Imagine joining a company where you feel perfectly aligned with its culture and leadership. You’re excited, you’ve done your homework, and you understand both the company’s culture and the leadership style of your boss. Everything clicks, and for a while, everything is exactly as it should be. You’re implementing changes, gaining trust across the board, from your team to your peers, and crucially, from your boss (the CEO). Everyone is aligned and the feedback is positive.
However, as time passes, you start noticing a shift. It’s subtle at first. Perhaps it’s the private equity firm that once praised your innovative approach now pushing for quick sales, or perhaps it’s an economic downturn affecting the team’s performance. The environment starts to change. The initial accolades turn into whispers of discontent. You uncover the sacred cows—those untouchable aspects of the company culture or those unspoken rules no one warned you about. You take a stance different from the norm in handling a situation, or you choose to retain an employee others expected you to let go.
Suddenly, the same people who had initially embraced your ideas begin to hold back. Their enthusiasm seems to wane, replaced by skepticism. Multiple factors could be at play—a shift in investor expectations, a strategic pivot by the CEO under external pressures, or perhaps broader economic challenges affecting the company’s performance. You’re not privy to these discussions, leaving you to navigate the complexities these changes bring, often without clear insights into their origins.
This shift often happens in leadership, and it’s here that the true test of trust begins. Trust is straightforward when the going is good and when actions meet expectations. It is far more complex when the circumstances turn. This is when, as a leader, you might find that the CEO’s behavior changes—the openness once appreciated is now replaced by a guarded demeanor. This lack of transparency, this shift in engagement, it’s what stifles a team’s ability to be innovative.
Message to the CEO
Vulnerability-based trust in leadership at this point becomes crucial. It’s not about showing how many times you can cry. Instead, it’s about showing bravery and courage. It’s about staying human and authentic to your team. It’s about you, the CEO becoming self-aware enough to realize how your changed behavior affects the team.
Remember, innovation doesn’t just happen. Innovation is cultivated through an environment where mistakes are seen as stepping stones to great solutions. What happens with innovation when your leadership team’s confidence is shaken? They avoid mistakes… no more innovation.
What if, instead of withdrawing, you instead communicated openly about your frustrations and insecurities? What if you asked curious questions to understand better rather than to judge? Imagine the impact of embracing tools like PXT Select or encouraging discussions around books like “Strengths Finders” to understand each other’s communication styles and behavioral traits.
This is not a quick fix. It’s a gradual transformation. It requires building new habits, sometimes unlearning old ones, and always, always communicating. It takes acknowledging that the people around you are humans too, humans who might have been hurt during these shifts. Building this trust and understanding back up is a journey in itself.
How are you going to take that first step? How will you use your position, whether as a newly joined leader or as a seasoned CEO, to foster an environment where change is met with resilience and challenges are seen as opportunities to grow stronger together?