Tad was so busy managing up to his boss his subordinates fired him.
“You’re kidding me! What happened?”
Well, it’s the cautionary tale of a high-achieving, very focused fellow who knew the only place he wanted to go was up. With a combination of good grades, dazzling smile, and an ingratiating personality he easily gained acceptance to his first choice in undergraduate and graduate schools. He was first in his class and first of his classmates to get a mega dollar offer to join a mega dollar company and he grabbed it.
Everything was going according to plan. Right schools and right company; check, check. Buy the right car. Wear the right clothes. Date the right women. Marry the right one. Check, check, check and check.
“Enough already. What went wrong?”
Be patient. It’s Tad’s story and just the right length to fill this column.
As I was saying, Tad was doing exceedingly well. His early performance reviews were filled with praise, extolling his ability to both anticipate the needs of his superiors and to deliver on them. He rose quickly through the ranks; the youngest in the company to have achieved so much, so quickly and so well.
“What did he do to mess up? Lie? Cheat? Steal?”
He did none of those things. It wasn’t his style because it wasn’t his boss’s style and one thing our erstwhile star could do better than most was to figure out what was in style. This was a company built on the traditions of honesty, trust and respect. They envisioned themselves the gold standard in the practice of those values and that’s what they rewarded.
And that’s why Tad (that’s not his real name) told his boss, and his boss’s boss, everyday in everyway, that he was the most honest, fair-playing, trustworthy, respectful guy that ever there was or ever could be. He made sure that he referenced those values in public presentations, private meetings, in front of power brokers, and behind closed doors.
He made sure that everyone who was anyone knew who he was, how smart he was, and where he intended to go in his company. And he would have succeeded….
“If…”
If he had put aside his strutting, salivating, and self-promoting self long enough to remember he had subordinates.
Tad was a tad self-absorbed. He wasn’t mean, vindictive, insulting, or cruel. His crimes were of omission, not commission. He was so narrowly focused on advancing his career that he ignored his responsibilities to his team.
And as a result they were failing. Tad was an indecisive boss with an ambiguous leadership style. He was inattentive, disconnected, and consistent only in his maddening ability to procrastinate direction setting, goals and metrics.
His subordinates would ask for assessment, expectations, strategy, and support and Tad was too busy to comply. He had people to see and places to go and it was always without them. Tad’s lust for self- aggrandizement left a vacuum of trust in its wake. Something was bound to happen and it wouldn’t be pretty.
“What was it? Tell me quick, we’re running out of column space!”
Well, Andy ratted him out.
“Who’s Andy?”
Andy was the mail courier and the owner’s grandson, Andrew the Third, unknown heir to the corporate throne. Andy had secretly convinced his grandfather that the only way to learn the business was from the mailroom up. As the “kid from the mail room” he was able to unobtrusively study people and performance.
Andrew reported his observations to his grandfather who in turn interviewed Tad’s employees, who validated Andy’s perceptions, and in the time it takes to stamp a letter Tad was gone.
Andrew is now Vice President of Employee Relations. Tad’s still looking for a job.
