The Chameleon: The Leader Who Agrees With Everyone
is not a liar. She would be offended by the word. What she does is smaller and more expensive: she tells each person the version of her position that fits the room, and there is a different room every hour. She calls it reading her audience. She thinks it is a strength, and for a while it was. It got her here.
Here is what she cannot see. Her people compare notes. The sales lead and the finance director have lunch. Her team talks to her peers. And within a quarter, the organization has assembled something Lena never said in any
single meeting: the full set of her positions, side by side, and they do not agree with each other. Nobody confronts her about it. They just stop treating what she says as information. Her yes becomes a maybe. Her support becomes something to confirm through someone else. The trust does not break. It leaks, quietly, until there is nothing left in the tank.
Look at what it costs. Decisions she thinks she has made get relitigated, because nobody is sure which version was real. The people who trusted her most are the ones who feel most misled when the versions collide. And the reputation she built on being easy to work with turns into the one thing a senior leader cannot survive: people who like her and do not believe her.
Here is the reframe. Credibility is not whether people agree with you. It is whether the version they heard is the version everyone else heard. One position, said the same way in every room, is worth more than five positions that each made someone happy.
Two moves. First, write it down before the day starts. On anything that matters, one sentence, your actual position, on paper, before the first meeting. Then say that sentence, in those words, in every room, including the rooms where it costs you something. Second, run the check. Once a quarter, pick three people who heard you on the same issue and ask each what you said. If you get three answers, the Chameleon is still running the meetings.
You do not have to be liked in every room. You have to be the same person in all of them.
The Right Altitude. Available now. therightaltitudebook.com
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