5 Leadership Mistakes Greece Made
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 14, 2015
By now we all know at least a little something about what's going on in Greece. To do a quick synopsis, the country is pretty much days away from defaulting on their debt, being tossed out of the Eurozone, and having to start from scratch with their own currency, which would be worthless pretty much everywhere except possibly in Greece... possibly that is.
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Right now there's a strong possibility that there's a deal on the table that the country will accept from the rest of Europe that would keep them in the union and make them solvent. I'm not going to get into all of that because, frankly, a lot of it is above my head. I know a lot about finance, even a bit on how they ended up in this trouble, but not all that much.
Still, this is an easy one to make some leadership judgments on. I decided to highlight 5 mistakes Greece made; let's see if you agree.
1. Never let your pride get in the way of getting out of trouble.
This one can be difficult for most of us but when it involves more than yourself, you need to let go of your pride and do what's right. History shows many leaders deciding it was better to surrender rather than let their people get slaughtered needlessly.
From what I understand, the deal Greece might take is the same deal they were offered a long time ago. The people of that country went through a lot of distress they could have avoided to end up where they started.
2. Never encourage others to make a decision without knowing all the facts.
When I heard this thing was going for a vote I was stunned. Maybe it's because I live in the United States, but if we had to make that kind of decision we'd mess it up. There's no way the overwhelming majority would have any idea how to decide for themselves how to vote on such an issue.
As we saw, the country voted against the same deal they're about to accept. The leader of the country knew better but went for what was popular rather than correct. Now he's probably going to suffer for doing something he should have bit the bullet on and done in the first place.
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3. Listen to the people you employ when they share their advice.
From what I understand, the finance minister of the country knew the trouble they were in, made the recommendation, made the deal and presented it to the head of the country. He didn't like it, as it was against his principles. That led to the referendum being defeated, the finance minister leaving, and the prime minister trying to earn points pandering to the people.
We all employ experts to handle certain things we're not totally proficient at. It pays to listen to them, and if we don't trust them, to replace them. It's hard to replace good people when you need them.
4. Do right from the beginning so you don't run into serious problems.
From what I understand, this isn't the first time Greece has been in trouble. They've had to be bailed out a couple of times previously. The government knew what its problems were, yet still continued spending as if they were one of the richest countries in the world.
Leaders can never afford to put their heads in the sand and act like the problems they have don't exist. They need to be ready to work with others to fix those problems, no matter how serious they are and no matter how austere those actions need to be.
If your employees needs to work overtime, make it so. If you need to be frugal, be frugal. Move towards correcting things first, then modify or try to figure something out to address the issues in a different way at that point.
5. Be careful what you promise; you might have to eat crow.
The prime minister is facing a possible protest and strike from the very people who work for him and put him in office six months ago. What they're doing is what he had them do when he wasn't in power in 2010 and 2014, the other two times Greece was close to default. This will not only embarrass him but probably get him replaced.
True leaders never let people get into trouble because of their stubbornness or their inability to use foresight to see what might be coming. We almost had the same thing in this country back in 2008 when housing, banking and the automobile industry was crashing.
President Bush did the right thing in deciding to bailout those industries and President Obama followed suit by continuing those bailouts. How would we have reacted if suddenly it was us in default, our banks closed, and we had limited access to our money? Luckily, we didn't have to find out. Our leaders went against the grain and did what they thought was right for the country.
Leaders don't always get it right. But they're leaders, and if they followed proper leadership principles things would have gone better than they did. They always do.
