Rising Strong from a Demotion: A Case Study

*Video Transcription*

I wanted to start off 2023 talking about demotions.

So there was a gentleman that I did a profile on about two, two and a half years ago, and when I assessed him in his current role, obviously, there were some concerns, and my assessment was that the charter that he had in front of him was a really bad fit for his strengths.

So my belief is that an exec's charter, what the company wants from them, and what they are naturally good at should be pretty closely aligned.

That doesn't mean we don't need to work on our weaknesses, but we really need to be playing to our strengths to feel confident, successful, and happy and to get those business results.

And when that's really misaligned, it's really hard to make that work, right?

You're never going to get a superstar when the charter is just an inherent miss match. So the organization has a really high ethos for trying to make things work, which I admire.

And so I worked with them for, I don't know, 12 to 18 months. And at the end of that 12 to 18 months, the company came to the same conclusion I came to: this is not the right fit for this person.

So what I love about how the company handled this is that when the writing was on the wall, and everyone sort of knew this was not going to be a home run for this guy, they gave him options.

So one, people really love options.

They gave them the option to take a comp package to be reseated in the organization, or, this is what was really cool, to be reseated in the organization while supporting the fact that he may want to continue to look for other opportunities in another organization.

So when people have their backs against the wall, options really help people. And I think that optionality really helped this executive to see how much the company cared about him as a person, which helped influence him to stay. So step one, give people options, and do it humanely. They could have easily said they were doing a reorg or a downsize.

There's lots of kind of shady ways we can get this stuff to happen. They were just super open and honest, and that really garnered respect on behalf of this executive and ultimately helped him make the decision to stay.

So second point, if you are an executive in this position and you're being offered a demotion, don't expect it to look good.

But here are the things I want you to think about when you're trying to make that decision about what to do. First and foremost, do you love the culture? Do you trust the leaders?

In this case, the answer was yes, yes. He bleeds company colors, and he has tremendous respect for leadership and tremendous trust in leadership. And so that really helped him to see that he could jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, but he'd have a 50/50 maybe shot of finding a company that he loved as much as he loves this company.

So if you're in this position where you're having to make this choice, think about the culture. Culture is king. He could have probably gone and made more money. He could have probably gotten an even better title because of where he was coming from. But ultimately, those things don't make people happy. They feel good to our egos, but that's not what creates fulfillment and people's work lives.

The second thing to consider there is an embarrassment and a shame about being demoted. And I'm not going to sugarcoat that. It doesn't feel good, right?

Most of us that have esteem about our work have a pride and an ego about our work. And being demoted does not send the signal to people around us that we've been successful, and that hurts.

And people are just like all animals, really, like we want to avoid pain. And there is a pain when people we think people are looking around thinking, "oh, gosh, that guy got demoted. What's wrong with him?" And that feels bad. And so he could have had a knee-jerk reaction to say, "well, I don't want to be in this company where everyone knows what happened. I'd rather leave to avoid this pain."

But he could have been leaving and going to a different kind of pain. And so he really had to humble himself. He's a humble guy anyway, which I appreciate, but he really had to humble himself and say, what's more important? Doing good work for a company that I admire and a leadership team that I trust, or is it getting away from this embarrassment and going into something that's an unknown and may or may not work out any better?

So humility, when you're making those choices, is really critical.

So three, what happens when you actually take that role?

So when he took that role, we did have to process some of the feelings of embarrassment. Are people thinking about me or are they thinking about what happened or are they talking about me behind my back? And the thing that you need to really remember is that people don't think about you nearly as much as you think about you.

And so people might go, "oh, okay, he got a demotion. He's over here now." It's a blip to them. And then they're past it because it doesn't have anything to do with them. So they're not sitting around for weeks or months, you know, considering what that means about you, what that says about you, they just kind of go, "oh, okay, interesting."

And then they move on. So don't let the pride keep you from making a wise choice for your life with a job you love, for a company that you love. What happened with this gentleman and now we have enough data to kind of report how this has worked out for him. He took that new role. He swallowed his pride.

He engaged fully. He went about building new relationships in the organization of really doing a thoughtful assessment about what's needed from him in this role. Took lots of time to understand the charter that was in front of him. So as he's come in, he's really he's done it basically textbook. It's in my book, Bombproof: A Field Proven Guide for the New-to-Role Executive, if you want to read it.

He did it exactly the way I would want him to. And lo and behold, he is so much happier. He is absolutely playing to his strengths. He shines in this role. He's much happier. Yeah, is the economic hit undesired? Of course, it is.

Nobody wants to lose out on money. But the happiness and the fulfillment that he has far outweigh whatever economic, small economic impact this has had on his life.

And he gets the joy of going to work and knowing he's doing a great job, that he's respected, that he's appreciated, and it's not working against who he is as a person. It's a very natural thing for him to be taking on this role. And I had a conversation with their head of HR about something else a week ago, I think, and just said, "hey, you know, how's this guy doing this role?" and he's like, "I've never seen this side of him."

He is in charge. He is confident, he's happy, he's effective. He's creating change. You know, he took enough time to learn what was needed in the organization. He set a plan in place. He's executing on that plan. He's bringing people together, and he's solving problems that this company has had for several years that have not seen anyone kind of make progress on.

And he's actually pulling that work together with all various stakeholders to execute on something that's really quite economically valuable for the company. So nobody likes to be demoted. Companies don't like demoting people. I think that's why they fake it sometimes and call it a reorg because they don't want to deal with the emotional, you know, the fallout of giving someone a demotion.

But I am here to say that it can work. I've had two clients go through this almost the exact same situation this year, and both of those cases have worked out better for the organization, better for the business results, and honestly, in the end, so much better for the executive.

If you’re looking to navigate a demotion or just a tricky leadership position in general, don’t hesitate to reach out today!