Who is your Weakest Link?

Wouldn’t it be great if you worked with people who were authentic in their work? Accepting responsibility, acknowledging errors, and committing to correction? Acting without blame or victim-hood and aspiring to be the best they could be?

I know many of your employees are authentic and they are fantastic but there’s always one who is not bringing in results. And the most negative person on your team is the weakest link, and he/she alone can lose the game for you.

Who is Your Weakest Link?

It seems to be human nature that when your work performance comes under scrutiny, you want to throw someone else under the bus so your superior will somehow overlook your glaring flaws-deflecting the call to correction with the expectation that somehow your poor performance will be acceptable to the head honcho and your job will be saved.

Lately, it seems that daily a new scandal hits the news exposing the ugliness of arrogance, fraud, and greed. Those who are victims quickly defend their lack of doing due diligence and claim foul-deflecting the entire burden of blame to the perpetrator. The perpetrator deflects blame on others around him as well. Trust is a delicate thing that we offer to people hoping and praying (and trusting) that what they tell us is true. And in our deepest thoughts, we devilishly giggle that we will make out like bandits and be rich-not really caring how it happens as long as we do, in fact, get rich.

It is an unpopular view that even victims have a responsibility for their part in a failing activity, but it is true. Life itself is fraught with risk and everyone makes poor decisions; one of your decisions today can possibly turn out poorly. As an owner or manager, you too are responsible for how you invest in your team or employees.

The challenge for the leader in an organization is to keep their focus on employee performance and to offer correction without blame, bias, or offense. Correcting with kindness sometimes can be interpreted as weak and an employee may make the mistake of taking that kindness for granted-continuing to perform poorly lying, cheating, perhaps even stealing, and betraying others to make himself look better. It is up to the leader to hold to the performance model and deliver the appropriate consequence; even termination.

The life and health of your business depends on it.

L2L Contributing Author

2 Comments

  1. […] Our own Nancy Low is featured on Linked2Leadership. The original post of her article can be found HERE. […]



  2. Gerald Juhnke on January 10, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    Hi Nancy~

    So, let me get this straight? IF a leader has a stable completely filled with all mature, authentic, devoted, dedicated, invested, charges who readily admit their faults and don’t throw others “under the bus,” THEN one is a great leader? Come on! What is that? An abridged re-write of the One Minute Manager from years past or maybe a management version akin to a scene from the old Stratford Wives Movie?

    True leadership requires working with the team one inherits or assembling the best players one can gather. True leadership requires working within the resources provided (or “gained”). True leadership means professionally and personally demonstrating the qualities you state in your blogand diligently investing oneself into developing the team.

    Like you, I sometimes become frustrated with team members who don’t invest themselves in the charges assigned or don’t change their failing ways! However, I don’t believe leadership translates into blaming the team. Instead, true leadership rewards those who are invested. True leadership rewards those who take responsibility. True leadership rewards those who accomplish their charges.

    Sometimes the weakest link is a specific team member. More often, however, I find the weakest link is poor leadership from above or the assignment of incompatible, schizophrenic goals that are polar opposites and therefore, unattainable. Sometimes the weakest link is a direct result of esoteric “goals” or an avalanche of “equally weighted goals” that have no clear “priorities”.

    I’ve been blessed by having excellent superiors throughout the majority of my career. They were leaders extraordinaire. They lead the teams they inherited and many times they accomplished the nearly impossible by exhibiting the behaviors you suggest as critical. What I learned from them was: (a) the importance of rewarding those who truly invested themselves in their assigned charges, (b) capitalizing on the strengths of the “strongest” links, (c) vigilantly searching and securing more and new resources to reward those team members who deserved it, and (d) hiring the best while actively encouraging the non-invested to other jobs (at their major competitors). Thus, I would argue that true leadership isn’t focused on the weakest link…instead true leadership is focused on rewarding the strongest links and accomplishing clearly prioritized goals.

    Your blogs are excellent and I thoroughly enjoy them, Nancy. I agree in “spirit” with what I believe you are suggesting. Thanks for allowing me to comment.

    Best Wishes,

    Jerry



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