A new CEO brings fresh energy and strategic clarity, making Kami feel more confident in the brand.
Customer Journey Series: Kami
This article is part of a customer journey series following “Kami,” a sales leader in pharma managing competitive changes and new leadership.
Her journey explores building leadership confidence, managing up, navigating organizational change, and positioning herself for the next level.
Each post explores a real coaching conversation or leadership challenge from that journey.
This is the fifth post in the series.
About this time, Kami came into a period of work where a lot of things were changing rapidly, and she had to navigate the changes.
“Work is so busy,” she reported, “but it’s good. I’m getting exposure. I’m having more impact and thinking through every step.”
She had made some incremental changes for the team. They were developing better training materials that focused on differentiation. The sales team needed data to support conversations with customers.
Still, Kami continued to be frustrated by her boss.
“There is so much going on and John is just not stepping up. I have to remind myself of his good qualities before I talk to him. I don’t threaten him and I do my best to be aware of how he feels about Robert and all the changes. I know it’s hard for him.”
She said she was walking a fine line between being supportive and validating his position while not completely aligning with him. Often, this is a tough line to hold while managing up, and Kami finessed it beautifully.
“Sometimes I just have to say it’s ok if we have different opinions, and I really respect the value you bring to these conversations.”
She said it was hard when she was getting a lot of leadership visibility, and he was digging his heels in. But she was determined to maintain a supportive relationship.
A New CEO Brings New Ideas
Soon after, Kami came to our coaching session announcing that they have a new CEO.
“It is uncanny to see this guy in meetings six days into the job. He is a turnaround specialist, and his focus is on some of the other brands that I’m not working on, but he sees the brand I work on as a flagship product.”
She watched the new CEO in a few meetings and was impressed. He asked a lot of questions and quickly cut through the noise to get to the crux of a problem.
“He kept asking: why haven’t we done this or that? And the other VPs were just saying, well, we haven’t done that before.”
Kami was cautiously optimistic. She said she was really impressed when he said, “Look, I’m new here so push back if I’m wrong.” That took guts, she thought.
Within a few weeks, Kami sat in on a meeting of senior leaders. John couldn’t be there so he asked Kami to sit in for him. It was an amazing opportunity to get some leadership visibility.
It was a big learning experience for her hearing what leaders do, how they look at problems, and ask questions.
The new CEO said there were a lot of talking and break-out groups in the company, but not a lot of action or decisions. He didn’t challenge them, but he did say that he wanted to see recommendations for how to move forward.”
She seemed energized by the call. “It made me feel I had added confidence in the brand and company.”
Kami’s empathy and listening skills were helping her gain visibility and confidence as the corporate landscape evolved.
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