There has been enough said about the post office scandal in UK. Dave Trott talks about his perspective on the same here. You can read more about the scandal on BBC’s site here or watch the documentary here.
Seven HUNDRED innocent people were accused of fraud or outright theft. A few of them gave their lives out of shame, some served prison sentences, a lot of them paid from their own pockets {out of shame} and a very few fought against the allegations and proved that the entire issue was due to a bug in the software.
All this, while each one of them knew for sure that they did not steal. All this, while the leaders knew that there was an issue with the software and not necessarily with the people that were being blamed.
It is this kind of leadership that destroys trust on almost all leaders. I am pretty sure that the leaders had ample opportunities to come clean and stop blaming the people and address the software bug. This was on both the sides {post office and the company that created the softwares).
However, it would have meant that they had to admit that they had wrongfully blamed a few people before finding out about the bug. And that needed both courage to face the anger and anguish, conviction to do what was right and the commitment to the people they lead.
All of this is not easy. All of this is uncomfortable. All of this requires leadership in its truest sense. It is easy being a leader when everything is going well. True test of leadership is when things go wrong.
What we do as a leader when things are not going as planned or when things have gone horribly wrong defines us as leaders and our character.
If we want to become Leaders worth following, we need to show up, stand up and take responsibility. And then do what needs to be done to make amends and bring things back to track.
