The day I made a fool of myself
Mastering the use of threat to achieve a good result
Many years ago, I was a leader of a small volunteer group at the University. During the summer holiday, I sent SMS to everybody to inform them of our plans to resume earlier than the University calendar to plan for our programs for the new session. The SMS had a threat tone and the consequence if defaulted. On the day of the agreed pre-resumption, I packed my bags and left for school. Our first meeting was scheduled for 5:00 pm the next day and that was the day I made a fool of myself.
About 97% of the members were not even in town yet. I couldn’t carry out my threat, it would mean dissolving the entire team. Something I wasn’t ready to do because it would mean building from the scratch and cancelling all the programs of that academic session. What I primarily wanted was to get the team on board at the same time, I wasn’t ready for the secondary outcome (I will explain this better in this article) of suspending the members. In retrospect, I’ve learnt what I did wrong, how to achieve a good result if I had to use threat and I want to share this skill with you too.
Decision-making skill is an important part of good leadership. The higher the stake the tougher the decisions become. We are the outcome of our past decisions, and that is why great and successful leaders are thorough when making decisions. A lot of great leaders don’t make important decisions at a certain time of the day. By the way, you should be doing that if you’ve not been practising it. Discover the most productive time of your day and make sure that’s when you make important decisions of your life.
“We are the outcome of our past decisions, and that is why great and successful leaders are thorough when making decisions.”
The higher a leader rises the broader the effects of his decisions are on people. A leader’s decision at that stage has more impact on people. For instance, the impact of the decision of President Trump of the United States of America will be more than the impact of the decision of President Ramaphosa of South Africa. So, if you are at this stage, you will want to make decisions that are airtight without blowback or at most with minimum blowback.
Making tough decisions
Let’s come to making difficult decisions. If you are a leader and you’ve not had to make some difficult decisions, keep breathing because you will soon have to do that. The reason is simple; everything rises and falls on leadership and every outcome will see around us is as a result of decisions. Whether you decide to act or stall from acting, you are already making decisions. There can’t be a neutral position when it comes to making decisions.
Life is full of different kinds of hurdles that require a leader to always chart the way for others. One of such tough decisions a leader has to make is giving an ultimatum to force a party to do something or to refrain from an act. Although this is more prevalent in political leadership, it happens in every field. In some sphere, they call it a threat, whatever you call it in your sphere, you will have to do it at some points in leadership. And this is regardless of your personality. It is something you can’t escape in leadership. It’s a necessary part of the chain of the decision-making process.
How to use a threat to make good decisions
So how do you make an airtight decision through threat that won’t have blowback or at most minimize the blowback? Before you make your threat in words or action, make sure you solve the following questions:
- What is the preferred outcome you want? There must be something you want to achieve primarily as opposed to the secondary outcome that your threat carries. For instance, if I threaten to stop receiving supplies from my major distributor (who is the best in the country) unless they apologize publicly for a reckless comment from one of their staffs. My desired primary outcome should be that they apologise and the good business relationship continues, while my secondary outcome within the treat will be to cut my relationship with them. All things being equal, every reasonable leader should want the primary outcome. While the secondary outcome may hurt the receiving party, the outcome will hurt the issuer of the threat too. Hence, in this case, my primary objective is to correct a public view of my company through apology from the other company.
2. How strong is the other party to ignore your threat? Have you ever wondered what it would be like if a 7 years old boy threatens his 38 years old Dad that he won’t go to school again if his dad doesn’t make pancakes for him every morning? That boy is making a threat that he can’t go through with. Sometimes, leaders make such an empty threat in trying to force a decision purely out of emotions.
“Great decisions cannot depend on mere emotions because emotions are not reliable.”
Emotional blackmail is never a good strategy of making decisions because great leaders never fall for it.
3. Do you know the inner structure of your threat subject and their private opposition? If the party you are threatening has domestic oppositions, he might be forced to ignore your threat. Not because he wants to ignore it but because he couldn’t withstand the domestic pressure around him. An example that came to mind was the assessment of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. President Kennedy of the United States of America and Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union made threats at each other without the knowledge of the domestic oppositions they were both facing in their countries.
The way to make your threat effective is to be sure that there are no surrounding factors that can force your subject to ignore your threat or that the subject of your threat can handle and suppress the domestic influences.
In other words, if you threaten someone that is not in control of himself, you cannot achieve your primary goal. Just don’t bother to use threat; think of other means to get what you want.
Lastly, if your threat is ignored, it could push you to a difficult situation and heighten trouble that you can’t afford. According to Michael K. Bohn, the author of the book; Presidents in Crisis;
“Don’t take the first step without thinking about what may be the last.”
I agree with him because most times our threats come too early in our decision-making process. People use threat too early and mostly it has a radioactive effect on both parties involved. Let threat be your last option and you have to be certain of the above 3 questions if you want to achieve your goal with a threat. You don’t have to make a fool of yourself as I did and if you’ve made a fool of yourself as I did, you can do better the next time with these new skills.
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