You supervise thirteen employees within a corporation with several thousand staff. Your unit is responsible to consult with staff within your company and other related industries.

As part of the annual budget cycle you identify various pieces of audio visual equipment, computers and laptops that are surplus. The process in your company requires you to send the surplus equipment to an auction with the funds being returned to head office.  The systems are somewhat loose with no central listing of assets. As a Supervisor you are entrusted to make decisions in the best interest of the company.

Your Boss, in his volunteer role on weekends, is the president of a recreational ski club.  He tells you the club survives by dues and donations. He further illustrates that his ski club has had a tough year and is really short of audio visual equipment. He tells you that the ski club could really use the surplus equipment. He states that the corporation is big, growing, turning a profit and declaring it surplus is just giving it away.

Your Boss also reminds you that he’ll be doing your performance appraisal in a couple of months and it would be to your and his personal advantage if the surplus equipment were to be left in the hallway for him to take to his ski club instead of to surplus auction.

King Nebuchadnezzar describes Daniel and his three friends as, “…in all matters of wisdom and understanding about which the king examined them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm.” (Daniel 1:20)

Leadership is defining wise choices in the face of conflicting options.

Would your staff confirm that you choose wisely in difficult circumstances?

Yours in Service
Laurie D. Kennedy
Leadership Coach