Leadership Suicide

I often write that one of the key foundation stones of leadership is trust. Without trust there is no real basis for people to follow you.

So today when I see what the Cypriot government is proposing, I am truly stunned, with one proposed action they have managed to lose the trust of practically their entire nation.

They have decided to take a %, how much still to be determined, from the deposit accounts of their resident.

This is theft, although how it differs from much of what others governments do under the heading of “taxation” is a moot point.

What is interesting is that this action is going to punish many of those who were not responsible for the global crisis, but were people who put their money away, didn’t borrow above their means and were probably prudent.

In addition to proposing this action they are also blaming it on others, such as the Germans, claiming they need to do this in order to get a much needed bailout.

I am sure that this is something they really feel that they need to do, the financial situation must be terrible to even contemplate this, so they have my sympathies.

But the manner in which they have gone about this is one of the worst examples of leadership I have seen in a while.

They will lose the trust of their people for this action, for something they blame on others, which is pretty much confession to the lack of control of the situation.

It seem like they also have no real clue as to how to implement this, one minute it’s 6%, then it’s 3%, then it’s only for amounts over 100k.

No trust + no control + no clear plan + poor communication = leadership suicide!

If this goes through I suspect that they will lose the next election by a significant margin, probably a record landslide defeat.

This could have been handled so much better that it does make me wonder whether they are looking to use public opinion to crush this proposal from Germany via the EU.

Either way this government will not survive this.