Where has good leadership gone?
I continue to be amazed at how many poor leaders there are in New Brunswick.
From small businesses to government, there seems to be a real lack of leadership in our province and I find it disturbing.
There are many examples that I could focus on but it would take too many blog postings to cover all these examples. Considering this, I would like to focus on the lack of good communication skills among the leaders of NB.
Good communication is very important for any organization. To operate well and to ensure that the public has the best possible image of your organization, you must communicate well in your organization and to the people on the outside. If you don't, your business will not be on the right track and it will fail.
A good example of what I am talking about is a New Brunswick business I encountered one time that boasted about having a new addition to the staff who was a supposed superstar in his profession. The enterprise planned to change how it did business in way that implemented a brand it believed the public wanted.
Indeed, this person was talented but he failed to communicate with the rest of the staff and his clients. Moreover, the leadership of this business also failed to communicate with clients and this new staff member. They didn't even understand what their customer wanted. The result was that the business suffered a huge drop in the amount of customers coming through the door, the new staff member quit, other staff members quit and the business acquired a poor reputation in its community that it is still trying to recover from. It still amazes me that the leader of this business still has the job and the only reason why it didn't fail is the fact that it has deep pockets.
Every business must make good communication a top priority. This starts at ensuring that staff are communicated with in the way the need to be and it must continue to include communicating well with other businesses and customers. The business I mentioned did not understand this and still does not today because it does not have the right leadership in place.
My suggestion for the business I mentioned would be to fire their leader, re-brand the business, make the appropriate changes to staff to reflect the new brand, setup guidelines for communications, setup the proper internal communications structures, setup the proper external communications structures and then get at promoting the new brand of the business.
Be a good leader and ensure that your business is not like the business I mentioned. Make the effort to understand your customer, take the steps now to get the proper communications structures in place and follow through on those structures. You will be happy you did.
Mark Taylor , a communications specialist, is a partner in Delora Media. Visit www.deloramedia.com
Delora Media is now offering one-on-one marketing and communications tutoring for SMEs and not-for-profit organizations. Email solutions@deloramedia.com for more info.
Please email me your stories and your suggestions for this blog to solutions@deloramedia.com
