06/03/2010

Leadership Indifference

A child who is healthy and literate, lives in security and is able to express his or her views, is a child who not only develops in harmony with his or her community, but also strengthens that community.
Marta Santos Pais, Director of UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre

In his book, Leading without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community (New York: Jossey Bass, 2003), Max De Pree tells a story about an incident at a West Michigan Whitecaps baseball team:

"At a game in the summer of 1995 one of the Whitecaps players hit a sharp ground ball to the opposing shortstop who was unable to get the ball out of his glove, and the runner was safe at first. The shortstop, apparently feeling morose about his error, begins to walk slowly toward the mount to hand the pitcher the ball when the runner took off for second. The second baseman hadn't bothered to go over to cover the bag, and the runner was easily safe. After a few minutes the official scorer, not knowing exactly how to score the play, announced over the public address system that he had decided to write off the second error to 'defensive indifference'."

De Pree told this story to ask how many errors in organizations are due to "leadership indifference." How often do leaders, so focused on their outward responsibilities, fail to see problems brewing within? Maybe the organization has become lax about customer service, or maybe some members of the team have become more focused on putting time in than accomplishing results. According to De Pree, leaders need to be continually vigilant to performance of all parts of the organization.

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