by Charles Plant | Jun 20, 2012 | Leaders
No one wants a micro-manager as a leader so it’s surprising when one actually succeds in politics and in fact becomes President of the United States. Jimmy Carter was noted in his one term of President for being just such a micro-manager and it became one of the factors that limited him to just one term.
When Carter was elected President in 1976, he proved to be a masterful campaigner. Instead of courting the party establishment, Carter ran as an outsider, capitalizing on the post-Watergate mood of the nation. He quickly developed a reputation as a “policy wonk” and micromanager. A trained engineer, Carter was undoubtedly a keen micromanager, who desired to be involved at all levels of the decision-making process, and to be aware of all the details of every issue; he had an ‘inability to delegate.’
You get an early hint of his problems, for example, when he laments that he is inundated by piles of decision papers. Instead of reorganizing his staff, he decides to take an Evelyn Wood course in speed-reading.
He was faulted for lacking the grand vision of previous presidents, and for obsessing over the administrative details of the office at the expense of seeing the big picture. It was reported that Carter once took time to resolve a scheduling dispute between staffers over the use of the White House tennis courts.
Carter himself even said: “I was sometimes accused of ‘micromanaging’ the affairs of government and being excessively autocratic, and I must admit that my critics probably had a valid point.”
For some reason, people find it hard to see themselves as micro-managers and even when they do, to change their behaviour. Ask yourself, do you micromanage and if so, can you change this?
by Charles Plant | Jun 13, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leaders
Gregg Saretsky gets a lot of press for his efforts to improve the performance of Canadian airline WestJet. What he should also get a lot of press about is his skill as a leader. I really liked a story about Gregg working a flight recently as a cabin attendant. he was obviously experienced in the role and comfortable joking with passengers and staff alike as the flight progressed.
Having worked his whole life in the airline industry, he can empathize with other staff and bring a much more personal touch to the role that someone who would never have worked in the industry. This degree of empathy that experience brings is essential, not only in the good times but particularly in bad ones as well.
An empathetic leader will still have to make the tough calls but employees are much more comforted and thus motivated even in bad times knowing that someone understands what their troubles might be, is sensitive to their needs and has their back.
by Charles Plant | May 30, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Leaders
When you think of famous inventors, you often think of people working away in their labs, day after day, alone, producing failure after failure until they eventually succeed. Inventors are thus rightly known for their persistence. As a leadership skill, persistence is often underrated. When you think of Orville and Wilbur Wright, you would be right to credit them with persistence but not perhaps for the area in which they exhibited their greatest persistence, that of marketing their invention.
Innovation = Idea + Marketing
I’ve used this formula before in a blog and when most people think of persistence, they think in terms of coming up with a working idea. In actual fact, marketing can take much more persistence that inventing and Orville and Wilbur Wright are an excellent example of this. You might know that the Wrights made the first powered flight on December 17th 1903. In 1904, they set up an air strip in Dayton and flew every day but hardly any reporters came to see them.
With 105 flights under their belt, they wrote the US government to see if the army might be interested. The War Department responded that they were not interested in providing financial assitance until such a device could be “brought to the stage of practical operation without expense to the US government” which they had already done.
In October of 1905, the Wrights wrote the government again and by this time they had made flights of up to 39 minutes over 20 miles. The War department declined once again with the same comments and this so discouraged the Wrights that they basically ceased flying as the Wrights couldn’t see any use for airplanes other that for military purposes.
Persistence pays off
Finally, in 1907, an employee on the Army Signal Corps who was following the early flight pioneers convinced the government to give airplanes a try. The government acting very responsibly, put out a tender and got 41 bids. The Wrights finally won the tender and were able to make a sale to the US government. their persistence had paid off but it took almost 5 years from when they made their first flight until they got their first sale.
As a leader, are you persistent or do you give up too early?
No one wants a micro-manager as a leader so it’s surprising when one actually succeds in politics and in fact becomes President of the United States. Jimmy Carter was noted in his one term of President for being just such a micro-manager and it became one of the factors that limited him to just one term.