A few weeks ago, I sent a letter to the administrator of the nursing home where my mother was a patient for six months before she died to bring to her attention concerns I had about my mother’s care.

Surprisingly, I got a call two days later from the administrator. She not only acknowledged that they had make mistakes in providing care to my mother but also told me what steps that had taken to assure the mistakes don’t recur. Their mistakes dealt with weighing my mother (a significant weight loss is a sign of decline) and their lack of accommodation to her idiosyncratic eating habits.

The management team has already changed the policy regarding how patients are weighed, conducted in-service for all the staff who weigh patients, rotated staff who weigh patients, and assigned the education coordinator to conduct random checks to be sure weights are taken accurately.

They also hired a full-time nutritionist (as opposed to a one-day-a-week, part-time consultant) whose responsibilities include meeting with patients and their families to understand and accommodate their particular eating habits.

I was impressed. Too many times, I’ve seen senior executives, when confronted with questions about the performance of their staff, fail to accept responsibility, spend all their energy defending or obscuring their mistakes and, most disappointingly, fail to take appropriate action. Not this time.

The administrator did the right thing and took the bull by the horns. She acknowledged their mistakes and, even before I had written, had taken steps to rectify shortcomings in the performance of her staff.

That’s what good leaders do. They don’t hide from the uncomfortable truth. They don’t deny shortcomings. They don’t wait for someone else to tell them what’s wrong. And they don’t avoid making changes when to do so will make things better.

The other thing I noticed about the administrator during our conversation was her direct, open, and non-defensive manner. She wasn’t at all perplexed, or anxious, or reluctant, or uncomfortable, or guarded, or defensive. She discussed the issues I had raised with openness, ease, and candor. She was as comfortable talking about their mistakes as if we were talking about the weather.

She made me comfortable by being comfortable herself. That, too, is what good leaders do. They find ways to make it easy for people to talk about hard stuff. Not only do they raise tough topics, but they also do so with the kind of openness and candor that encourages and teaches others to talk candidly about difficult issues.

Good leadership is great to see and even better to experience first hand. It’s impressive and memorable. Are you ready and able to provide it?

In the previous newsletter I wrote about the gubernatorial candidate I met and whom I invited to speak to my Rotary Club. Since then, I’ve had conversations with staff members from the campaigns of three gubernatorial candidates.

Two of those campaign staff members are direct, clear, and efficient. The other dawdles, delays, and doesn’t ever seem to get the job done to schedule the candidate to speak. The impression conveyed by the three campaigns is very different.

Two suggest competence and efficiency and the other a clumsiness and inefficiency that makes me wonder what would happen if their candidate won.

What impression is conveyed by the people you lead? What do disinterested parties, like me, have to say about the competence, efficiency, and effectiveness of your staff?

There is no doubt that the tone and culture of an organization is influenced not only by what leaders do, but also by the actions of those they lead. What have you done to ensure that the impression conveyed by the people you lead is what you intend it to be?

Recently, I asked a well-known author to speak at a seminar for a technology group I belong to. His daily fee had just increased to more than $65,000 and, even at that rate, he was booked six months in advance.

At the same time, I’d been talking to an organization that was reluctant to invest about the same amount of money to establish and deliver a leadership development program for 15 – 20 up-and-coming leaders within the organization.

The contrast is illuminating. Why are some organizations willing to bring in a noted and expensive speaker for one day while others are unwilling to invest to develop their own aspiring leaders internally?

In part, the answer lies in our natural attraction to fame and reputation. We like being in the aura of the famous.

It is also explained by the all-too-common inability of organizations to develop talent from within. Developing leaders is not a core competence for most organizations and, as a result, they often depend upon convenient and less-than-optimum solutions.

The best leadership development initiatives are ones that build leaders from within over an extended period of time and that use real work as the primary tool for their development.

If you’d like help thinking through how to develop a leadership development program that meets your needs, let me know. I’d be glad to talk with you.