Ask Savannah
The realities of senior leadership that rarely make it into the job description.
Name the mistake plainly and specifically, without over-explaining or minimizing it, and let your subsequent behavior do the actual rebuilding. Trust returns through a consistent pattern afterward, not through the quality of the apology itself.
Acknowledge the fatigue directly rather than adding another round of enthusiasm about the next change — people exhausted by change need stability somewhere, even if it's not in the area that has to keep moving. Naming the exhaustion honestly tends to build more trust than pretending it isn't there.
Authority itself creates distance, because people around you calibrate what they say based on what it costs to say it to someone who holds real power over their work. The antidote isn't pretending the distance doesn't exist — it's deliberately building a few relationships, often outside your own organization, where that dynamic doesn't apply.
Get honest, direct input from your board, your peers, and your team about what each of them actually expects in year one — those three views often disagree more than new CEOs expect, and finding that out early is far cheaper than discovering it in month six. Preparation is less about your own readiness and more about calibrating everyone else's.
When the business or organization genuinely needs a different set of skills than the ones you built it on, and your remaining in the role is protecting your own identity more than it's serving what comes next. That's a hard, honest question to ask yourself, and it's usually clearer from the outside than from the seat itself.
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