War Stories - Defusing an executive kerfuffle
Some situations you encounter as a leader are no-win scenarios. The best thing to do for your organization sometimes is to take the "L" personally.
A sudden flurry of Slack notifications appear on the top right of my screen: three new, separate DMs, surprisingly from the President, CEO, CTO, and CMO. I knew something blew up.
Given the absence of other blaring alarms, I knew the system wasn’t down.
What was?
An unexpected crisis
All four messages were about the exact same thing.
One of my reports, a newly minted engineering manager, had posted a message on his team channel that had suddenly ruffled a lot of executive feathers.
The message itself was simple: “We have unexpectedly received new goals from leadership and will need to reprioritize.”
It was viewed as extremely passive aggressive given the context of the company.
What was the context?
My report had previously communicated feedback up of the difficulty caused by frequently changing goals.
The leadership team had listened, and had been working feverishly on implementing a new, fair, and more consistent goaling system. It would take time because such a change is always fraught with everything from board dynamics to HR considerations to projection challenges and everything in-between. It was a heavy topic with many vigorous debates behind the scenes, but it was something actively being worked on.
The problem was that my report had also communicated feedback down, around, and across — pretty much to anyone an everyone who would listen. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and he oozed frustration in every conversation. With coaching it had decreased some, but old habits die hard.
The demands
Aligned by this particular problem, the entire C-Suite had the same demand: that I immediately correct the engineering manager for this passive aggressive message.
I had one problem: I can’t just tell my report he’s the new target of the C-Suite. It would change how he viewed his relationships with others and key partners, and make him afraid of posting and communicating. It would’ve made him less likely to trust others, when it’s such a large component of his effectiveness in the role. It would also make him less likely to give feedback upwards from a team that I needed to hear it from.
In short — it would have created a cycle of destructive fear.
What did I do?
I took the blame.
I told the C-Suite: hey, I’m working with the report on communication techniques. It’s an area that we expect to improve over time and I’ve seen good progress — we’ll need to expect unintended mistakes happen as we refine and hone this skill and I take responsibility for the miscommunication here.
To my report — I coached him. as if I came up with the message and that it was me who had issue with it. I essentially gave that C-suite feedback as if it was my own.
I had a quick chat with the report:
“I read that message and I can see it being interpreted by others in a way that you may not intended. I recommend adjusting it to be more neutral or matter-of-fact that the goals changed — ie. without any particular charge, to avoid alienating any stakeholders. We want to cultivate a culture where change is welcome, and embraced as an opportunity to improve.”
I didn’t even mention the C-Suite.
My report took the feedback immediately as he typically did — “we will be reprioritizing our efforts to align with our new goals.” The C-Suite was satisfied — the newer message was perceived as less passive aggressive.
The crisis subsided. The C-Suite moved on to other issues and I was able to give my report some useful advice that he implemented moving forward.
3 months later
My report gave me a negative mark on the upward performance review, citing that I had “inappropriately micromanaged communication”.
My boss gave me negative remark on my own performance review, citing that I “needed to work more closely with reports on effective messaging.”
Sometimes you just have to take the “L” to do what’s best for the company.
I thanked them for the feedback and carried on.