The laws that govern good leadership, the necessity for responsibility and accountability will never change. Be it 20 years ago or 20 years into the future, while one talented human continues to organise, supervise, motivate, manage and lead others the laws which are central to successful governance will never change.
Right at the top of this list of law is honesty and integrity. For a leader to earn and maintain the respect and trust of the people they are accountable to, requires an unconditional commitment to honesty and sincerity of the highest level. Break this code of conduct and the consequences can be severe and brutal. And the higher up the ladder a leader climbs, the more accountable they become.
One mistake destroys an entire career.
This short article summarises the downfall of a person who carved out a career as a high profile public servant which spanned over a period of 4 decades, then all lost due to one stupid mistake. Eighteen years as a Member of Parliament, Ministerial roles, two terms as Mayor of a large city, and finally leader of a political party that saw his return to Parliament once more. Then one careless act of dishonesty lost him the lot!
Without going into the entire background, the basis to his downfall was the acceptance of a donation of $50,000 towards his mayoralty campaign and his failure to declare this donation. He asked for the donation by means of two separate cheques of $25,000 each, so the identity of his donor would remain unidentified. The law demands when a donation exceeds $30,000, there is a requirement of immediate disclosure to the Electoral Commission, and this information then becomes public.
The person donating the $50,000 is a person of questionable character. He also trying to fight extradition to the USA, and this large donation, I sincerely believe, will have been given with some manner of expectation.
It is obviously clear this gentleman wanted the money to support his campaign, but not seen publicly as having an association with the donor for obvious reasons. And to achieve this, he broke the law which governs disclosure. Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake!
The offence was committed back in 2010, and as always, his opponents were continually searching for any piece of information which may discredit him. They stumbled across the undisclosed donation and in 2014 he ended up paying the price. As his offence aired in public, instead of taking responsibility for his actions, which may have resulted in people being more lenient, even forgiving, he further compounded his problem by complete denial and attempted to shift suspicion and blame upon others. Again, stupid, stupid mistake!
The court judged him guilty of the offence. This one offence has ended his life career. People have quickly forgotten the multitude of good he achieved throughout his career. They now judge him solely, and remember him by this final act.
The original offence of failing to disclose the donation was one thing, but what cost him most was his second offence, when discovered not being completely honest with those that had placed their faith in him.
I guess the lesson all leadership, (and all people from all walks of life) can take from this unfortunate event is to learn to draw that line in the sand, what is acceptable professional behaviour, and what is not. It doesn’t matter how tempting it may be to occasionally operate on the wrong side of this line, just don’t! You simply mustn’t! The price paid for offending is far too high.
All material presented in this series of business articles is sourced from my personal website: www.teamperformance.co.nz
Gary Wilson Leadership
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Kind regards, Gary Wilson