The Chameleon Leader – A Leader in Disguise

Yes, Sociopathy Disguised as Empathy 

“If I listen to your lies, would you say 
I'm a man without conviction
I'm a man who doesn't know
How to sell a contradiction.”

from Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

You may be reporting to a “Chameleon Leader” right now, or have had multiple “Chameleon Leaders” during your career.

A lot is being written these days about leadership and leadership development. However, the reality for many subordinates is to be exposed to bad leadership continuously. Consequently, Gallup recently reported that 70% of the workforce is disengaged. About 70% of all managers, approximately 7 million of them, are “not properly developing or worse [they] are outright depressing 70 million employees”. 

Not all of these are Chameleon Leaders, but very many probably are.

What is a Chameleon Leader?

On the surface, these leaders seem to be saying and doing the right thing, blending in with personnel, seemingly even helping some along the way. They are extroverted, at first sight, charming, intelligent, and busy leaders. They create their own “chaos and crisis,” then going about solving the very chaos and crisis they personally directed and created. He/she rarely sees a link between themselves and the chaos.

During the process, they publicly provide a detailed description of the seriousness of the matter to their personnel and their indispensable role in solving the crisis.

These two are critically linked, as the whole organization, in the eyes of this leader, depends upon his/her capabilities and survival skills. The type of chaos and crisis can be anything, though it is frequently related to strategic direction, innovation, organizational development, or key hires.

The Chameleon Leader is overly involved in the career development of their personnel and is particularly interested in mingling with the junior staff and calls this affectionately “mentoring.”

He/she considers the team his/her extended family and openly brags about it. Tenure for this leader is a goal in and of itself. The longer the personnel is on board, the firmer an employee will be in the grip of the leader. Personnel frequently misreads the behavior and may consider this leader to be an ‘ideal’ leader.

However, this is a leader in disguise and a true Chameleon. He/she attempts at times to connect and to collaborate and seems to be empathic to their personnel. This is, however, sociopathy disguised as empathy because often times his/her behavior unexpectedly changes, and he/she turns into a manipulative, narcissistic, and power-hungry leader.

The leader is often demanding immediate attention by interrupting personnel’s daily activities, for example, by calling urgent ad-hoc meetings. During these meetings, sudden changes of direction are being told, not discussed.

A Chameleon Leader applies great sophistication and sly techniques to make people do what he/she wants. Most anyone will oblige, doing things one would normally not do. He/she is a great ‘communicator’, yet not open to dialogue. However, they use skip-level meetings to receive gossip by personnel to use later on in a manipulative manner. Although the behavior is experienced by everyone, it is not openly discussed by anyone.

Johan Reinhoudt put a checklist together to recognize this leadership behavior:

1.     Playing favorite with those hired and/or promoted, disregarding inefficacy and even outright failure, being blindsided by loyalty and conformity of its personnel

Subjectivity (conformity) seems to be of much higher worth than objectivity (performance) to this leader. Personnel that does produce results is disregarded and even publicly punished at times. The leader blatantly mistakes agreement for loyalty and tenure for performance.

2.     Hiring identical people like him/herself

He/she hires people like him/her and hopes nothing major will happen. There is no drive for performance and improvement. They resist pro-active thinkers and visionaries and are anti-innovation. In general, a Chameleon Leader resists better ideas or concerns from personnel, which could demand personal changes by the leader.

3.     Not always having the right intention

The intention is the most important factor in getting positive and successful leadership results, and this leader mistakenly believes that mechanism by forced processes will make up for a less than good intention. Unfortunately, the outcome is never good.

4.     Not being completely honest with themselves and others

A Chameleon Leader seems trapped by its own behavior. Although there may be a slight awareness that the organization is not functioning properly and efficiently, nothing is done about it.

A Chameleon Leader has usually hired all of the leadership team members with a specific person and management target in mind. Delegation is a sham. Activities and decisions seem delegated, but in reality, everyone knows to better check with the leader prior to making any decision.

5.     She/He communicates up but avoids any form of conflict

Continuously being aware of their own career. He/she will not challenge their superiors on issues that are critical to the business and indiscriminately accepts instructions and targets, even though they are problematic. They make unrealistic promises on the personnel’s behalf, which creates conflict. When such conflict arises or when something goes wrong, they bully and blame all involved. They use shuttle diplomacy aimed at avoiding to transparently having to deal with the situation and preventing detection.

They keep tight control of communication and manipulate the investigative outcome and their way out of conflict. Along the way, they make superiors believe what they want to hear.

Does that describe someone you work with?

If so, here are two pieces of advice:

1.     Do not attempt to change a Chameleon Leader or even gather colleagues’ support to oust the leader. The organizational web created by this leader is so sophisticated that the slightest unwanted movement will be detected. The resulting action will have serious professional consequences.

2.     Shorten your exposure to this type of leadership. View the experience as a career developmental period. Upon reflection, the experience with this type of destructive leader will certainly make one wiser. So, it is wise to move on. One will end up happier – next time around, no matter what.

Contact us if you would like to find out more about interim or fractional sales leadership.

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Johan Reinhoudt – Chamelon Leaders and How to Spot One?