Opportunity knocks on a firmly shut door

Unlike many of the Southern women with whom she worked, the COO at one global oil producer didn’t walk into the office inquiring about how a colleague’s children’s pool party had gone over the weekend or chatting with the rabid football fans who worked with her in the large Texas city in which she worked.

A kind and loyal colleague and friend, Jillian didn’t mean to be offensive in not shooting the breeze. It simply never occurred to her to do so. A person of high integrity and a straightforward thinker, she expected to work, and work hard, during business hours, not treat it like a social event.

Likewise, she breezed by niceties at business lunches and cocktail functions, drilling people about their business units’ performance and compliance matters with little preamble.

Jillian spent most of her days in her office with her door shut. To her, it seemed normal to create a secluded quiet space in order to think. Known throughout the company as highly productive, she was proud of how much she contributed to the company’s efficiency.

Little did Jillian realize that nearly all of her behavior was communicating the same closed-off, disconnected message to her peers and direct reports. They didn’t understand who she was, what her vision was or where they stood with her, creating a high level of anxiety and frustration among both her colleagues and her staff. When the CEO suggested that she needed to work on her leadership skills, Jillian was astonished.

Despite feeling up-ended by the CEO’s recommendation, Jillian quickly realized it was in her best interest to try to understand his concerns. She was among the contenders to rise to his position, and the firm was doing succession planning at that very moment.

What Debra did to change things

The comments in Jillian’s 360 stung more than a little as she learned most of the people around her considered her aloof and superior. Jillian was stunned. She liked people; she couldn’t understand why they didn’t seem drawn to her. It didn’t make sense to her, at first, why dedicating time to relationships was important at her level when so much of the company’s momentum hinged on her efficiency and powerful strategic thinking.

Debra’s first step was helping Jillian hear and understand the comments without being debilitated by the criticism she heard in them.

Debra helped her decode the real message: that her introversion did not facilitate others’ feeling connected to her, and that the people in the company needed to feel connected to her if she were going to continue to be successful and effective.
This information felt counterintuitive to Jillian, to say the least, but she pressed forward in seeking to gain the skills she needed.

Together, Debra and Jillian identified what parts of her personality put others at ease and developed ways to display those more often. Debra helped her choose specific activities that would remind her to interact with others, even when the “task” did not come naturally. Debra suggested using operational skills and habits that this COO comfortably used in her everyday work life—in this case, her calendar and reminder lists—to help Jillian integrate new habits.

For instance, Jillian began eating lunch in the employee cafeteria at least once a week, sitting with people she did not know for the express purpose of establishing new relationships. She then calendared time to keep in touch with her new contacts, occasionally peeling off for a one-on-one lunch or coffee offsite.

She cleared one morning a month on her calendar and invited her direct reports—and theirs—to drop by the executive conference room for coffee and conversation. Then, she made a point to follow up on suggestions they offered.

As she got to know more of her colleagues, Jillian began making notes in her contact files containing tidbits about individuals’ children, hobbies, and the like and began reviewing the data before every meeting of the leadership team so she could weave the information into conversations with her peers.

And she left her door open much of the time, training herself to look away from her computer, stop typing and have a conversation with people who ventured into her office.

None of this was rocket science. Cognitively, Jillian knew relationships were important. Left to her own devices, though, she was prone to focus more on company processes, supply chain integrity and expansion planning. Debra helped her understand that how well she interacted with people at every level of the company was as important as the mission-critical milestones she continually reviewed. To be a more effective COO, she had to engineer quality interactions.

Update: Jillian was named the board’s choice for CEO and will succeed him upon his retirement.

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