Why A CEO Can Never Run Away Like Gov. Sanford

Author: Klaus Kneale

When Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for a few days, everyone was shocked. Leaders don't have the luxury of disappearing--especially without warning.

Douglas McKenna, an executive coach who helps corporate brass deal with stress, anger and anxiety in general, doesn't view Sanford's lapse as a moral one (despite the governor's finally admitting to an affair). He sees it as one of simple responsibility. "A leader's first responsibility is to be present and accounted for. And that doesn't just mean there being physically," McKenna says.

Sanford broke that cardinal rule when he left without informing anyone. That's not to say leaders can't get away. Every leader has to take off occasionally, both for his or her health and for that of the organization he or she runs. But you can never leave a vacuum behind. Without explicit substitute leadership, people can start making the wrong decisions that are out of line with the organization's culture and priorities. It's such a colorful danger it happened on The Office, with employees holding office Olympic games with work to be done.

"CEOs are the keepers of the company culture," says Robert Damon at the executive search firm Korn/Ferry (see "CEOs Say: How I Hire"). The best leaders work hard to instill a solid sense of the culture in their staff. Then when those leaders need to be inaccessible, they can be confident their people will make the same decisions they'd make themselves.

Even decisions made with the best intentions can fall short when there's a vacuum at the top--as happened when Sanford's staff apparently ventured a guess as to the governor's whereabouts that later turned out to be wrong. That's because even smart, experienced people fully capable of leading can stumble, panic or freeze in such a mystifying situation.

McKenna recalls when an executive he knew planned a complete restructuring of his company, announced it by e-mail and then took a month-long vacation while everyone else cleaned up the mess. But behavior like that is rare, despite the level of stress many leaders deal with.

Even wanting to go AWOL is rare too, McKenna says, notwithstanding how stressed out, angry or defeated CEOs get. He's never seen anything like the Sanford case before.

It sounds like the governor was under so much stress he may have felt his head was about to explode. When you get to that point, McKenna says, it's very important to have a confidant. A trusted friend could have seen things going awry or known enough about the situation to have undertaken some damage control when things finally hit their peak.

At the very least, a confidant could have gotten Sanford's vacation destination right.