Some of the most confusing leadership moments often come from working with very very good people. Uh they’re faithful, they’re committed, they’ve got strong character, they’re trying really, really hard. But sometimes with these good people, the results just aren’t there. And sometimes you don’t know why. And often times it’s not a people problem. It’s not a motivation problem.
What you have is a placement problem. You have the right person, but sometimes the right person is in the wrong seat. Now, what makes this challenging is that they’re the right person. In other words, they’re like a good person. They’re very, very capable. And perhaps they were great at their previous role.
And so, it’s confusing as to why they’re struggling in their current role. U they’re smart, they’re talented, they’re dedicated, but they can’t seem to get traction or momentum. And so you look on and you care for them and you’re trying to figure it out because they’re talented and they love the mission.
But you have to remember someone can be allin and still struggle in the role. So some of you as we get into this you might be thinking okay but like I don’t have a big staff. What I want to do is be clear. Um you will face this problem. It applies to small teams. It applies to volunteers.
It could even be working with a board or your contractors. And if I can just be really direct, sometimes it even applies to yourself. Right person, wrong seat. And there are two common mistakes that we’re going to start with, then we’re going to dive in really, really deep. Um, the two common mistakes is we confuse loyalty with fit and we assume effort will fix misalignment.
Let’s talk about that for a moment. We confuse loyalty with fit because they’re loyal people and we like them. We tend to think that they’ve got to fit in the role or we assume if we all just try harder, I coach them better, they give a little more effort, that effort will fix misalignment. Unfortunately, these things generally aren’t true.
