April 2025 Newsletter
Burning Questions from the C-Suite
From a Right Hand (RH): I feel like a strong leader until the CEO walks into the room. Then I feel like I’m nobody. How do I manage that?
It’s one of the strangest parts of being a Right Hand. You can be running a department, making decisions, building a strong team, and feeling capable. Then the CEO enters the room, and everything shifts. You suddenly feel smaller and less certain. Like you’re an extra, standing off to the side of someone else’s story.
That feeling doesn’t mean anything is wrong. It means you’re experiencing the natural strain of being two things at once: a powerful leader in your own right and a deferential helper to the leader above you.
When you're facing up toward your CEO, you’re a brain partner who brings your full effort to the table, but you are also constantly aware that you’re not the final authority. You’re not the one whose neck is on the line financially. You’re not the one who started the company from nothing and brought it to this. It’s the CEO you respect who did that. You’re the support, not the lead.
But when you’re facing down within the organizational structure, you have to be a buck-stops-here kind of person. You have to be a powerful leader and decision-maker. Even if your style is not authoritative, your role is authoritative. Meaning people who work for you count on you for leadership. They look to you for direction. You’re probably the leader who makes the most difference in their daily work and the lens through which they experience company culture.
Facing up and facing down are truly two different identities. And an excellent Right Hand fully owns both. Here are three tips for how.
1. Accept the Duality. Both roles are real. Both matter. And neither one is a costume you wear temporarily. They are both part of who you are and both required to do the Right Hand job well. The trouble comes when we expect to feel the same in both spaces. We don’t, and we shouldn’t. Leading down requires decisiveness. Leading up requires humility. If you expect to carry the same energy facing up toward the CEO as you do facing down into the CEO’s organization, you’ll always feel off balance.
2. Code-Switch. As a Right Hand, you are bilingual: you speak CEO language, and you speak employee language. That’s why you are often the translator between the two. You don’t use the same words, tone, pace, or posture when speaking to the CEO as you do when leading your team. Each audience needs something different from you. In the field of communication, we call this code-switching, where you shift your style based on current context. It takes emotional intelligence and awareness of others to code-switch well, but it makes things so much easier for the people around you.
3. It's Fluency, Not Compromise. This isn't about splitting yourself into two parts. It's about owning your whole identity and bringing the right leadership voice to the right moment. Imagine that you speak both English and Spanish. You don’t stop being yourself when you switch languages. It’s not lack of integrity or sacrifice of self to speak Spanish to your Abuelita and English to your coworkers. It’s literacy. It’s using language to build relationships and move things forward. This fluency is a hallmark of Right Hands. Embrace it for the skill it is.
Famous Right Hands
Ted Lasso, one of Apple TV+'s most popular offerings, provides a
fascinating example of a Right Hand Relationship. The 2020 comedy show’s portrayal of Ted’s relationship with his boss, Rebecca Welton, could have been a generic rivalry or romance. Instead, it's a complex and authentic interaction between two leaders who gain mutual respect, show vulnerability, and learn from their mistakes.
Rebecca’s initial reason for hiring Ted is based on deception: she thinks Ted will fail at managing the team, and his failure will hurt her ex-husband, whose sports team she inherited in the divorce. Despite this terrible start, Ted takes his role as Rebecca’s Right Hand seriously and meets her with patience and open communication. Even though she has extreme "bad boss" behaviors, Ted shows up with a smile on his face and a calm approach. He does the right things with his employees, helping them win at their jobs. He solves problems for them without painting her as the bad guy.
Ultimately, Ted wins Rebecca over with just the right combination of kindness and competence, and she becomes a much better boss. And the franchise thrives. Bottom line: Right Hands have a lot of power to improve the relationship with their CEO. And you don't even have to bring homemade cookies (iykyk).
Caution: Characters in the show swear like sailors, so if that's not your thing, you may want to read the Lessons in Leadership Masterclass instead of watching the show. Additional sources: Power dynamics in Ted-ology, More on Rebecca in How Rebecca Changes the Narrative
Not So Famous Right Hands
In case you think employees don’t notice how well CEO and Right Hand get along with each other . . . employees at BIG Construction in Chicago did a yearbook-style vote to celebrate the graduation season. My clients CEO Tony Iannessa and President Chris Farrington proudly claimed the “Best Bromance” title. Check out the goofy photos of Tony and Chris and the rest, including my personal favorite: Most Likely to Handle a Power Tool Better than a Smartphone.
What can we do for you?
At Practical PhD, we help companies Get the Right Hand Right so they're ready for top leadership transition in 1-3 years:
Find and hire a Right Hand
Onboard a new Right Hand
Teach an aspiring Right Hand the job
Performance-manage a struggling Right Hand
Create a phased leadership succession plan
Ask about the Right Hand Advantage program we offer with One Eighty Collective. It's a full-service hiring, onboarding, and coaching solution for CEO, President, and COO level Right Hands.