Leadership in a crisis!

The newspapers have been full of stories relating to poor leadership over the past few weeks. We have seen General Stanley McChrystall loose his position due to communicating with the press directly and criticising the Obama administration. John Terry has also been talking directly to the media about his boss but has survived despite making a “big mistake”. My favorite of the current batch though is Tony Hayward embattled CEO of BP who continues to get a roasting from all sides for his handling of the Gulf oil crisis.

Knowing what to do in a crisis is a rare skill. The decisions you make have a habit of following you around for many months or even years after. Good judgment is often hard to quantify immediately – it is often only in hindsight that we can see the real and lasting benefits.

It is important that as we represent our interim managers we focus on where they have added value, what they have achieved in previous assignments and if they have a positive legacy. We want to demonstrate to our clients that their organisation is better off; that our interim manager made a contribution that met their expectations and that they passed on their knowledge so that their efforts made a lasting impact.

We place leaders - perhaps they are not leading the national team or running one of the world’s largest oil companies but they are providing excellent leadership to businesses, departments, projects or teams. We like many, are also searching for the illusive characteristics that make good leaders and therefore good interim managers. I would like our clients and interim managers to get involved in this debate and tell me what they believe makes good leaders and good interim managers.

We will all see greater competition for assignments especially as opportunities for interims in the public sector run dry. We will need to fight against the impulse to make a commodity out of interim management and therefore interim managers. We will need to re-enforce the added value message to our clients - the lasting benefits and importantly that the value and contribution of a good interim manager is always far greater than their cost.

Doug Baird is Managing Director of Interim Partners.

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