Getting a leader to follow-through

Dear Erica,

I’m working with a vice-president on our board who has lots of great ideas but never follows through. We have an important event coming up and I can’t even get him to schedule a meeting. How do I motivate him to do what needs to get done?

Puzzled in Potomac

Dear Puzzled,

Oh no. Sounds like you need Who Moved My Babka?, a popular leadership book for Jewish boards! I share your frustration and have heard this concern voiced many times, especially as people get busier and the volunteer base is shrinking. And our inability to follow-through on projects is as old as the hills. Saadia Gaon, a tenth century Jewish philosopher, describes a mentally lazy person as one “who fails to pursue an idea to its conclusion.” He says that people don’t realize that if they act this way with things they want to achieve, they’d never get them. The key here is how much people really want to make an idea happen or if they want the idea to happen but someone else to do it. Generating ideas and being a leader are not the same thing. Here are a few practical questions for you to answer because you can’t control someone else’s behavior, but you can control your own:

· Have you communicated directly and clearly what has to be done?
· Have you followed up with him about responsibilities and deadlines?
· Have you thought of consequences that you might share with him should the tasks not get done?
· Have you given him honest and helpful feedback about what is not working?
· Have you given him enough support and good feeling about how important the work is that he is doing and how great it is to get projects completed?
· Have you spent sufficient time mapping with him how ideas become realities?

If you can answer those questions, you’re halfway there. Don’t be afraid to suggest that maybe there’s a better place within your organization for him. Maybe this is the wrong fit if he is not following through. Maybe he needs some proverbial hand-holding to help him make good on his word. I know you are busy with your job, but you know what they say about teaching a man to fish…