Team Leader Support for Election

YU Yiran B00674000

1. I have faced a very awkward situation and made a hard decision about whether or not to support my team leader to win one election in the organization I was working in.

There were two parties in the organization named as Party A and B. Leader C had led the Party A to win the election last year and beat Leader D of the Party B. So Leader C shut down one department controlled by Party B and reorganized some projects followed by Leader D. I supported the Party A and worked directly under control of Leader C. In the reform process of the projects I was chosen to go to one project transferred to Leader D, who I was not familiar with, and followed him to go the another town far away.

That project was in a poor countryside in China where the Internet and electricity were not even connected to some households. Due to some mistakes we could not finish our project and were even threatened by our business partner to get out of the town. Our colleagues found out the business partner had lied to us about the details of the project and unfortunately, Leader C was abroad and could not get in touch with our local partner. People started to blame the fault to the Leader C because the partner was chosen by him and they told me many underlying things about Leader C, which made me feel really confused and struggled. What’s worse Leader D helped me a lot with the project and started to hint me to support him in the following election. Later Leader D solved the problems with our partner successfully and saved our team from that dilemma. As I could not get in touch with Leader C, my trust on the project and Leader C were literally destroyed in that dilemma. On the other hand, what Leader D had done really changed my negative impression of him.

But when I was asked by Leader D to support him in the next election, I did not give my promise because I still had my faith on Leader C and Party A. I wanted to wait until I could get in touch with Leader C and have talks with him face to face, even though I could see him until one month later and had to work for Leader D every day during the project. Later on almost every college in my team started to claim their loyalty to Leader D. Under huge pressure I finally got the chance to see my leader C, but I only reported the details about our project but not tell him about the talks between me and Leader D. After our talk, I did analyse my situation in that organization and what Leader C answered to me and the pro/cons to support Leader C.  

1. Situation: I was one of the most loyal support of Leader C and I have my own teams too. So I can play a role in the promotion of the election. Before the election, however there were more people supporting Leader D than C due to his mistake on that project. There was a team of Leader D giving me pressure not and few people really knew the underlying relationship between Leader D and the local business partner. Leader D gave me good promises which Leader C could not offer to me. It was difficult for Leader C to win the election.

Influence factors:

Objective:

1. Leader C was supported by few more people in the superior management in the organization
2. The reform Leader C led is necessary and progressive according to me.
3. More people claimed to support Leader D and so did my colleagues.
4. There was no clear explanation about what literally happened in our project.
5. Leader C did not ask my opinion about Leader D and my colleges in that project.

Subjective:

1. Leader C had helped me a lot in my promotion and progress of projects before, which I did appreciate.
2. My position is closely related to Leader C and I had been loyal to him for a long time.

3. I believed in Leader C’s explanation about the mistake in that project.

4. I knew Leader C also had hide some facts to me in the political conflict between him and Leader D.

Pros to support:

1. I maintain the position and can have even more successful career if Leader C wins the election.
2. I keep my loyalty and pay back to Leader C for his help.

Cons to support:

1. Leader D will prevent me from many important work if he wins the election and many my colleagues won’t be so willing to cooperate with me.
2. I was even closer to Leader C and I had to be always support his Party A, which had also been changed a lot since last election.

Outcome: I did not stand out to help Leader C to give explanation about the mistakes of the project. In the following election I chose to support Leader C but I also proposed to move to one supporting department because I was stuck in a difficult situation to always support Leader C but I did want to get the benefits as his follower. On the other hand, I was afraid of being forced to do more things conflicted to my values and did not like to be involved in this political conflict again as I estimated that Leader C had also changed after winning the election.