Negative Campaigning = Loss of Leadership

As a marketer, I'm dumbfounded over the amount of local and national negative political advertising.  As a citizen, I'm alarmed.

As leaders, I believe we can learn a lesson.

Strong marketing is the business of delivering compelling messages that the consumer will wish to respond to.  We are to craft images, visions and value propositions that will engage the customer.   We are in the business of "telling our story" so that people will want to follow us.

Some (maybe most) of current political advertising does little or none of this.   The story is all about how bad, dangerous, incompetent and well, just plain evil the other candidate is.   Usually this story is accompanied by at least one photo, if not several, of the opposition candidate with his/her name plastered all off the screen.  If one is watching with the sound off, it is often very difficult to tell which of two candidates the ad is promoting.

By devoting so much time to the other candidate, the focus becomes the opposition.   It's like this:   I spent years in marketing for Macy's.  If I had crafted a television commercial that spent at least half of its time showing imagery of JC Penneys, my tenure with Macy's would have been considerably shortened.  The resources that I was entrusted with for marketing were for the purpose of telling our story, not for bashing the competition.

Ironic that candidates are spending so much of their own campaign's money. . .creating imagery and focus around the other candidate.

Moreover, with the conversation centered around "what's wrong with the other guy or gal" there is not a vision for the future.   Who are we to follow if there isn't a clear path forward?

That is why, as a citizen, I'm alarmed.  I need to know what I can believe in.   I need that path forward.  I need to know the story and vision of the people I'm asked to follow.

The same is true in the workplace.  Teams need to know what and who they can believe in.  They need to have a positive story and mission to follow.

Are you, as a leader, presenting a positive image and story that others will follow?   Or, are you so busy bashing others, or talking the negative points of the job and/or company, that the people entrusted to you don't know what or who they are supposed to follow?  If you have ever worked for a boss that focused on the negative, you realize how demoralizing this can become.

Just as advertisers spend the resource of money, leaders spend the resource of time - both their time and the time belonging to the team.  Are you using the resource of time creating focus around the competition, or are you wisely investing it in crafting positive images and stories for your team to follow?

Negative campaigning, whether in politics or in the workplace accomplishes this:  it makes both parties look bad.  As a leader, your team entrusts you to do so much more by creating positive communication that allows the company and the people who propel it to move forward.

The Power of One vs. The Power of Many

As a senior executive, he had great ideas; he was smart and was imbued with entrepreneurial spirit.  He knew what he wanted to get done but was challenged by sub-par results.  The challenge was that he was clueless as to how to energize the workplace to follow him.  Perhaps the issue was that his idea of professional nirvana was this, "If I could just shoot all of them and hire a hundred robots, we'd get things done around here."

In other words, his idea of success was "one brain, one hundred drones."

This is not leadership, this is one person pushing buttons instead of utilizing the group to maximize the idea and build consensus.  Seldom, if ever, do the ideas of just one person outpower the consensus that can be built by engaging smart people who know the business.

How then do we lead groups to consensus?

• Recognize that the very idea of group consensus means that not one person is going to get it 100% their way.  "My way or the highway" is an antiquated idea.
• Have confidence that the individuals in work groups have diverse experiences, skill sets and viewpoints.   Their experience and outlooks do not weaken concepts, they bring ideas to fruition by making them stronger.
• As a leader, be extremely clear what the goal is and why it is important it be met.  These are the guardrails for your group.   In other words, describe the desired "what we need to do" and spend less time on "how we need to do it."  If you are working with a group of true professionals, they will point the way.
• Be humble.
• Listen.
• Recognize what is important to each member of the group.  The strength and diversity that arrives with the group also means that each individual has their own goals.   Minimally, those goals should be respected and not transgressed when building consensus.  Maximally, you can achieve the goal you set and the goals of the members of the group.
• Even though it may be your idea,  the entire group should have ownership of the project and the result.  If everyone wins, you win.  It's that simple.

One person doing all the thought and execution is not leading people;  working positively to build consensus within a group not only maximizes results, it is also true leadership.

The Power of An Apology: A Lesson in Leadership from GoDaddy

The letter to customers on the GoDaddy website began:

"We owe you a big apology for the intermittent service outages we experienced on September 10th that may have impacted your website and your interaction with GoDaddy.com."

Preceding this apology, said GoDaddy experienced a major technical malfunction, shutting down hundreds of thousands of the websites they host.  I'm not going to debate the handling of the malfunction, but I was impressed by the apology that followed.  As opposed to some apologies that seem only shallow enough to mildly placate, GoDaddy donned the sackcloth and accessorized with ashes.

"We have let our customers down and we know it.  I cannot express how sorry I am to those of you who were inconvenienced.  We will learn from this."

Note the difference in tone from other corporate "apologies" that aren't really apologies at all:

• "We are in the process of an internal investigation. . ."
• "Due to circumstances beyond our control. . ."
• "We will have a statement in the future. . ."

Instead of this type of spin, GoDaddy went right to the core of the matter and apologized.  That's smart.   When you've been inconvenienced, think of how it makes you feel if you're getting a run around. . .versus how you feel if someone admits to the obvious:  "We were wrong. . .and we're going to learn from our mistakes and do better in the future."

Leaders can and should learn from this simple statement of contrition.

Let's face it, errors, mistakes, blunders and bloopers are bound to happen in the workplace.  Seriously, not one of us is perfect.   The challenge is that often either we think we need to be perfect - or worse, we actually come to the god-like conclusion that we are perfect - and thus are unable to utter these three powerful words:  "I am sorry."

Instead of apologizing, we relinquish ownership of the issue ("It was Sebastian's fault."), try to turn around the blame ("Well. . .the copier wouldn't break down so much if people didn't use it.") or try to shift all evidence of wrongdoing hastily away from us, much like passing gas and then furiously fanning the emitted air in the general direction of the person seated next to you.

The truth is, if you've done something wrong, and aren't owning it and making proper amends, things start to go wrong:

• Even though you may think that by refusing to apologize you are making the issue go away, you are actually prolonging the issue.   The very act of apologizing is the act that allows humans and teams to move forward.
• Even though you may think that by refusing to apologize you are obscuring responsibility, the fact is that people figure out pretty fast who did what and by trying to dodge it, you are appearing to be less than courageous.
• When an apology is owed, and isn't delivered, mis-trust is fostered and teamwork is lost.

Conversely, by owning an error, making a sincere apology and learning from an honest mistake. . .the organization is enabled to move on and you garner extra respect as a leader with both courage and ethics.

By apologizing, you're doing something very right.