No leader left behind
I’m currently working with three leadership teams where it’s clear that someone in the team is stranded in the past and the business has moved on.
There’s a few patterns shared by the three of them:
Long-serving and loyal, though each of them had grown more critical and felt they had the standing in the group to do that
They were once the top dogs and are still in their position, but their performance has been overshadowed by newer, sharper people
They have big personalities and are confident in speaking up, but their contributions are either humorous which lowers the intensity of the conversation, or simplistic which again lowers the quality of the discussion
That last trait is interesting. They still have big voices and feel they should be heard. But the business has become more sophisticated, and they are out of their depth. It’s not that they’ve waded out too far, it’s just that the tides have risen around them. Their jibes and disclaimers (‘I’m just a simple whatever, but this isn’t that complicated’) are their ways of trying to assert influence when they’re struggling to be relevant.
The quandary for the CEO and the team is even harder than the classic "toxic performer" who makes their numbers but doesn’t share the values. Our faded star shares the values but isn’t making the numbers.
The stark answer is train, transfer or terminate. Sending a senior leader on a good executive residential course could make a difference, but the other pattern among these three is that they’re not great learners, which may be why they have been left behind.
Transfer is a good option if they have superior technical skills and you have capacity – move them out of leadership and into a specialist role. But you have to take them off the exec as well and depending on how self-aware they are, they'll either gratefully accept an escape route or reject it as offensive.
So, it becomes a matter of taking a hard look at your values. Do they include personal growth and aspirations? Is there anything about excellence and continued improvement? And if they don’t, or aren’t sufficiently explicit, look at your three year goals. Is this person going to help you get there on current performance?
And that’s the start of the hard conversation. Use the hard data about results and the observations of behavior to paint a picture of the gap between this person’s performance and the requirement of the role. Have the option of training and transfer in your back pocket.
But also have the mental script that starts “we’ve had a good run, but it’s over. We’ll help you find another role, but we need someone different in that seat now”.
This is the hard stuff of leadership, but the rest of your exec (and the organization as a whole) is waiting for you to move.