Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be

perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about the Disruptive Executive. This is part two of a two-part podcast. Part one was broadcast in June 2012.

I had been coaching Marina, a very disruptive executive

for several months when her boss,auna called asking for a little help.

I wasn't officially coaching Shauna, but because Marina was so difficult to manage, I had

talked with her frequently. I think I blew it yesterday, she

told me. I stopped by Marina's office to do the drip-trip-trip feedback you suggested, and

she just flipped out. She started screaming that she was

getting results our department haven't seen in years and that if I wasn't going to

support her then she was going to file a complaint against me. I just lost it, Tom. I started yelling back at her. I finally caught

myself and I walked out, but everyone heard us. I was a mess for an hour afterwards. It was

terrible. I haven't yelled at anyone like that since I was a mess for an hour afterwards. It was terrible. I haven't yelled at anyone like that since I was a teenager. I just couldn't hold it together.

Shauna had experienced one of the traits common to disruptive executives. They create a great deal of emotional

upset in the people around them. Emotions are as contagious as any virus, but without the incubation period.

When we get infected, we suddenly find ourselves behaving in ways we know are inappropriate,

but we feel helpless to stop.

It's exactly what happened to Shauna.

I had spent time teaching Shauna tools for dealing with disruptors,

and she'd been an apt student. The five tools I taught her were covered in last month's

podcast, but she had just found out that all those tools and her rational

...