I Really Like Him. I Just Can't Tell You What He's Done For Me.
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
Vincent sat across from me a few months ago. He runs a business unit, and the leadership team above him had set a twenty percent growth target for his group next year. He had lost four strong people in the six months before that, and he could not make sense of it. He is well liked. His team would tell you he is a good man to work for, patient, generous with his time, never the one to embarrass someone in a meeting. And his part of the business was losing ground.
The Feedback He Never Wanted to Hear
I asked him what HR had learned from the exit interviews of the people who had left. None of it named him directly. Direction was not clear. Priorities kept shifting. People had stopped feeling confident about where the business was actually headed.
Then I asked him a harder question. If I called the last person who left and asked what he had actually done for her in the last year, what would she say? Not whether she liked him. How he had helped her grow, what he had pushed her toward, what he had put on the line for her, the kind of investment that makes someone a better leader and eventually makes the business better.
He started listing projects the woman had worked on. I stopped him. That was not something he had done for her. It was work the woman had done that he had approved. I asked him to try again with a second name, someone still on his team. The answer was almost identical, delivered with less confidence than the first time.
He sat quietly for a few minutes, looked away, and said nothing.
I Recognized Him Because I Have Been Him
I recognized Vincent because I have been like him. I got far in my career on getting along with people and having a good instinct for what clients wanted. There were tasks I kept doing myself long after someone else should have owned them, because handing them off meant asking my team to stretch, and stretching people can make them uncomfortable with you for a while. My team paid for that quietly, the way teams usually do. I never heard the complaint.
Likability Got Him the Role. It Will Not Grow the Business.
Being easy to work with had gotten Vincent a long way. It earned him promotion after promotion without ever requiring him to prove the leadership skills his more senior role actually needed. This is not unique to Vincent. I have seen similar situations across many leaders that I coach today.
With growth demanded from every direction and AI closing the gap on skills that used to set people apart, being pleasant does not separate anyone. What separates a leader who moves an organization from one who is simply well liked is whether he sets a direction people can repeat back, leads by example, builds teams that perform without him in the middle of every decision, and drives results even in challenging business environments.
Vincent and I spent the next several months on exactly that. Not a personality overhaul, and not a script for saying hard things. The work was more deliberate than that. Naming, out loud, the specific decisions he had been avoiding. Learning to articulate a strategy plainly enough that his team could repeat it back and act on it. Practicing what it sounded like to ask someone to stretch, then staying personally involved when a situation called for a leader instead of leaving it to whomever was available. Leading by example in ways his team could actually see and admire. Finding a way to do all of it authentically, because a phony persona would not work.
I have also coached people who went the other way, who led with sharp elbows and drove hard results for a while. They hit their numbers, and their people stayed quiet, right up until the bruises added up and nobody was left willing to protect a leader they no longer trusted. Neither extreme is the answer. The leaders who actually turn a business around are the ones honest enough to see that what got them their role will not keep it, and disciplined enough to go build what will.
Vincent left with one assignment. Call three people who still work for him, people he would call loyal, and ask them the same question I asked him about the one who left: what has he actually done for them this year.
I am waiting to hear their answers.
Mitchell Schuckman is the Founder and CEO of The Schuckman Group LLC. He is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed by the International Coaching Federation and the author of I'll Tell You a Great Story. theschuckmangroup.com
Note on privacy: Names and identifying details have been changed. The experiences described are drawn from multiple client engagements and do not represent any single individual.