Our new leader from the big city stood to address us for the first time. His first words were:
Thank you for coming to this meeting. My name is Harry, and I have a genius IQ.
I’m from Chicago and have lived with a two-hour commute to work each morning. This company and this team have a lot to learn from me.
We waited for the punchline, but there was none delivered.
Harry was being brought in at great expense to the company to help lead a major change initiative, but he wasn’t quite what we expected.
Yes, he had a high IQ. Yes, he was from Chicago. Yes, he lasted three months.
What went wrong? Too many things to count, but here are the three gaffs that cost him his job.
The Three Gaffs
- He wore his insecurity on a sleeve of pomposity and ridiculous bravado. As soon as he told us how smart he was we knew, in our gut, that this was a terrified human being. In that moment, we decided not to trust him as our change leader. He lost us at hello.
- He tried to short-cut respect by demeaning us. Rather than showing us the kind of leader he could be, he decided to elevate his importance by telling us that we were small-town losers. I supposed he hoped to scare us into submission. Using a verbal whip might drive short-term change, but it will neither be sustained nor effective.
- He believed that clothes DO make the man. He actually passed around his expensive watch so that we could see how much money he made to impress us. If a leader has yet to prove themselves, expensive clothes become a costume worn uncomfortably by the clown at the front of the room.
–Great leaders know that people must be respected before any change effort is
effectively implemented. —
The company could have kept him for three years and he would have never succeeded because of how he began the relationship with our team.
If you’re leading change, start with respect for those on your team. And realize that there are people behind every successful change in corporate America. If you don’t enroll them, your change will be on paper only.