.jpg)
An interesting question from a student leader at Widener University this weekend. "When you see someone screwing up something for an event happening next week, should you step in and take over, or should you just allow them to fail?"
In this student's case, flyers were needed to publicize a special event next weekend. The group's previous event had been poorly attended because this same person waited too long to publicize the event. Now, it was happening again.
The president knew he could yank the task away from the procrastinating officer, but he also knew there would be drama if he did. Should he just do it and then deal with the drama? Or, should he give the person the benefit of the doubt and wait and see? Perhaps it will be done tomorrow or the next day -- just in time for the event. But, what if it's not? Will everyone blame the president for allowing the weak officer to fail at the same task twice?
I'm a fan of letting people screw things up from time to time. More things are learned from occasional failure than from organization presidents who spend all their time covering for incompetent subordinate leaders in the group. But for many student leaders, that's a scary gamble.
I advised him to have a meeting with the officer and demand immediate activity (like in the next 24 hours), or delegate the task to another person in the group. It might even be a good idea to do it in the presence of another officer. Ask the person if he/she needs help getting the task done. Perhaps this weak officer would love to pass it off to someone more competent.
When given the choice between "doing the work yourself" or "letting the job go undone," my advice is to step in aggressively with others in your organization, and get the task done. However, you can't let the officer who dropped the ball get away with it, and you need to put safeguards in place so it doesn't happen again. If someone has messed a task up once, it's incumbent upon you as the group leader to make sure that this person:
- Understands how and why the error was made
- Understands how to accomplish the task in a timely and appropriate way next time
- Understands clearly the deadlines for getting the task done
In retrospect, what this president should have done was to ask to see a draft of the event flyer two weeks in advance. If that deadline wasn't met, then it would have been a justified move to ask the officer to step aside or assign the critical task to someone else. Setting incremental deadlines in advance of a project or event is a great way to force a lazy or incompetent officer to show some positive movement before it becomes a crisis.
Dealing with underperforming officers or committee chairpersons is just part of the job. Your job as president is to make sure that the machine is running. That usually means keeping an eye on the performance of your workers far in advance of the critical times. Otherwise, you'll constantly be reacting to crisis after crisis.
