Fire your CEO

They’re not the boss of you

A year ago, a friend of mine took a senior leadership position at an NGO he’d admired for years. In his role, he oversees programmatic work for the NGO’s entire network of hospitals.

Last month, over rapidly cooling coffees in a café on a hospital ship in Madagascar, I asked him how it was going. 

Now, I’ve known Christiaan (not his real name) for at least a decade—he’s a soft-spoken, gentle, diplomatic Dutch guy. So, I expected an equally diplomatic description of his new job in response. 

I got something altogether different instead. His answer was firm, immediate, and direct:

“Honestly, Mark, I love it. The best part is that my CEO sets the vision clearly, gives me everything I need, and then trusts me to get it done.”

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It’s been over a month since Christiaan and I had those cold coffees. Neither of us is in Madagascar anymore. But that line—he gives me everything I need, and then trusts me to get it done—that’s stuck with me. 

For two reasons: first, it’s exceedingly rare in the NGO space (which, in the end, isn’t actually the subject of this post). And second, because it’s also exceedingly rare internally. 

Before I get to what I mean, let me tell you about a CEO I recently worked under. 

With this guy, every morning was a ritual in deflation. He specialized in sabotage by subversion. He would assign tasks without context, then withhold resources, clarity, and authority. He’d undercut me with whispers to my team: “I’m not sure why I hired him.”

And it wasn’t just me. Every person who worked under him became the subject of his Katy-Perry–inspired hot-and-cold yeses and nos.

Every decision felt fraught. Every success felt accidental, and every failure inevitable. 

Fundamentally, it was leading from fear. During the rare lucid moments I had in the three years I was in that job—moments when I’d had enough sleep, or when I hadn’t interacted with him in a week—I was able to see his savagery as simply the defense mechanism of an insecure man who felt like his own job was threatened. 

But, chat. I took more sleeping medicine in those three years than I have before or since. Which means that, after I left that job, it took years to shake the feeling of inadequacy he’d installed.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

There’s a whole blog post somewhere about why characters like this guy so reliably fail upward. 

But that’s not the point of this one.

Why did I hire this person?

We all carry that CEO inside us.

A near-constant refrain I hear from the burnt out clients I work with is that their inner monologue sounds remarkably like my old boss.

He sits behind their eyes, runs meetings in their minds, and whispers incessantly—why did I hire this person?—always just loud enough to keep them stuck.

It’s not just my clients either. When we say things like, “I’m stuck,” the CEO means, “you’re incapable.” When we look at others who seem to glide through choices—who pivot their careers, who live boldly, who speak authentically—the CEO tells us there’s something fundamentally different about them. Something we don’t have.

We believe there’s an X factor that separates the free from the stuck.

Here’s what that internal CEO sounds like. You know it as well as I do:

“You don’t have it in you. You’ll make the wrong decision, unless I make it for you.”

“If you get this wrong, your entire identity is at risk.”

“Those other people succeed because they’re better than you.”

I spent fifteen years terrified of flying. It all started on September 14, 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. I took one of the first flights into or out of NYC, and as the pilot rounded the southern edge of Manhattan—a place I’d only started calling home three months previously—he offered to dip the wings so we could see Ground Zero.

That’s when I learned what a panic attack felt like.

For a decade and a half after that, every flight required medication — small white pills in a little amber bottle, which I clutched tight like a talisman. I had my dosing schedule down to a science: how many hours before takeoff I’d take a half dose. How many minutes before I’d take a full dose. (The tailspin I’d go into with flight delays wasn’t pretty). 

I tried to justify it. I blamed turbulence. Weather. Airlines. I rationalized that anxiety was normal, responsible even. Humans weren’t designed to be 7 miles up in the air, right?

But one day, standing in line at the gate, boarding pass in hand, something shifted. No dramatic epiphany. No motivational speech ringing in my ears. Just a question:

“What if I didn’t take it any meds?”

The CEO in my head was quick and vicious:

“Dude, no. Don’t be an idiot. You’ll have a panic attack. Everyone will see it. It’ll break you.”

But there was another voice, quieter, almost drowned out by boarding announcements:

“You got this.”

I…didn’t listen to that second voice.

Not the first time, at least.

But then, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I started to. The first time I boarded a flight unmedicated, my heart hammered, cold sweat pricked my palms. I kept the meds in my backpack—just in case the CEO was right—but I walked down the jet bridge, sat in seat 14C, and the flight attendants closed the boarding door.

I felt every movement of that flight. Every tiny shake, every whispered conversation around me, every sound. I even had a mild panic attack as we took off.

But here’s the crucial thing: nothing else happened.

I landed. Walked off the plane. Same body, same mind, same heart—but something was undeniably different.

I’d fired the voice that had kept me small.

Nothing about me had changed. I hadn’t gained courage overnight. My psyche remains stubbornly anxious, even to this day. 

The only thing I’d swapped was the voice in charge.

And it made me wonder: what if the people we envy — the ones living authentically, speaking honestly, pivoting bravely — aren’t different? What if it’s not that they have some X factor that the rest don’t?

What if they’re just running a different internal org chart?

Albert Bandura calls this shift self-efficacy: the belief in our ability to act. Bandura showed, way back in 1977, that:

expectations of personal efficacy determine…how much effort will be expended, and how long it will be sustained in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences

In other words, the more we believe that we’re personally effective, the more energy we’re willing to invest in the hard things—and the longer we’re able to stick at them despite whatever the world throws at us.

This isn’t simple optimism or blind confidence. It’s something more subtle and more grounded. It’s trust.

In ourselves.

Fire that CEO before you regret it

I talk to people every week who carry regret like it’s part of their DNA. “How could I have wasted so many years?” they’ll ask. And then, resignedly, “Maybe this is just who I am.”

And I want to reach through the Zoom screen, grab them by the shoulders, and tell them, “That regret isn’t proof of anything except the cruelty of your CEO.” 

It’s not evidence that they’re inadequate; on the contrary, it’s evidence that they’ve been mismanaged, just as badly as my CEO mismanaged me. Their CEOs undercut them with the exact same script, a script they’ve just accepted as gospel: “You don’t have it in you. I should never have hired you.”

When Christiaan told me about his new CEO, something clicked. For the first time, someone had shown him trust—and he’d internalized that trust into belief. Into self-efficacy.

Trust changes everything.

Consider, just for a second, what might happen if you fired your CEO, if you allowed yourself an Inside-Out–style reorg. Can you fire the voice that doesn’t trust you, the one whispering doubt, inadequacy, and shame? 

What would it change if you hired a new one, one who spoke words you’d desperately wanted to hear for years:

“I trust your judgment. I’ve got your back.”

Imagine the decisions you’d finally feel free to make. The identity you’d step into without fear of consequence. The authenticity you’d finally own.

There is no X factor. There is no “they’re better than me.”

There’s only who you’ve listened to up to this point, and who you choose to listen to next.

You already have everything you need. The evidence is right there in your history—in the things you’ve survived, the careers you’ve navigated, the failures you’ve bounced back from, and the fears you’ve faced.

You don’t need more courage. You need more trust in the courage you already have.

I know because I’ve done it. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But steadily. I chose a different voice, and it changed the trajectory of every decision that followed.

You’ve always had what it takes. You just need a boss who knows it.

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→ Doctors, nurses, healthcare folks: Are you ready to fire your CEO? Check out my free webinar on creating your Burnout Escape Plan, one science-backed decision at a time, here.

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