They were all C-level executives at high-profile companies who lost their jobs due to interpersonal incompetence (aka “no people skills”).
(Julie Roehm was fired from Wal-Mart; Robert Nardelli was forced out of Home Depot; Steve Heyer was let go from Coca-Cola; and Harry Stonecipher lost his job at Boeing.)
In his Forbes blog last week, Dale Buss quotes Bob Eichinger, CEO of Lominger International, as saying such people are “promoted into their jobs for their business smarts, and they fail because of weaknesses in their people smarts.”
Well, no kidding.
As I think we’ve all learned from Donald Trump, many highly successful people rise to the top because they have some kind of genius for business. And many stay at the top in spite of a pronounced lack of interpersonal skills. As long as they’re making money, the stakeholders can overlook the trickle-down problems that affect the worker bees.
Until, that is, those trickle-down problems become so severe that they start to affect profits.
I shudder to think how bad things have to get for shareholders to tie in an executive’s interpersonal skills with a shrinking profit margin, but I’m encouraged by the fact that sometimes the connection is indeed recognized.