“Oh,” I said involuntarily, looking at my phone, “I have a new boss.”
I was attending a conference where I had been asked to speak about change management for large-scale implementations. During a break, I had glanced down at my phone and discovered a company announcement about a new CEO. The most interesting things always happened when I was out of the office. The person I was standing with asked who, and I said the name.
“Have you met James1?” He asked. “James worked with [new guy] at [new guy’s previous organization].” He pointed James out to me and I worked my way across the room and introduced myself.2 James had already heard the news.
“I hear [new CEO] is going to work for your organization,” he commented. “You’re going to love working for him. A real servant leader.” James told me a few other things, all positive, and then we were swept off to the next part of the event.
That was the first time that I heard the phrase “servant leader.”
When I returned to the office, I shared this story with my boss who reported directly to the CEO. He grunted something along the lines of, “he gave me this; maybe you’d like it” and tossed me this book. Ah, there was that servant leadership thing again, I thought. I started reading it and was amused. Based on what I had read so far in the book, for all my boss’s cynicism about being told to read the book, he himself was already a servant leader.
Eventually I met the new CEO. His affect seemed a little flat, almost as if he was depressed. I didn’t quibble with the changes he wanted to make at first, but I did think he seemed a little…. uninformed. As if he weren’t interested in how things worked there and how to pull the levers of change.
The more I saw of him, the stranger and more… odd… he seemed. He was fine 1:1 but he would come to meetings where he didn’t know anyone and share odd personal facts, the kind of personal facts that you wouldn’t usually share with strangers in a professional setting. I wondered if he was working with an executive coach who had advised him that the way to build trust as the CEO of a social organization was to open up, take off the professional mask that executives often wear, and let people see his personal side. But the facts were so random and so personal that it just put people’s backs up. And the more people were in the meeting, the weirder the facts were.
I kept reading this book and tried to fit what I was reading about with his behavior.
He brought in a posse from his previous organization. Some of them were less discrete than they should have been. Rumors swirled that they had plans to do a two-year turn-around. They started applying some kind of formula, lecturing us on customer service (ironically, something that their previous organization was known for being terrible at, while a strength for our organization); they changed the staffing model in a way that undermined all the sales objectives for the year (to say nothing of that precious customer service they yammered on about). For the most part, I got along with them. They were trying to implement some much needed changes; not everyone understands change management, I told myself, they’re still getting their feet under them; be patient. I took deep breaths and kept reading this book.
Until my boss left and they replaced him with a complete dweeb. This guy showed no interest in my team’s work, how we operated, how my skills could be useful to him; instead he talked down to me as if I were an inexperienced backslider and gave me stupid directives. I politely took notes that I immediately discarded after leaving the room. He made the mistake of joking one night when he thought no one was around that they needed to cut more payroll so he could stock his office fridge with better snacks. The biggest office gossip overheard and his words quickly circulated through the building and throughout the regional sales teams.
I kept reading this book. Kept my head down. Kept working. Kept my team focused and out of the politics, focused on our objectives. When people asked if they should be looking for a new job, I suggested they give the CEO time: I had heard positive things about where he wanted to go in our 1:1 meetings (if only he weren’t so off-putting in group settings).
And I kept wondering where the servant leadership was.
A month later I went on vacation. Burnt to a crisp but in the last 30 days of a huge project, I left my phone in my bedside table and checked it only once a day, after meditating, doing yoga, going for 10-mile walks, showering, and getting dressed for the day, I’d brace myself, open the drawer like it contained nuclear waste, quickly skim my emails replying anything that seemed urgent, then toss the phone back in the drawer and slam it shut.
One day there was an email not related to the project, from the Chairman of the Board. Short, to the point, it basically said, “I goofed. Sorry. Effective today, they’re all gone.”
When I returned to the office, people told me that, on some floors, it had been like Times Square after WWII ended. People racing through the halls, hooting, papers flying like confetti. I was glad they had gone – they had been a huge distraction. Unfortunately, some of the important turnaround objectives died with their departure.
To this day, I think about James, telling me that this guy was a servant leader. This book is still on my shelf and I still wonder: what happened?
Change+Management 