'Don't be fooled by flattery,' district mayors warned

More than 100 days have passed since the ninth round of directly elected local governments took office.

In human terms, it is the milestone when a newborn has found its footing in the world — a moment worth marking.

For first-term district mayors in particular, those 100 days must have been a breathless sprint. The job is so grueling that people joke it belongs in the "3D industries" — dirty, difficult and dangerous — or compare it to an iron-man triathlon. It is not a post anyone can handle without a genuine commitment to public service.

After that headlong rush, the broad outlines of campaign pledges and governance priorities for the next four years should by now be taking concrete shape. The time has come to turn plans into action.

Local politics, however, is no easier than national politics. In a tight-knit community, rivals and opponents are always watching, and every word and action a district mayor takes is subject to scrutiny and criticism from staff.

For elected officials, humility and caution are therefore paramount. They must examine themselves each day as though walking on thin ice.

To Seoul's district mayors, this column offers one piece of advice.

"Don't be fooled by your employees' flattery."

For a district mayor to lead an organization effectively, the most important thing is ensuring that every employee shares the mayor's policy direction and priority projects. The starting point is surprisingly simple: making sure staff actually read the daily district press releases and the mayor's guidance messages.

How many civil servants in Seoul's autonomous districts are carefully reading the district news releases and mayoral messages posted on the Saeeol administrative system they use for their daily work?

If employees do not know what projects the district mayor is pushing hardest or what policies are meant to change residents' lives, how can the organization ever move in one direction?

It is especially problematic when senior officials attending executive meetings walk into the room without having read that day's key district press releases. What meaningful discussion or follow-through is possible when they have not grasped the core initiatives their mayor is emphasizing?

On Thursday, this reporter checked the click counts on district news posts and mayoral guidance messages in the Saeeol system of one Seoul autonomous district and was startled by what appeared: a mere 20 to 30 clicks. In a district with more than 2,000 employees, that means only 20 to 30 people had read the posts — roughly one in ten of the approximately 300 staff at section-chief level or above, which includes about 70 division directors and more than 240 team leaders.

"If employees are not properly reading district news releases that contain the mayor's key initiatives, it is hard to say the mayor has a real grip on the organization," one senior district official said.

The same applies to the mayor's guidance messages. If staff are neither reading nor acting on them, the district mayor needs to first examine whether internal communication and a sense of professional urgency are functioning at all.

Yet district mayors often gauge the health of their organizations from entirely the wrong signals.

Senior officials can always tell a mayor what they want to hear: "You're doing a wonderful job, Mayor." "Your policies are the best." Such words flow freely in front of the person who controls personnel decisions and budgets.

But praise and flattery are not the same as organizational control. What a district mayor needs is not officials who sing their praises but civil servants who understand policy precisely and carry it out in the field.

If a mayor is lulled by pleasant words into believing the organization is running smoothly, the foundations of their leadership can begin to crack.

So what should be done?

First, checking the district press releases and mayoral guidance messages posted on the Saeeol system should become a routine part of every employee's workday from the moment they arrive. And it should not stop at confirming that a post was opened — managers need to verify that staff have genuinely understood the intent of each policy and the tasks required to implement it.

There is also a tool available in executive meetings. The district mayor can ask a few division chiefs to summarize the key points of recent press releases and describe what follow-up their departments are taking. The purpose should not be to catch people out, but to check whether the organization's direction is being communicated all the way through.

Once that culture takes hold, the mayor's policies will not stay confined to the mayor's office. They will flow to every department and every community service center, showing up in the explanations and actions of the civil servants who meet residents in the field.

When a resident asks a community center employee whether the district mayor is doing a good job, the answer should not be a reflexive "Yes, absolutely." The employee should be able to explain specifically what projects the mayor is pursuing and what concrete changes those projects are bringing to residents' lives.

That is precisely what enables residents to understand and fairly evaluate their district mayor's policies.

Of course, reading press releases alone does not complete the picture of organizational control. Free expression of opinions on policy, rational personnel management, fair performance evaluations, and genuine two-way communication that listens to voices from the field must all be part of the equation.

What matters most is building an organization in which the mayor and staff are moving toward the same goals. District governance succeeds when the civil servants carrying out a mayor's campaign pledges share the intent and direction of those policies and take responsibility in their own roles.

What a district mayor needs is not employees who flatter, but employees who understand policy and put it into practice.

More than 100 days into the ninth term of directly elected local government, district mayors need to look past the compliments around them and examine what is actually happening inside their organizations — not what employees are saying, but how well they understand and are acting on the mayor's agenda.

The moment a mayor is taken in by flattery and convinced the organization is running well, organizational discipline may already be on the verge of collapse.

It is worth thinking about carefully.