Send to KindleThere seem to be plenty of examples, both good and bad, of things leaders should do or not do. But, every now and then some particularly noteworthy examples are splashed across the headlines. The latest of these can be found in the international furor over Arizona’s new immigration law. For the next few paragraphs, I want to set aside the issue about whether the law itself is good or bad and present three lessons leaders can learn from the resulting tumult.
1. Don’t jump to conclusions until you have the facts. Yes, leaders sometimes have to make decisions when sufficient information is not available or there isn’t time to thoroughly consider all the angles. But, good leaders don’t use that excuse when it isn’t true. The Arizona bill is all of 13 pages long, including two pages of signatures. Yet many arguing against the bill, including senior government officials, admitted they were unable to find the time to read it. Leaders must absorb as much information as possible before making a decision. To blatantly disregard readily available information severely damages the leader’s credibility with bosses and subordinates.
2. Leaders must take bold action, and be willing to endure the results. Arizona was suffering from an influx of criminal activity. They analyzed the situation and determined the problem could be traced directly to failure to stop criminals from illegally crossing their southern border. With that information, they devised the bill as an action necessary to address the problem as they saw it. As a result, Arizona has suffered extreme bad press and some business loss, yet the state’s leaders, particularly the governor, have not wavered from their position. That’s not to say that a leader should never admit they were wrong and reevaluate a decision. All leaders will make mistakes and must be willing to admit and correct them, but leaders must not change their mind just because a decision is unpopular. As Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying (I don’t know if he really did) “you can’t please all the people all the time.”
3. Consistency is critical to leadership success. This is a little difficult to extract from the Arizona law but bear with me. The Arizona law merely directs state and local law enforcement to uphold federal law. Many who oppose that law do so on the grounds that it isn’t right to prevent people from coming into the country, whether they enter legally or illegally. At the same time, there are many local governments and even some states which mandate disobedience to federal law through what are generally referred to as “sanctuary” areas. Here’s the leadership lesson: a leader must be consistent! One cannot select which rules are to be followed and which are to be ignored. If leaders are allowed to selectively follow the rules, then their workers will do the same thing, but they will most likely elect to ignore something the leader thinks is important. A subset of this lesson is that leaders must be willing to listen when people tell them that a rule is not working, or needs updating.
While at first this analysis may seem like a bit of a stretch, think about your own work situation. Can you see any of these leadership lessons in yourself, or your leaders? Take these lessons to heart. As a leader you probably don’t have political spin doctors available to smooth over the inconsistencies.
