We recently hired an outside executive to fill our new Chief Operating Officer seat, but our legacy leadership team is subtly freezing them out and bypassing them to come directly to me. How do we stop this passive resistance and integrate this new leader effectively?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your legacy leadership team freezes out a newly hired executive and continues to bypass them, it is a structural failure of accountability that you must correct immediately. This behavior usually stems from insecurity and habit, but letting it persist will destroy the new leader's authority and waste your recruitment investment.

You must stop this behavior at the source. As the Visionary or business owner, you cannot accept backdoor conversations or solve problems that belong in the new executive's seat. When a legacy leader comes to you to complain or seek a decision that falls under the new executive's authority, you must refuse to engage. Direct them back to the new leader and ask if they have run the issue through their peer-to-peer relationship first.

Next, pull up your Accountability Chart with the entire leadership team. Reconfirm the exact roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority of the new executive's seat. Make it clear that bypassing this seat is a direct violation of how you run the company.

Encourage the new leader to build strong, individual peer-to-peer relationships with the legacy team members outside of formal meetings. Once the legacy team realizes that you will no longer act as a workaround and that the new executive is here to stay, they will adjust and begin collaborating directly.