Usually when I visit here, the buzz is about
football or basketball. But not
today. The buzz is all about the recent announcement
of the retirement of the incredibly popular Ohio State President Dr. E. Gordon Gee. In case you are one of the few people on the
planet who have not heard about the recent controversy surrounding Dr. Gee, negative
comments he made about other universities at a meeting of Big Ten presidents
and athletic directors back in December recently became public. Depending on your perspective, the comments
were either “unfortunate attempts at humor” or “mean spirited.” Regardless, they factored into his decision
to retire.
Dr. Gee is an incredible leader. I had the opportunity to meet him when he
first became President in September 1990 and I was a Ph.D. student at Ohio
State – he is an amazing, charismatic leader.
He has led the university impressively and with impact. He has thousands of fans in the Buckeye
world. TIME magazine named him the most
outstanding President of a university in 2010.
And yet, these comments helped to bring him down. What can we learn from this?
Leadership is fragile.
I recently read where someone said:
“Every time you do something good as a leader, it’s
like you put a pebble in your pocket.
And when you do something bad, you take a pebble out. As a leader, you need to keep pebbles in your
pocket, so people will follow you.”
This advice is incorrect in one important
way. Doing something good, does “give
you a pebble.” But doing something bad
can cut your pocket open and all the pebbles will fall out. We have certainly seen this with other public
leaders (e.g., Eliot Spitzer among many others) whose acts are far, far, more
egregious than Dr. Gee’s.
If we want to lead others – or causes – we need to
be ever vigilant to monitor our behaviors and censor actions which can cause
the loss of our credibility. Otherwise,
we will be unable to help make the Mission
Impact to which we are committed.
Leadership is fragile.
For more
ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog
and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com You will find free resources you can
download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at
no cost. You can also check out my book,
Mission Impact: Breakthrough
Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if
you are interested. And you can follow Sheehan
Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.
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