Felix: “This is the worst decision ever.”
Felix, a Senior Vice President, was moving on, leaving the organization of 50,000 employees for a bigger role in an even larger organization. He had tried to talk to Leslie, his Executive Vice President boss, into replacing him with the one person who was truly qualified, a Vice President named Jackson who had been reporting to him. Jackson was the person Felix had worked closely with to be ready to take over if he ever left.
The problem was Leslie had decided that if Felix thought it was a good idea, she knew it was a bad one.
How did this situation come about?
Felix and Leslie had a rocky beginning that never got better. Right from the start, four years ago, Felix decided he didn’t understand Leslie, that he didn’t like her, she was impossible, and there was no point in even trying.
Felix stopped communicating with Leslie unless he really had to.
They grew to resent each other, and left meetings exasperated.
This went on for four years. When Felix proposed Jackson as his replacement, Leslie was so antagonized by any suggestion Felix made, she announced she would be replacing Felix with someone Felix thought was “a disaster”.
As these organizational changes were announced, Felix was preparing to leave, and his entire division was in chaos.
I had been coaching Felix on his presentation skills. He had become quite a presentation rock star. But in his relations with others, it was a different story. Felix thought he was right about everything, and that the problem was Leslie. He had no interest in working on how to communicate more successfully with her.
When this happens at the top, the whole organization suffers. It’s not just the individual who finds it difficult.
It’s one thing to not get along with someone when you’re lower in the organization. Deciding they’re no good, deciding to limit talking to them, to blow them off, to not resolve issues …. You can get away with it if you’re not near the top.
It’s quite another matter when you’re near or at the top of the organization. When your weak points show up, they really matter.
Your relationships with the peers at your level and your boss affect thousands of people. If you don’t have solid communication skills when you’re at this level, the whole organization is in trouble.
What I’m talking about happens every day in many organizations around the world. The people at the top have a hard time with each other. We get a lot of all-star players, a lot of Prima Donnas, intense, driven, focused on what they want, big beings with a lot of horsepower.
It’s not so much that they run into issues that can’t be resolved. It’s that their communication ability breaks down and they don’t have the solid communication skills needed to deal with another driven executive coming at them with a lot of horsepower.
When you have two people with weak points in this area of communication, it doesn’t even matter where they are in the organization. Neither one of them knows how to compensate for the other’s communication weakness. They’re both weak.
They don’t have the skills to make it go right, and they have no tolerance when it goes wrong. Their demands become unrealistic and generate tremendous confusion.
The poor people lower in the organization look up and see their leaders not communicating effectively, and all they can do is watch helplessly. They shake their heads, say “It’s terrible, but what are you going to do?” and go back to work and focus on things they can control.
Some of the people that have come here for training have no authority and they’re being influenced by the people at the top in ways that block them from doing what really should be done. Their goal for the training is to learn how to influence their leaders, especially when the leaders don’t have the communication abilities needed for others to find them easy to talk to. Especially leaders who don’t listen.
When do you give up on someone? That’s something only you can answer, but when the answer to this question affects tens of thousands of people, it’s worth pushing the limits of not giving up.
I’ve seen communication succeed despite all odds, and this is where REAL skill comes in.
People stop trying because what they’re doing is not working. They think that even if they create real understanding, they still won’t get their way. And they’re afraid to irritate the other person by continuing to talk about something they don’t want to hear.
The opposite is true. When you are truly able to communicate, you don’t irritate the other person. When you create real understanding, transformation happens. And it happens quickly.
And this is where the real magic comes in. When a person learns how to communicate effectively, there’s is no issue they can’t resolve, no conversation they can’t transform. And this is what every organization needs.
And that’s exactly what happened with Felix.
There’s a world of difference between good decisions and bad decisions when these decisions affect large numbers of people coming to work each day, trying to be happy. And that’s why I coached Felix to develop the skills he needed to create real understanding with Leslie. Initially, Felix didn’t even want to, but I appealed to his sense of purpose.
The organizational change had already been announced, so this was going to take real skill. But at his level, Felix needs a superior level of communication skill. If not for himself, for the thousands of people who look up to him.
Felix went back in to talk with Leslie. She’s not a bad person. She makes decisions based on what she understands, just like everyone else in the world. Felix created a new understanding and did it well, and because he did it with affinity, she stopped fighting him.
It was simple. When she really understood, Leslie simply announced a new organizational change. She was putting Jackson, the VP Felix wanted and had prepared, in charge. It was remarkable how simple it was.
I’ve been talking to people in the organization, and I have never seen a group so happy. They are hugely relieved, smiling, enthusiastic, exhilarated, productive, infused with a real team spirit. Celebrating even. The right person is in charge, they have a leader they love, solid direction they agree with, good goals, and they are busy making them happen. For the first time, they have Leslie’s support. They loved Felix, but they don’t even miss him.
Felix is busy too. He’s shaking up the new organization.
Sometimes people say to me, “Come on, you have to admit, some situations are impossible!” I have yet to see one. I don’t think the right question is whether or not it’s “possible”.
I think the right question is, “What skills does this situation take?” Because once you get those skills, nothing is beyond your reach.
Be the cause!