Mentor Liderlik Danışmanlık

Today, I’ll present you a case study. The firm I’ll be talking about is imaginary, it is not a real firm.

You work for a national airline company. You are at the first rank related to CEO, (the C level managers that are so popular nowadays), you are the CIRO, meaning Chief International Relations Officer. You are a young, successful, dynamic manager. You’re from the team that CEO brought with himself while coming to this firm, so you’re “CEO’s man”. You feel you’re safe. You like your company but you are not happy with the salary strategy that was used in the past because your and your team’s salaries are not satisfying.

You addressed this matter immediately when you started working there. CEO agreed with you but since the budget was not suitable and the executive board didn’t approve, you couldn’t change the firm’s salary policy. It is evident that if this change is made, there’ll be a budget deficit in the following years and many people will have to be misemployed and the service quality will go down.

One of your targets this year is to start an application process for the international network known as “magical sky” which you want to be a member of. You need lobbying for the support of the other companies. Naturally, you also need to make the board members of your firm contribute to your effort. As a result, you always travel, and make successful meetings that serve your target. You successfully state your company’s recent development, its determination to join the network in question and its future growth plans.

You attend an interview for the last stage of joining this international network. There’s a panel consisting of the representatives for this network’s member companies. They ask you some very challenging questions about your company. The most critical question is; “Why should we accept you when we have your opponents that we could also accept? Some of your company’s lower level employees stated in their letters that their salaries are very bad and they want to go to another company at the first chance they get. We feel this could be a problem in the future. Are there too many employees that share these kind of thoughts and does your company have a plan about this issue?”

What would be your answer? Please take a moment to think before you continue reading.

“Of course we’re aware of this situation. It is not only the lower level, even the CEO himself and I have complaints about the salaries. We work too hard but we don’t even have Mercedes cars provided to our service. Most people are dissatisfied with their salaries, and the company does not value its personnel a bit, we’ll all leave the moment we find a job but there are no jobs available. And we can’t just make the board apprehend the situation. Actually, it would be great if you’d set some conditions to join the network and the company couldn’t join without fixing this salary problem. Believe me, we would all be so thankful…” Could you say that, for example?

Or would you hire a manager that would say these things? And if you were to learn your manager told these, wouldn’t you fire him? Would you trust a manager that endangers the company’s future, use the trump card he had for his own agenda, and would you give him big responsibilities in the future? Would you believe this person can be a good leader?

Integrity is the first of good leadership musts. This concept can’t be explained with just one word in Turkish. But “be who you seem to be or seem as who you are” defines integrity perfectly. And a manager who can’t act this way can never be a good leader.

I have a dream I’m never tired of stating. It would be so good if we could choose the country’s rulers from the successful executives. Because the firms with an established management art, don’t experience these kind of incidents. And if it happens, that manager pays the price of his action with his career and learns from his mistake. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who made a complaint about his country to European Union about a matter very questionable in accuracy, doesn’t pay a price and keeps representing his country abroad with his complaints. Maybe the group he thinks he’s representing is not the whole country.

If this behavior was in a successful company’s management, that person would immediately be sent to ethical or disciplinary committee. And he would lose his job at once. It is no secret that the government is not successful in human management but still we need to emphasize this: With this behavior the Minister of Foreign Affairs is not “a successful leader candidate.”