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Sally is the Executive Vice President of Marketing and a member of the executive committee of a large rapidly growing software company. She has been with the company for 4 years and has been instrumental in dramatically increasing sales through her creative marketing savvy.

Bill is the CEO and has been pleased with Sally’s contribution as evidenced by his promotion of her to Executive Vice President 6 months ago. Recently, though, Bill has been concerned about Sally. She doesn't seem to be the energetic individual he promoted. Also, he recently overheard his administrative assistant discussing with another assistant Sally’s unusual behavior. He shrugged off the comments as idle company gossip. Two months later, Sally did not report to the executive strategic planning retreat due to illness. As a key player in the development of the plan, her absence dramatically affected the quality of the work completed.

Shortly afterward, Bill noticed that Sally was often not in the corporate office, her administrative assistant stating that she was traveling. Due to her heavy travel schedule, she missed several executive committee meetings, meetings in which Bill expects high attendance. As Bill began to inquire, he found that there were others who have been either upset or concerned by her behavior. The Vice President of Sales stated that she has not been returning his phone calls and has dropped the ball on two major sales in which he needed her assistance. Bill talked to Sally’s administrative assistant and two of her direct reports. Although reticent to discuss their boss, they did say tension existed in the department due to Sally’s moodiness, anger and absence.

Getting outside help…
A consultant from Emersus Consulting, Inc was retained to aid Bill in addressing the problem. His consultant initially interviewed Bill and documented Sally's performance deterioration. Next, she requested that Bill review Sally’s last two performance evaluations with her. After a review of all  the information she spent a significant amount of time coaching Bill how to privately discuss his concerns with Sally.

The Emersus consultant recommended that Bill alone approach Sally and ask her to provide him with insight into the problems.  She further coached him to get Sally's word that she would remedy them. Uneasy with this type of confrontation, Bill stated that he would like to wait a bit longer to see if she would improve on her own. His consultant helped him see that the performance deterioration had a pattern that was predictable and that it would probably continue unless addressed. She pointed out to Bill that in her experience, organizations wait far too long to address such executive issues, often so late that trust of the executive is irreversibly damaged.

They explored his hesitance to address this serious issue. Bill was able to identify his own fear of treading into personal issues. He also realized that since he had been the strongest supporter of Sally’s promotion, he wondered if his credibility would be questioned. That insight allowed him to see clearly that the good of Sally’s health and of the company were much more important. He agreed to meet with Sally the following week.

Addressing the problems…
After his meeting with Sally, Bill met with his consultant. He described Sally’s behavior as initially defensive and later apologetic as she promised to resolve the problems. She disclosed that she was recently divorced and that it was very difficult for her.  She did agree to remedy the problems immediately.   Bill decided to monitor the performance and see if Sally could improve on her own.

The Emersus consultant asked him to read some information she provided that would help him gain more skills and knowledge to more comfortably address these type of executive problems. This information addressed the difficulty in assessing executive performance, how stress affects employees at high levels and the difficulties organizations have addressing problems at the top. She would follow-up with him to discuss the material and find out about Sally’s progress.

Improvement…and then regression
For the following month, Sally’s performance seemed almost back to normal. Bill found out that she had met with her staff, apologized for her absence, adjusted her travel schedule and began delegating more work to her direct reports. Her department appeared to be back on track…until he got a call from the Vice President of Sales who was livid over the failure of a major advertising campaign that she was overseeing. The failure was going to cost the company hundreds of thousands in lost sales. Bill called his consultant from Emersus Consulting.

Creating consequences…
Together they strategized another meeting with Sally that now included the consultant. His consultant coached him on the importance of firmness as he addressed the issues, outlining consequences if the problems did not subside.

During the performance meeting with Sally, Bill discussed the multiple performance problems he had documented, expressed his expectations for improvement and made available the Emersus consultant to aid Sally in addressing her problems.

The Emersus consultant thoroughly evaluated Sally’s situation. From that assessment she recommended to Bill that Sally take a couple days leave to allow her to focus exclusively on some personal problems before returning to work. She further referred Sally to a local therapist to deal with some underlying and unresolved personal issues. She had Sally sign a release of information to the therapist that would allow her to communicate the workplace issues that were now affecting her job security. They then conjointly created a plan to aid Sally in returning to the workplace to begin to re-establish trust with her co-workers.

Making progress…
Over the next 3 months, Bill met monthly with Sally and the consultant to discuss the progress that was being made. Sally was initially uneasy with these meetings, but gradually opened up.  These honest discussions lead her to share with Bill her fear of displeasing him. This manifest in her tendency to never say "no" to projects she simply did not have time to do. This dialogue led to a significant change in Bill and Sally's relationship.  Sally was able to express to Bill some of his leadership behaviors that created low morale in the executive team.  She stated that others had voiced the same, but would never address Bill directly.  After 3 months, the consultant dropped out of the meetings and maintained contact with both Bill and Sally via email and telephone for the next 6 months.

One year later, Bill and Sally both report that her performance has consistently continued to improve. Bill mentioned that he felt that Sally had become even more important to the executive team because she was now able to disagree with Bill in the meetings, thus encouraging other members to do so. Sally reported that she was intermittently seeing her therapist and had begun to pursue an avocation she had dropped years ago

***This case study is a compilation of true executive consultations by Emersus Consulting.

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