doing so makes such leaders failures. For example, Buddy Hield's Oklahoma Sooners did not win the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship like I know they wanted. However, they came very close; indeed closer than many thought they would. They clearly had good leadership to get that far - leadership provided by their coaching staff and by players like Buddy.
Does anyone think them failures, even in the wake of the worst Final Four blowout in history? Absolutely not! Over the course of a season, and throughout the NCAA tournament, that team thrilled the world, but most of all delighted themselves, in their ability to work together to rise to great heights in the sport they all love. They achieved greatness in their sport and it takes successful leadership to do that, even without accomplishing that ultimate goal.
It is easy to see when leaders are succeeding - at least that is what we think. We look at the results and then judge whether the leader is doing his job. Therefore, if profits are rising, unemployment is falling, and growth is steady, we have a tendency to say leadership is succeeding.
When the opposite is happening, we say leadership is failing. Well, I think things are deeper than that but that we may discuss another time. Today, I want to point to five things that clearly reveal when leaders are failing, no matter what results they are achieving.
First, no one knows what the hell the vision is. Projects and programs might be part of a vision but they do not a vision make. A vision is a global outcome for the group or a situation that was defined from the beginning and for which the leadership has the particular job of articulating, promoting and influencing all the necessary people involved to help achieve. Vision is where leadership starts and that which guides its effort every single day. If your leadership has not defined a vision for your group or organization, does not promote it and is not working every day to achieve it, then it is failing.
Second, having to do too much explaining about results. When leaders have to use the words "in the pipeline", "working on", "about to happen" or "in the works" too often for too long, they are failing. Results are more often than not self-manifesting.
High sales are high sales. Good profits are good profits. A low crime rate is low crime rate.
Low unemployment is low unemployment. National Health Insurance is National Health Insurance. If you have to explain to people too much for too long how what you are doing to help them is helping them, you are not helping them. You are failing. Results, more often than not, are self-manifesting.
Third, you start blaming people's dissatisfaction on poor public relations. When what leaders are doing is not having manifest or clear positive impact on the people they serve and they find themselves having to do too much explaining it is not unusual to hear those leaders say that they are not doing a good enough job talking about what they are doing.
The problem here is that people do not want to hear talk, they want to feel results. They want to feel better. When leaders have to talk up how people will feel better by what they are doing too much and for too long through public relations, they are failing in their leadership.
Four, when they get too defensive. When leaders start acting like they are being victimized by their critics and start reacting to every hint of their incompetence or ineffectiveness, they are failing. As human beings, we are naturally defensive but failing leaders are overly defensive. They no longer see their mission as central to their work but rather the preservation of some inflated image of themselves that they feel is under attack.
All of a sudden, life becomes about their perfectly sterling reputation and how no one can call them into disrepute. Even the ones who are the worst abusers of public ethics, or who are among the most incompetent, resort to finding examples of how others were worse abusers or more incompetent to sure up their image. It is like two people with bad breath arguing about whose breath smells worse. No one wants to smell the breath of either individual but they find comfort in not having the worst breath of all. Hurray!
Five, when they resort to threats and intimation to compel compliance. When leaders use their power to do things that make people feel so uncomfortable that they are afraid to speak or act against them, they are failing. I am sorry, there is nothing cute or impressive about a leader who breaches the law, public ethics or simple common decency to do things that intimidate their followers.
Successful leaders are not afraid of their followers and do not make their followers afraid of them because they know that fear is bondage. No good leader wants to lead their people into bondage; rather, they want to lead them out of it. Threats and intimidation are sure signs that leadership is failing.
There you have it. There are more signs of failing leadership but these are enough for now. They give us some guidance to examine what is happening with our leadership today in every area of private or public life. If you are a leader and see any or all of these things in you, don't get mad at the messenger or message.
The beauty of life is that it allows for change and repentance. I thank God for this. We are humans and we are flawed. That we can change means that we can work on our flaws. Like Jesus said on several occasions to people found in sin, "Go your way and sin no more."
o Zhivargo Laing is a Bahamian economic consultant and former Cabinet minister who represented the Marco City constituency in the House of Assembly.
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