A new CEO presses on with two seemingly irreconcilable behaviours – being a badass and being likeable. In effect, the person is seldom likeable and often leaves people anxious, and in some instances, fearful. Why does this happen?

This person comes on board with a brief to improve parameters viewed as critical – growth, profitability, professionalisation, diversification, and any number of similar themes. The initial weeks are hectic and each day, with new information coming in, the story in the mind is overwritten with an expanded, more detailed and complex version. But holes remain in the storyline and many questions stay unanswered. New questions arise too; chances are that some questions have no answers at all.

Simultaneously, the CEO plots his moves based on low hanging fruit identified, and on hunches and judgment calls; some more daring ones take big decisions to shake up the system and/or wield the scalpel liberally. It is now almost a norm that the first 90 days is the first gate to get past – to show that you mean business, produce results, make an impact.

To assure the team that the new boss at the top is not an ogre, the CEO often unleashes a charm offensive by reaching out, with carefully edited self-disclosure. Knowing that the team could easily sabotage his agenda, building a working relationship becomes a priority too.

Much depends on the CEO feeling secure, well-anchored and self-assured. Harm is routinely done in organisations when they are not, and where newly inducted or anointed CEOs wrestle with their inner demons of need, greed, unbounded expectations, delusions of grandeur, fears and anxieties. The organisation is the stage, the battleground where they play out. The result – the system and its people end up being collateral damage.

A function head once confided, “My new boss, the CEO, comes with an impressive record of success. But he is turning out to be every bit a jerk”. He explained thus:

“The first signs came when the CEO sent many home packing rather early and unceremoniously, and replaced them with ex-colleagues poached from a previous employer. Many of those shown the door were veterans in the system, well regarded by their teams, and repositories of tacit wisdom gained over many seasons of successes and setbacks.

While no one denies a CEO’s right to forge a team capable of delivering on a mandate, packing the team with ex-colleagues didn’t go down well. They were seen as nothing but a bunch of cronies. Some called it a kitchen cabinet at work.

The HR head was reduced to a handmaiden, whose counsel was selectively sought, rarely responded to, and occasionally indulged or patronised with gratuitous feedback. While empowerment and collaboration were explicitly emphasised, the implicit signals suggested that the CEO held the reins tightly. Trust was more a directive rather than a personal commitment.

The new hires brought in had greater access to the CEO, who had a vested interest in helping them succeed, while others had to prove themselves all over again to avoid the fate of their colleagues culled in the purge. Over the weeks and months, the organisation hardly felt like a place the old hands had known and shaped. It was more threatening than challenging, less welcoming than exciting. Everyone tried to carry on with a ‘business as usual’ air and efficiency, but beneath this was a deeply felt dislocation.

The CEO did little to assuage the team’s fear that a game of Russian Roulette was on. Perversely, this made the CEO more powerful vis-à-vis his colleagues, the destabilisation making the latter second-guess the ask and be appropriately responsive, lest…

Quickly, it was clear that all eyes were on the CEO waiting for that one misstep.

The CEO had other behaviours that were not just annoying, but also dubious.

The first was the CEO’s habit of lapsing back to past experience and grand victories in former tenures, the “good ole days” – the clever moves, pathbreaking changes, the accolades and trophies – and a lack of curiosity about colleagues’ stories and experiences. The message was perhaps, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been there, done that. You guys are lucky to have me”. This was tiresome and alienated the team.

The second was the ill-conceived harking back to ‘best practices’, which were sought to be transplanted from the previous employer without caring to check their relevance to the new context or inquiring about what was in vogue, or what had been tried and cast aside. In effect, the CEO had attempted to replicate what was familiar in a different time and place as if they were universally applicable. The current Board’s brief could not have been to make this organisation a clone of his past employer.

That performance, results and success are a result of many elements coming together and a product of culture was lost sight of.

In the process, the CEO revealed a disconnect vis-à-vis the organisation and perhaps a disdain or contempt for it.

This became even more clear with respect to the challenge of balancing continuity with change. We saw that the new CEO was trigger-happy. On a mission to usher in the new, there was little patience to examine which of the present organisational ways merited continuing and what of the legacy was worth preserving. There was trauma in anticipation of the uprooting, and little dialogue on what was to replace it. There was a gradual snuffing out of pride, ownership and belonging. People began to bide their time. Organisation-building and alignment became doubly difficult.”

What the organisation had hoped for was inspired leadership and orchestration. What it got was a self-important imperial overlord.

As a member of the leadership team, when confronted with such a circumstance, what is one to do? This is a great opportunity to take stock and do a realistic self-assessment.

• Ask how the present tenure has added to your overall professional stature, what has been honed and what has atrophied, what your goals are for the foreseeable future and in life. It is also a good time to study your financial situation and determine how strong or vulnerable you are. How many months can you hold out without employment at about the same standard of living?

• Reflect on the ground that you stand on and operate from: What are the non-negotiables from your personal and professional perspective? What are your feelings about flexibility, compromise, negotiation with colleagues and bosses?

• It will be important to be one’s own spokesperson, ambassador and champion. It is not a time for modesty and underplaying one’s role, abilities, needs or accomplishments. This also means that we should tamp down on the urge to be self-effacing or self-deprecating. Certainly, it would be unwise to use a language of unflattering descriptions of oneself that makes it easy for the CEO to play back and use as a put-down when convenient.

• Look for the grain of truth in the CEO’s feedback or criticism and work on it. Don’t let their obnoxious behaviour be your excuse for not facing up to uncomfortable truths.

• If organisational politics is the art and process of strategic influencing, practice it. Build alliances, mend ties that are broken, engage purposefully with those who have the CEO’s ear and communicate/broadcast to be on the radar.

• In all interfaces with the CEO, the above should help in clarifying expectations, holding one’s own, acting with honour, knowing the risks that one can take and being at peace when discretion must rule over valour, and a spirit of compromise must prevail over considerations of victory or defeat.

• It is always useful to have your resignation typed and ready. It can come in handy. It makes it possible to act with a sense of liberation in every moment, knowing that all control hasn’t been lost.

Image from pxfuel.