How to deal with Manipulative Executives

My 5 learnings

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The CEO of a startup I worked for seduced my wife in direct retaliation for my pushback in the office, directly leading to my divorce.

When people ask how I survived the snake den of manipulative, political leaders to become a Vice President at Amazon, I assure them that I have real experience with unethical leaders.

Here is how you succeed in “the real world”:

First, as the story above suggests, I had to work for many unethical and manipulative leaders in my career. While the seduction and divorce story is the worst, it is not the only encounter I had with managers and leaders who lied and sacrificed others for their own advancement.

The advice below is based on that world, the real world.

Over the course of my career I worked with many good, honest, helpful leaders, and some nasty, self-interested, pathological liars (and everything in between).

My five learnings:

1. When you have a good manager, lean in and take advantage of it.

2. Spot the snakes.

3. Do excellent work, even for nasty leaders.

4. Don’t confront the snakes directly.

5. Don’t become a snake.

1. When you have a good manager, lean in and take advantage of it.

I have written before about the Breakthrough Loop, the way to build a relationship with a good manager for your mutual benefit. While I “survived” bad bosses, most of my career progress came from working for good, honest, and helpful managers.

Hold on to these managers as much as you can. Help them grow and succeed so that you can stay together and grow and succeed with them. See success as a partnership with the people you can trust.

Ultimately, the key to my career success was excelling when I had good managers and just surviving in the periods in between.

Career progress will always be uneven. The trick is to make rapid progress when you can and hang in there when you cannot.

Also, notice I say take advantage of “it”, not “them”. Take advantage of and benefit from the situation, don’t become dishonest and take advantage of someone else for your benefit.

2. Spot the snakes. Generally, it doesn’t take long to figure out who is a good person and who is only looking out for themselves.

There are many ways to see through the dishonest people:

1. See if their actions match their words.

2. Talk to others who have been there longer - they know!

3. Investigate their pasts - talk to someone who used to work for them but is now safely away.

A smooth talker may fool you in person, particularly if you give people the benefit of the doubt.

Observing carefully and doing your research can help you not fall for the charm of someone you shouldn’t trust. Being cautious is important, but there is a big difference between being watchful and skeptical and being cynical and untrusting. Extend some trust in case your leader is a good person, but do not make yourself fully vulnerable until you know.

3. Even snakes need to get things done. You can be valued for excellent work even by nasty, dishonest people.

When I think about my many dishonest, political bosses, I realize that they kept me around and valued me while I was producing good work that helped them. On the other hand, they were happy to quickly discard me when I became inconvenient.

The key lesson here is that high performance is a survival skill, and it should be a priority even when you have a snake as a leader.

The selfish leaders who are willing to sacrifice you for their own careers still need to look good, so as long as you are doing good work that helps them grow, they will tend to keep you around or even promote you as long as it serves their purposes.

I believe you should try to escape such leaders (more on this below), but you can usually buy time by being valuable in the short term.

4. I suffered the most when I confronted amoral leaders directly.

I wish I could tell you inspiring stories of how I defeated dishonest leaders with straight talk.