Leadership baseline
August 14th, 2011Author: Chris Dennis
I have been struggling with a series of articles on leadership, what makes good leaders and how they behave. The more I leaned into my definitions, the more stuffy the prose became to the tipping point of academic mumbo-jumbo.
In frustration, I sat back and thought about lousy leadership examples – we have lot’s of those!
Currently topical is the debate in British Columbia, Canada, about HST vs. the inefficient and costly PST. Both are sales taxes on consumption and I happen to like the concept of taxing consumption rather than income and capital – more of this in later musings.
One of the keys to good leadership is intent and integrity (Henry Cloud). We all make mistakes because we act as we see our relative reality. And we find our reality is not the reality as others see it so our decision does not bring the result we expected. Part of integrity is to admit the mistake, acknowledge the impact and set about recovering from mistake. A final piece is reflecting on our choices and learning from the experience. It will be painful but what learning is not uncomfortable?
Bill vander Zalm, an ex-premier in British Columbia, is vehemently opposed to the HST and has campaigned loudly against its adoption. Intent seems fine until you scratch the surface at which point both intent and integrity become suspect.
Have a look at Chris Thompson’s HST rebuttal video. Two sections are particularly obnoxious: the section where a well-known economist does a little arithmetic calculation to compare the real impact of PST to the HST – PST is 16% more expensive than HST (after tax PST cost at $123.06 per $100 base cost vs. HST at $107 per $100 base cost; a difference of 16%). Vander Zalm deflect this fact and points to an argument that “poor people” now have HST levied on goods that previously were exempt from PST. In other words, vander Zalm ‘bends’ the reality to fit his argument. The second section refers to a report where parts of sentences are taken out of context and ‘massaged’ to fit his argument.
His intent is, at best, to overtly manipulate and at worst, to deceive. Hardly an example of great leadership!
Now, let’s look at integrity. As a guest of a talk-show, vander Zalm states that he has not watched the Chris Thompson video and launches into mocking students and suggesting that we, the taxpayers, are funding Thompson’s time and, further, that Thompson is an aspirant lawyer and you know what lawyers are like – snide innuendo.
No acknowledgement of any faulty intent and, for me, no integrity. In fact vander Zalm shows up as a bully.
Well, I now have a baseline to measure leadership against.