Ed Batista Executive Coaching

Ask Me Anything, Anytime: The Ed Bot 2.0

2025-04-26T16:46:25-07:00

UPDATE: The Ed Bot can now be found at edbatista.ai.

Tarikh Korula, founder and coach, has trained a version of ChatGPT on the more than 1,000 essays that I've posted to this website since 2005.

We call it the Ed Bot 2.0, and you can use it to ask me anything, anytime.

(Version 1.0 was taken down when the startup that developed it was acquired.)

Privacy and Confidentiality

Here’s how your information is handled when you use this GPT:

I do not have access to any of your interactions with the GPT. This GPT is based on my published writings, but I am not involved in your use of this tool and cannot see what you share.
Tarikh Korula created this custom GPT, but he does not have access to your individual questions or responses. He doesn’t see or store your conversations. Everything you share here stays between you and the GPT, unless you choose to share it elsewhere.
OpenAI, the platform behind this GPT, may store conversation data for system monitoring and improvement. These logs are typically anonymized, and OpenAI does not use them to identify individual users.
Please avoid sharing sensitive personal details. While your input is treated respectfully, this is not a private or confidential coaching relationship, and this GPT is best suited for general leadership insights and self-reflection.

Photo by Fred Seibert.

Why Systems Change (and Why They Don't)

2025-04-23T08:12:49-07:00

The model above was developed by educators and consultants Mary Lippitt and Delorese Ambrose [1], and I first encountered it thanks to Noah Brier and James Gross. [2] (Here's a larger version.) I find it a useful tool in my work with clients, almost all of whom are leaders seeking to drive organizational change. This obviously includes CEOs brought in to turn around an under-performing business, but it also includes startup founders who must transform their company at regular intervals in response to technological advances, market conditions, runway, team size, and any number of other factors. So if you're a leader in a similar situation, here are some considerations to bear in mind:

1. Vision

A vision is an idea, of course, but it's not sufficient for a leader seeking change to merely have a vision. It must be communicated to stakeholders in a way that allows for individual integration and collective action. In this sense a vision is a story, a narrative, and as I've written before,

We rely upon narratives to "make sense" of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others. But our reliance on narratives means that in the absence of a coherent story we will feel lost and ungrounded. This poses a risk when we face rapid change that may overtake our existing narrative and render it out of date... When disruptive events occur in organizational life, we require a shared narrative to re-orient ourselves and restore our understanding of the world around us. [3]

So your first task as a would-be change agent is to clarify and communicate your vision, which rests upon your effectiveness as a storyteller. Many leaders are natural storytellers, but it's an eminently learnable skill. Improving as a storyteller entails repetition, which is necessary for people to grasp and internalize your vision. I regularly advise clients, "When you're tired of hearing yourself, it's starting to sink in." The key here is finding the balance between variation and consistency. Core themes and concepts must be illustrated with novel anecdotes and language that suits the situation. [4]

2. Skills

One of a leader's primary responsibilities is assessing their team and determining whether they have the skills necessary to initiate and sustain desired change. If you're seeking to turnaround or transform your organization, it's likely that you'll need to make some structural moves and invest in training to ensure that your team's collective skillset is up to the task. But in many situations such efforts can't be enacted immediately, and sometimes, as the saying goes, "You don't go to war with the army you want. You go to war with the army you have." [5]

Whether or not you intend to pursue "the army you want," you can certainly improve "the army you have," and one avenue is by addressing your team's mindset--how they think about their abilities, and whether they view the challenges they face as learning opportunities or threats. This doesn't mean that your team can overcome any gaps in fundamental competence with willpower and enthusiasm, but the cultivation of a "growth mindset" in which people believe their abilities can be developed through persistent effort has been shown to yield results. [6] As the Roman poet Virgil wrote in The Aeneid, "They can, because they think they can." [7]

3. Incentives

It's essential to be aware that the status quo benefits someone, and change will generate resistance on their part. It may be possible to win their support by understanding what they value and determining how those needs might be met under new circumstances or what other "currencies" could be substituted. [8] That said, merely promising rewards is unlikely to yield sustained support, in part because the most readily available ones will likely lose their efficacy and more scarce or expensive resources will be required in the future. [9]

So it's also important to attend to how people feel about the prospect of change, and how those emotions foster or inhibit incentives to pursue change. Management theorist and longtime MIT professor Edgar Schein had a relevant theory of change that I've discussed previously:

A key driving force is known as "survival anxiety": We must change in order to accomplish our goals, and failure to change will threaten our existence. A key restraining force is known as "learning anxiety": Our identity and sense of worth are connected to our current behavior, and change will result in a new (and uncertain) identity or a loss of self-esteem... Change occurs when survival anxiety is greater than learning anxiety under conditions of psychological safety. Only when these elements come together will we be truly open to taking risks and experimenting with new behaviors, the necessary precursors to learning and growth. [10]

4. Resources

The most important resources are self-evident: talented people and the capital to retain them. And yet countless change efforts undertaken by well-compensated all-star teams have failed. So what else do you need? Psychological resources. Talent and capital are necessary but not sufficient, and a key differentiating factor is how a team feels--how they feel about the talent and capital at their disposal, how they feel about working together, how they feel about the team itself. The concept of the "emotionally intelligent group" has been explored by psychologists Vanessa Urch Druskatt and Steven Wolff:

Study after study has shown that teams are more creative and productive when they can achieve high levels of participation, cooperation, and collaboration among members. But interactive behaviors like these aren't easy to legislate. Our work shows that three basic conditions need to be present before such behaviors can occur: mutual trust among members, a sense of group identity (a feeling among members that they belong to a unique and worthwhile group), and a sense of group efficacy (the belief that the team can perform well and that group members are more effective working together than apart)... At the heart of these three conditions are emotions. Trust, a sense of identity, and a feeling of efficacy arise in environments where emotion is well handled, so groups stand to benefit by building their emotional intelligence. [11]

A related resource is noted above: psychological safety. This concept is often misunderstood as the absence of distress, a state in which "no one's feelings can get hurt," which, paradoxically, leads to a less safe environment. What psychological safety really means is that people feel free to speak up and be direct without fear of punishment. [12]

5. Action Plan

The absence of a plan clearly poses a risk, making it difficult for leaders and teams to prioritize the various steps to be taken and sequence them appropriately. But in my experience the opposite problem is just as risky: Change efforts can get bogged down and fail to achieve momentum because too much time and energy are devoted to perfecting the plan rather than launching and iterating. General George Patton had a clear point of view on planning: "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week." [13] Legendary entrepreneur Herb Kelleher felt similarly: "We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things." [14]

Footnotes

[1] The model's precise origins are unclear, and I haven't been able to locate its first appearance, although I can find references that date to 1987. My research has led me to conclude that Mary Lippitt and the late Delorese Ambrose should be credited as its creators. Lippitt is a consultant and educator based in Florida, as well as the niece and daughter, respectively, of Gordon and Ron Lippitt, two major figures in 20th century social psychology. Ambrose was an author and management consultant based in Pittsburgh who served as a dean at Carnegie Mellon University. Lippitt holds the copyright on the model (and has taken legal action to maintain it), but there are also references that credit Ambrose, and it's possible that Lippitt and Ambrose were active collaborators in the 1980s. Tim Knoster, a professor of education in Pennsylvania, is sometimes given shared or even sole credit for the model, but it appears that he merely included it in a book and subsequent presentations in the 1990s that helped to popularize it. There's no evidence that Knoster was connected to Lippitt or Ambrose, and the earliest references linking Knoster to the model appear several years after those that credit Lippitt and Ambrose.

[2] In 2019 entrepreneurs Noah Brier and James Gross, who at the time were co-founders of Variance, included this model in one of their newsletters. Noah and James recently co-founded Alephic, an AI-driven marketing consultancy.

[3] The Importance of Shared Narrative

[4] For more on storytelling:

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Why Uncertainty Is the Crucible of Creativity (Maria Popova, The Marginalian, 2012)
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories [5-minute video]
Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots (Miriam Quick, BBC, 2018)
Structure Your Presentation Like a Story (Nancy Duarte, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
The Secret Structure of Great Talks (Nancy Duarte, TEDxEast, 2011 [18 min video])

[5] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said this at a press conference in 2004: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." As an astute Redditor later noted, however, "Rumsfeld's got some great quotes, most of which were delivered in the context of explaining how the Iraq war turned into such a clusterfuck, and boy could that whole situation have used the kind of leadership Donald Rumsfeld's quotes would lead you to believe the man could've provided."

[6] Minding Our Mindset

[7] The Aeneid (Virgil, translated by Joseph Trapp, 1718). A version of this line is often mistakenly attributed to the American industrialist Henry Ford. I haven't read Trapp's 18th century edition of The Aeneid, but I have read Robert Fagles' contemporary version, which I highly recommend.

[8] Currencies (On Motivating Different People)

[9] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[10] Why Change Is Hard

[11] Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups, page 83 (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven Wolff, Harvard Business Review, March 2001)

[12] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[13] War As I Knew It (George S. Patton, 1947)

[14] Kelleher was co-founder and longtime CEO of Southwest Airlines, and this line is widely attributed to him. I haven't been able to find definitive proof that he said or wrote it, but it seems consistent with his legacy.

Stow the Oars, Raise the Sails (On Leaving a CEO Role)

2025-04-16T06:58:06-07:00

A client is in the process of transitioning out as the CEO of the company he founded. He previously negotiated a sale to a corporate parent, which achieved his financial goals for the business while allowing it to continue operating independently and positioning him as a shareholder of the parent.

He's delegated managerial duties to his hand-picked successor, he's preparing to step into an executive chair role, and he's confident that this is the right move at the right time. He feels optimistic about the future of the business...and yet he's also had the nagging feeling that something was off, and a recent coaching session helped to illuminate the issue.

I suggested that Joseph Campbell's concept of the Hero's Journey might be useful in exploring his situation. Campbell was an American scholar who applied the insights of psychology to his study of mythology, folklore and religious traditions from around the world, and I find his ideas highly relevant to my work with leaders. [1]

In the Hero's Journey, also known as the monomyth because it appears so frequently in so many different cultures, we meet the hero in their ordinary existence, the "World of Common Day," as Campbell called it. The hero is "called to adventure," and if they heed the call they venture forth into a "Region of Supernatural Wonder," where they encounter various allies and adversaries in the course of a series of struggles in search of a "boon," a trophy or prize to be shared:

When the hero-quest has been accomplished...the adventurer still must return with their life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing [their prize] back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community. [2]

This led to a discussion with my client of leadership as a journey, with a destination, a goal, and a conveyance, a means of making progress along the path. As a founder and CEO, my client was an oarsman, straining hard to propel his craft forward. It was arduous work, but it had certain advantages. The destination was far in the distance over the horizon, but the compass pointed straight to it: the survival and ultimate success of the company. The goal was by no means certain to be achieved, but it was commonly understood: financial returns sufficient to meet the needs of all stakeholders.

There was another advantage to the work of an oarsman: my client's labors were clearly visible to all. Anyone with an interest in my client or the company could see that he was constantly striving and doing his best. There was never any question about his work ethic, his commitment, or his values. And yet having completed his "hero-quest" through the sale of the company, my client now found himself in uncertain territory. Retiring to a life of leisure held little appeal for him. While this may seem surprising to some, it's a common response among my clients:

We have a number of preconceived notions about what it would be like to not have to work, and they're often some form of "life as permanent vacation." That's certainly what some people do when they realize a windfall, and if it brings them joy, then good for them. But that's not what I've observed in my practice. It turns out that many people who've worked hard their entire careers have a finite capacity for being on vacation. [3]

When people like my client have achieved a degree of financial freedom, they still need to make a contribution through some form of work. But simply continuing on as an oarsman would pose inevitable difficulties. My client's successor was ready and able to take up the oars himself. He was eager to benefit from my client's guidance as executive chair, but he also wanted a degree of autonomy and independence as CEO. My client would have to determine how to add value in this new capacity without holding on to an oar. [4]

My client also has a role to play as a shareholder in the parent, but he realized that approaching it as an oarsman would be the wrong mindset. It would occupy more time and energy than necessary and distract him from the essential project of finding a new sense of purpose, a new identity. While he won't be "retired," he may elect to remain in the "World of Common Day," sharing what he learned on his quest and stepping into the role of teacher or sage. [5] Or he may find himself called to pursue another venture in the "Region of Supernatural Wonder" and embark on a new quest.

With these and other options now available to my client, he's realized that he must change how he thinks about work, which entails a change in how he thinks about himself. He's still on a journey, but not as an oarsman. It's time to stow the oars and raise the sails. The sailor doesn't just go where the breeze takes him, of course. He is an active navigator, but he must be open to possibilities, sensing and responding to the prevailing winds. Under the right conditions he can change course rapidly. And he can travel vast distances, enabling him to pursue a wider range of destinations.

And yet while this new way of thinking offers certain benefits, it also poses challenges. The sailor can make more progress than an oarsman, but the path he takes is far less predictable. The ability to change course and travel farther requires a greater tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. And while the sailor plays an active role with his hand on the tiller, his efforts aren't always visible. To the untrained eye it may look like he's just sitting there, which can be unnerving to the veteran oarsman.

But even these challenges play an important part in the process of bringing one Hero's Journey to a close and preparing for the possibility of another. Campbell notes that the hero's successful return is by no means an easy transition: "The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life." [6]

The oarsman struggles mightily against the current, but he enjoys the struggle, in part because it keeps the "banalities and noisy obscenities of life" at a distance. It can be tempting to keep them at bay by holding tightly to the oars, imagining that this remains duty of a hero. The new challenges posed by sailing remind the hero that they must adapt to their new circumstances.

Footnotes

[1] The Hero's Journey in Everyday Life

[2] The Hero with a Thousand Faces, page 167 (Joseph Campbell, New World Library, Third Edition, 2008)

[3] What Do You Need When You Don't Need the Money?

[4] The Ambiguous Role of Executive Chair

[5] The Warrior and the Sage

[6] Campbell, page 189.

Photo by Alvin Trusty.

You Don't Have to Do All the Thinking Yourself

2025-04-13T18:07:04-07:00

Most of my clients are CEOs, and many of them are founders, and they're almost invariably high-agency people who enjoy taking on responsibility and prefer to be in charge. This is consistent with research by psychologist Jerry Burger which showed that differences in the need for control have a significant impact on behavior and attitudes, and that people who score high on this scale are more likely to become leaders:

People with high desire for control were found to have a higher aspiration level, to respond to challenges with increased effort, to persist longer at difficult tasks, and to make attributions for task outcomes that facilitate future striving for achievement. [1]

This is also consistent with David McClelland's "motivational needs theory," which suggests that people are driven primarily by three distinct needs [2]:

The need for power, or concern "about having 'impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.'" [3]
The need for affiliation, "or the need to be with people" and a concern with "establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons." [4]
The need for achievement, or "doing something better for its own sake, or to show [that one] is more capable of doing something." [5]

McClelland also studied people's capacity for "activity inhibition," or impulse control, and his research showed that the most successful senior leaders display 1) a relatively high need for power, 2) a relatively low need for affiliation, and 3) a high degree of impulse control, a distinctive pattern that he called "leadership motive syndrome." McClelland found that people who possessed this combination of traits were most likely to obtain senior leadership positions, ultimately outpacing those who merely had a high need for achievement. [6]

But another theme in my work is that our weaknesses are often overused strengths, a concept I first learned from my mentor and colleague Carole Robin. And while a high degree of agency and a desire to exert control can be "leadership superpowers," like all such traits they have "shadow sides." [7] One such shortcoming is a leader's perception that it's their responsibility to come up with the best ideas and solve problems on their own.

Leaders obviously have a special role to play in any problem-solving process, particularly early-stage founders whose visions for the venture may still reside largely in their heads and whose teams may lack sufficient context or expertise to act independently. But when this state of affairs persists, the leader may become a bottleneck, an unqualified decision-maker, or an outdated expert. [8] So if you're sensing that this might be a challenge for you, what can you do?

1. Look in the Mirror (and Ask for Feedback)

A starting point is assessing the extent to which your sense of agency and preference for control might be inhibiting more effective means of problem-solving. This entails being more self-aware of your impact on the people around you. [9] And note that your self-perception almost certainly includes some blind spots, so be sure to ask those people for input. In my first leadership role after business school I was lucky to have a mentor on my Board of Directors who took me aside and gave me this precise feedback. (He also advised me to address it by working with a coach, which was my first exposure to coaching.)

2. Invite Others Into the Problem (Even When They're "the Problem")

I'm not suggesting that you simply delegate problem-solving to others. They may not be ready, and you may be unhappy with the results. But in between A) deciding in isolation and telling people what to do, and B) delegating and hoping for the best, there are a range of alternatives: sell, consult, agree, advise, and inquire, to be specific. [10] I ask clients to consider how they might use one of these methods to "invite others into the problem" as a way to test their readiness and capacity.

This is possible even when other people themselves are "the problem." Another theme in my practice is the ubiquity of interpersonal conflicts between leaders and key stakeholders, from employees to investors. In you're in such a situation it's not possible to delegate the issue, but it's also not necessary for you to do all the work on your own. You can invite others to join you by being overt about your goal of improving the working relationship [11], by giving (and requesting) more candid feedback [12], and by discussing potential differences in your work styles that are likely contributing to the conflict. [13]

3. Foster a Better Problem-Solving Culture

Leadership teams vary widely with regard to their ability to problem-solve as a group, and this is one manifestation of their culture, as defined by management expert Michael Watkins:

Culture is consistent, observable patterns of behavior in organizations... Culture is [also] a social control system. Here the focus is the role of culture in promoting and reinforcing "right" thinking and behaving, and sanctioning "wrong" thinking and behaving. Key in this definition of culture is the idea of behavioral "norms" that must be upheld, and associated social sanctions that are imposed on those who don’t "stay within the lines." [14]

As the leader you don't dictate the culture, but you have a great deal of influence over it, particularly if you're a founder. So consider the following:

Do you have the right people in the room or on the call? Optimally your leadership team includes the most relevant and useful voices, but sometimes junior people have vital information and need to be included, and sometimes nominally senior people are just in the way and shouldn't be there.
Do you have the right people on the team? If there's a persistent mismatch between the composition of your leadership team and the most relevant and useful voices, that may be a sign that it's time for a change. [15]
Is everyone contributing constructively? Is anyone dominating (including you)? Is anyone being repeatedly interrupted or ignored? As the leader you have to be attuned to these group dynamics, because you're the person who's best-positioned to intervene and facilitate as needed. [16]
Do people feel free to disagree (especially with you) and to share bad news? This is what we actually mean by "psychological safety." [17]

4. Prioritize and Upgrade Your Own Reflection Time

Involving others in problem-solving doesn't mean you'll no longer engage in solo reflection. If anything, you should be able to devote your individual problem-solving time to even more meaningful and significant issues than before. But it's common for highly responsible leaders to deprioritize this time, to push it to the far corners of their calendar, or to allow it to come at the expense of personal obligations.

Here the key is recognizing that your attention is one of your organization's most precious resources, and it's up to you to be its steward. Very few others will care (or even notice) that your attention is finite, and that any time taken from solo reflection and directed toward other activities comes at a high cost. You have to be deliberate about protecting open space for this purpose [18], and creating the conditions that allow you to do your best thinking. [19]

Footnotes

[1] The Effects of Desire for Control on Attributions and Task Performance (Jerry Burger, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 1987)

This quote from Burger's 1987 paper describes research conducted previously and discussed in detail here: Desire for Control and Achievement-Related Behaviors (Jerry Burger, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985)

[2] For an extensive discussion of each of these needs, see Human Motivation, Chapters 7-9 (David McClelland, 1987). Having developed his "motivational needs theory" around these three drives in the 1960s and '70s, later in his career McClelland suggested that a fourth such drive is the "avoidance motive," characterized by a fear of failure and a need to minimize anxiety and reduce distress (and discussed in Human Motivation, Chapter 10.) However, while McClelland's research on leadership identifies a relationship among the first three needs, he doesn't integrate the avoidance motive in the same way, nor is it included in most discussions of his theory, so I've omitted it here as well.

[3] Ibid, page 271. (McClelland cites a definition made by his colleague and former student David Winter: The Power Motive, 1973.)

[4] Ibid, page 347. (McClelland cites a definition made by his longtime collaborator John Atkinson with Roger Heyns and Joseph Veroff: The effect of experimental arousal of the affiliation motive on thematic apperception, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1954.)

[5] Ibid, page 229.

[6] Ibid, page 313:

"By way of contrast, those with high n Achievement peaked in their careers [earlier]. The nonlinear trend is significant. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that individuals high in n Achievement are used to doing things by themselves and for themselves... They are able to advance in the company as long as their job involves the individual contributions they make. However, at higher levels the focus on the job shifts to influencing others. The greater success of those with the leadership motive syndrome at this level can be explained on the grounds that they are interested in influencing others (the high n Power score), they are not unduly concerned about whether they are liked or not (the low n Affiliation score), and they are self controlled (the high Activity Inhibition score)."

[7] Superpowers and Shadow Sides

[8] How to Scale: Do Less, Lead More

[9] The Balcony and the Dance Floor

[10] Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management

[11] Better Working Relationships

[12] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[13] Work Style Differences

[14] What Is Organizational Culture? (Michael Watkins, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

[15] The Evolution of the Executive Team

[16] For more on group dynamics:

[17] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[18] Open Space, Deep Work, and Self-Care

[19] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

Photo by Mike Dish.

On Leadership Transitions and Public Narratives

2025-04-05T15:42:33-07:00

I work with clients in open-ended engagements that typically last for several years. Either the client or I can elect to conclude our work together at any time, but I've found that my approach is a good fit for leaders who want a long-term thought partner. As a result, although most clients enter my practice occupying a leadership role that they expect to hold for the foreseeable future, I regularly accompany clients as they transition out of that role into a new chapter of their lives.

In some cases a client's transition occurs in parallel with or is triggered by a business event, such as the sale of the company. Many of these situations provide a sufficient explanation for my client's decision to leave their role. The CEO of an acquired company will likely stay on for a period of time to ensure a smooth handover, and if they leave shortly after the transaction no one wonders why. The change in the business is sufficient explanation.

But in other situations a leader's departure will invite curiosity, and this is particularly true if the transition occurs in the absence of a corresponding business event. When this happens, anyone with a reason to care will begin to ask a series of questions. If these questions aren't raised publicly, they will certainly be raised in private:

Why is the leader leaving? What does it mean?
Did the leader initiate the transition, or was it initiated by other stakeholders?
If the leader initiated the transition, do they lack faith in the business? Are they disgruntled or unhappy in some way?
If others initiated the transition, do they lack faith in the leader? Did the leader fall short of expectations in some way?
What are the implications for the future? How will the leader's departure affect the business? How will this transition affect the leader's career?

These questions are often problematic. The situation may be sufficiently complex that the answers are unclear, or different parties may have different answers. The answers may be embarrassing to one party or another, or the fact that there are different answers may itself be embarrassing. This can result in paralysis, with the questions hanging in the air, unresolved.

If these questions go unanswered by the leader or the company, other parties will be left to draw their own conclusions. As my colleague Carole Robin says, in the absence of data we make shit up. So in these situations what's required is a public narrative that provides an explanation for the transition that is sufficient to answer these questions (and any number of others that may arise). Note that this narrative isn't fictional or phony, but it is reductive. It leaves out information that may be confusing or distracting in order to emphasize specific aspects of the situation that provide a coherent explanation. In this sense a narrative is a story, and as I've written before,

Why is storytelling such a powerful process? Because we depend upon narratives to navigate the world--they are our compass in the wilderness, our lantern in the dark. Organizational psychologist Karl Weick called this "sensemaking": we rely upon narratives to "make sense" of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others. But our reliance on narratives means that in the absence of a coherent story we will feel lost and ungrounded. [1]

So if you're a leader about to embark upon a transition--or if one has been imposed upon you--what should you do? First, envision the various parties who may have an interest in your transition arrayed around you in a series of concentric circles. People in the innermost circle are there because you trust their discretion and their judgment, and their interests are fully aligned with yours. This space will accommodate a great deal of complexity and nuance, and you benefit by being as candid as possible with the people who occupy it, in part because they will be able to advise you on how to communicate with others.

As you go further out, in each subsequent circle there's a little less trust and a more divergent set of interests. There's less capacity to handle complexity and nuance. As a result, you'll need adjust what you share with the people in that circle by modifying the narrative. Typically this entails reduction--leaving out certain aspects of the situation in order to emphasize others. This ultimately results in a series of narratives that explain your transition to different sets of stakeholders in terms that fit their ability and willingness to comprehend the situation and are appropriate to your relationship with them.

These narratives will get more reductive the further out you go, but it's important that they're all mutually consistent. They shouldn't contradict each other, nor should they contain falsehoods. I don't make this assertion out of naive idealism, but out of pragmatism. Contradictory narratives or those that are demonstrably false risk the loss of trust and create unnecessary complications that can usually be avoided with a modest amount of forethought.

The outermost circle is the public sphere, occupied by individuals you don't know personally, but who for some reason have an interest in your transition. The narrative for the public sphere is generally reductive to the point of simplicity. Thus the cliché, "I want to spend more time with my family." That's almost always true, and it's rarely the whole truth.

I'll add that I often see leaders make three mistakes in this process:

They wait too long.

Leadership roles are hard to obtain, but they can be even harder to leave. Leaders tend to feel a high degree of responsibility for the business and their stakeholders, and they don't want anyone to feel let down, misled, or betrayed by their departure. They want the narrative to reflect "good timing," so they wait for (or try to engineer) a moment when no one will fault them for leaving. But that moment may never come, and the leader may find that the situation gets worse, not better. A theme in my practice is that sometimes there are no good options, only varying degrees of bad. The goal isn't "success," but "avoiding catastrophe." I don't advise acting with undue haste, but I do encourage clients to consider the potential costs of delay. [2]

They pretend they're invulnerable.

I'm under no illusions about the risks to a leader of being perceived as weak or incapable. [3] But leaders in transition can also err by insisting on a narrative that rejects any hint of vulnerability and represents their career as a seamless trajectory with every move "up and to the right." This can contribute to waiting too long as the situation worsens, but it can have other negative consequences. When a leader's desire for a transition is being driven by a sense of fatigue or burnout, the pretense of invulnerability shuts out stakeholders who may be in a position to offer support and exacerbates the leader's sense of isolation.

They rely on unreliable intermediaries.

I began my career as a journalist, and I've had many friends in the media, so I empathize with the challenges faced by people tasked with explaining events in the business world to their readers and viewers. But it's unrealistic for a leader to rely upon journalists and other intermediaries operating in the public sphere to transmit the leader's narrative--they will have narratives of their own. It's also no longer necessary, as communications and PR expert Lulu Cheng Meservey makes clear:

Today, most of the planet is directly reachable by social media or email. There’s no longer a need to go through traditional gatekeepers of information and brokers of reputation--especially as their own credibility has plummeted... Going direct means crafting and telling your own story, without being dependent on intermediaries. [4]

For Further Reading

Handing Off to a New CEO

The Ambiguous Role of Executive Chair

The Problem with Hot-Swapping (On Exec Transitions)

Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Shared Narrative

[2] Kicking the Can Down the Road (On Hard Decisions)

[3] Cautionary Tales (Authenticity at Work)

[4] Go Direct: The Manifesto (Lulu Cheng Meservey, Flack, 2024)