I have only come across a handful of brilliantleaders and managers in my working career.
The ingredient these people shared was, they were intrinsically drawn to “doing the right thing”. The “right thing” for these leaders and managers wasn’t always popular. The act of choosing for them was sometimes personally agonising, but they still made those decisions.
When questioned, many leaders and managers know what “doing the right thing” is, but quite often, mysteriously, they just don’t make that decision. Thus, opportunities are lost, credibility is questioned and results are lower than expected.
Sometimes leaders and managers don’t “do the right thing” because they:
▪ Take the least line of resistance
▪ Are swayed and intimidated by counter opinion
▪ Don’t have the confidence to make difficult decisions
▪ Don’t believe or are not in touch with their intuition
▪ Are simply not brave enough
▪ Are blinkered to values which are inclusive, caring and fair
Let’s face it if everyone “did the right thing” we would have little need forregulation or employment law in the way in which we have it now.
We would never unfairly dismiss or discriminate against people. We would never allow disrespectful behaviour. We would naturally want to consult with people whose very livelihood was affected by possible redundancy. We would want people to have appropriate work/life balance. Wouldn’t we?
Businesses frequently find statute and regulation to be prohibitive and frustrating. In the worst scenario, employers may see regulation as a barrier to getting what they want and employees may use regulation to beat the employer about the head when they are unjustifiably disgruntled.
I’m not advocating we shouldn’t have any regulation, or guidance or indeed laws about employing people. Safeguards need to be in place, and expectations need to be clarified. Both employers and employees need to have in place a certain amount of protection. I’m just saying if you are a brilliant leader or manager, you don’t need them in order to know what the right thing to do is, in most situations.
A brilliant leader and manager will rarely have to buy in expert employment law advice or instigate formal procedures for the sake of it. Instead, they regularly and routinely take consistent action and use guiding principles such as:
▪ Draw up simple and helpful guidelines and policies
▪ Have standards for everything they do which are accessible and simple to execute
Go, Leader, Grow! 