My culture spidey sense went off the moment I walked into the office.
Back in 2018-19, before I’d decided to go out on my own, I was interviewing for a head of HR role with a tech company in Montana. I’d had great interviews over the phone and was flown out to interview in person with the new CEO and her leadership team. The CEO had recently been hired and was taking over from the founder, who was still involved in the business.
I walked into the office and something immediately felt off.
They had an open-concept office, very in vogue at the time. Desks were stacked nearly on top of each other.
And each person sat there with headphones on. You could have heard a pin drop.
No energy. No collaboration.
I went through a series of interviews that day, and each one felt … off. In retrospect, it felt like I was immediately put into a defensive position. I vividly recall one leader sitting behind the table in a corner with his laptop open in front of him, asking me oddly passive aggressive questions.
Nothing about the interview process felt collaborative or engaging or even mildly friendly.
I already had a feeling in my gut that this was not a fit when I went to dinner with the CEO.
And then she shared what for me was the death knell.
Half of the leadership team would be in one city. The CEO and a few key others would be in another city 90 minutes away — the “preferred” city.
The VP of HR role would be in the first city, the home base, to (and I quote) “keep an eye on and handle the founder.”
I didn’t say it at the time, but what went through my head was “Hell no. I am not your babysitter.”
I’m glad I didn’t get that job. And now when I tell this story I think about that leadership team, and how utterly dysfunctional it must have been. A CEO who is passing off a problem. A disruptive founder. Senior leaders who are territorial.
No wonder no one was talking in the office.
The signals were everywhere. The silence. The defensiveness. The geographic split designed to manage around conflict instead of addressing it.
Everything I needed to know about that team was visible within a matter of hours. I just didn’t have the language for it yet.
Now I do.
If I walked into that room today, I’d name what I was seeing. I’d ask about the founder directly. And I’d say the quiet part out loud: that you can’t build a healthy leadership team while tiptoeing around the dysfunction at the center of it.
Not because I’m braver than I was then, but because I’ve learned that the thing no one’s naming is usually the thing that’s keeping the team stuck.
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