Terry Prone: Sneaking to Costa to gossip about the Starbucks-loving new boss

A new wardrobe and a mouthful of management speak won’t stop your new colleagues coming up with a lethal nickname for you.

The new CEO hasn’t appeared yet. The announcement has been made, the grapevine has gone crazy and the person involved is working out their notice or, much more likely, on gardening leave.

Gardening leave is a time-waster for those upwardly mobile on the career ladder, who wouldn’t know real gardening if hit with a spade. They’ve done the parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow bit with their previous employer, and now they’re at home, wondering about creating the ideal public profile for themselves. Right down to the pictures. They may have a dressing room full of heavy cotton shirts and pure silk ties, but whenever they try a tie on, it looks old-fashioned. At the interview, they were open-necked. So maybe that should continue? If they’re female, they’re caught between buying a fresh wardrobe of clothes for the new role and the fear of looking naïvely overdressed when they arrive on the first day.

Even during the gardening leave, they meet key people on the leadership team of the new company. Partly to show dynamic eagerness. Partly to get a feel for the place and the people who run it, who will allow the new CEO to deliver on that killer answer to the interview panel’s question about what would be achieved in the first hundred days. They were, of course, ready for that question, but only in theory.

The smart new CEO makes sure to meet their future reports in neutral territory. Seriously neutral. Starbucks rather than Gilbaud’s. The smart ones are also in situ before the other arrives, knowing they can capture an amazing amount of information about people by how they arrive for an appointment in a semi-public place. The sure-footed ones come drop their computer bag, check if their future boss needs a refill, and are comfortable selecting what they want and waiting for it with their back turned.

Now, here’s some advice to you, which will help, come the day you are that new CEO. Once they sit down, congratulate you and wait, they create your worst danger. Because you will have the urge to talk. Even worse than the urge to simply talk, which is pretty exigent in new situations, is the urge to talk about yourself. What’s that you say? Well, it’s only fair to give them a sense of what your values are. What, now? Your values? Meaning what, precisely? You’re firm but fair and you need them to understand that. Right. Here’s the problem. “Firm but fair”, as it leaves your mouth, sounds great. “Firm but fair”, as it arrives in the other person’s ear signifies that you’re an intemperate bad-tempered egomaniac who spends your days trying to find people making mistakes, and who interprets the smallest error as a significant indicator to the wider flawed nature of the mistake-maker. So, maybe steer clear of “Firm bit fair,” OK?

Oh, you have an alternative. Great. Fire ahead. You want them to know that you don’t want “Yes men.” Or “Yes women.” That’s one of your key values. I hear you.

Maybe look at that one in the same light as the first one: what does it signify as it arrives in the other human’s brain? What’s that you say? It signifies that you want robust response. For your people to have the courage of your convictions? Gotcha.

Now, could we divert for just a minute and look at the wastage in the leadership team in the company or organization from which you come? Meaning what proportion of the leadership team you started with are still there? Very few of them? And why is that? Because they always gave you an argument and had six dozen reasons why your proposed course of action wouldn’t work. You know something, Sunshine, that could be interpreted as you not taking kindly to disagreement from your reports. So maybe throttle back on statements of “Yes man” avoidance.

In fact, maybe throttle back on the self-definition altogether. Not just during the Starbucks covert meetings, but when you actually land in HQ. New CEOs have an awful habit of describing themselves. They claim to be innovative, driven, committed to excellence, impatient with excuses, consultative and workaholic. Each of them doesn’t claim to be all of those things, but sooner or later, these new CEOs articulate a variant of “I’m the kind of person who.” Anyone who ever articulates those words should know that they have an awful inevitable link to “do you know who I am?” The last is the query of the loser, the one whose sense of entitlement outstrips the reality, the one who no longer has the importance they believed they once owned. Nobody should ever say either “I’m the kind of person who” or “Do you know who I am?” Ever. No matter what the surrounding pressures.

Both come from the need to be appreciated, which is a fatal flaw in managers and politicians alike. But here’s the thing. Before you tell people that you’re innovative, driven, committed to excellence, etc., etc., you might usefully consider the degree to which your claim will influence their thinking. In other countries, self-definition has some utility. Not in Ireland. In Ireland, we nod solemnly when the new boss tells us how consultative she is, while thinking “Yeah, right.” We can’t wait to go tell others about the new boss claiming to run 5 kilometers per day in order to be fit for the job. We are egging to pass on their claim to follow some American guru or to be a big fan of the Michael O’Leary style. We head for a Costa coffee to meet pals from the office and have a good snigger, safe in the certainty that the new top bod likes only Starbucks, so we can connive and conspire against them and maybe, if the caffein makes us sufficiently creative, even come up with a lethal nickname for them.

Incoming CEOs need to understand that the water table of cynicism is permanently high in this country, and nothing taps into it like grandiose self-definitions. Don’t define yourself and don’t define what you’re going to do, either. We’ve all heard the CEO who announces that for the first three months, they’re going to do “a listening exercise.” They’re going to tour the branches and hear from the people on the front line.

So what, you ask, could be wrong with that approach? To which the answer is: Announcing it. Falsifying it by megaphone statements. You want to hear what people in the branches really feel, turn up in a few without introductory trumpeting of the intention. I have yet to meet a human being in any organisation, private or public, who wants to be part of someone else’s listening exercise.

New CEOs need to remember that great old statement that actions speak louder than words. Just get on with it, notch up a few achievements and you won’t ever have to claim that you’re the kind of person who…