Latest / Executive Careers with Fexingo: VP, C-Suite, and Senior Leadership Career Strategy / How Senior Leaders Use Pre-Employment Listening Tours
Transcript
- Lucas: So you spend months networking, you go through a grueling series of interviews, you negotiate a package that feels right, and then you get the offer. And at that moment, most senior leaders are so relieved they skip the most important step: actually finding out what the place is like to work in. Luna: Right, because the interviews — especially at the C-suite level — are curated. You're meeting people who have been told to be on their best behavior. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why a growing number of senior leaders I've worked with are building what I call a 'pre-employment listening tour' into their acceptance process. Not as a formality, but as a serious diligence tool. Luna: I love this. Give me a concrete example — who did this well? Lucas: Sure. I worked with a former Fortune 500 CFO — let's call her Sarah — who was being recruited for the CEO role at a mid-cap manufacturing company. She had done the standard board interviews, met the executive team, everything looked good on paper. But she told me she had a knot in her stomach. She couldn't tell if the company actually lived its stated values. Luna: And what did she do? Lucas: She went back to the board chair and said, 'I'd like to spend two weeks doing a listening tour before I sign. I want to meet with a cross-section of managers, a few frontline employees, and some key customers and suppliers — all off the record.' The chair was surprised, but he agreed. Lucas: Look, I know I mentioned earlier that we keep this show ad-free — and we do, thanks to a small group of listeners who chip in through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's what makes it possible to do deep dives like this without any sponsor pressure. If this kind of practical advice has helped you, joining them is one way to keep it going. But back to Sarah's listening tour. Luna: Yeah, that's a good point — and honestly, it's exactly why I'm happy to support the show myself. So what did Sarah learn in those two weeks? Lucas: Three things, and they're all worth naming. First, the informal power structure was totally different from the org chart. The person who really called the shots on operations was a senior VP who had been passed over for the CEO role. Second, the company's stated value of 'transparency' was contradicted by how the executive team communicated budgets — one manager told her that quarterly targets were changed retroactively. And third, the board's commitment to the strategy was weaker than it seemed in the interview. Luna: That's the kind of stuff you'd never get from a formal interview. Did she still take the job? Lucas: She did, but with conditions. She negotiated a mandate to reorganize the operations team within the first 90 days, and she got a clear board agreement on the strategic priorities. The listening tour gave her the leverage to address those issues before she even started. Luna: So the value isn't just diagnostic — it also sets you up to negotiate from a position of knowledge. Lucas: Exactly. And I'll contrast that with a mistake I see a lot. A senior leader I know — let's call him Mark — accepted a COO role at a pe backed firm without doing any real culture diligence. He trusted the private equity partners, who were charming and aligned with his vision. Six months in, he discovered the company had a deep-seated silo problem that the interview process completely masked. He lasted 18 months. Luna: Yikes. And that's a common pattern with pe backed companies — they can be very good at packaging themselves for talent acquisition. Lucas: Exactly. The listening tour is especially important when you're going into a privately-held company or a family business, where public data is thin. Sarah's approach gives you a framework: map the informal influence, test the gap between stated values and actual behavior, and evaluate whether the board — or the ownership — is truly aligned with the CEO's vision. Luna: I want to go back to the 'how' for a second. When you propose this to a hiring committee, don't they get nervous? Aren't they worried you're going to steal their secrets or poach their people? Lucas: That's the biggest objection I hear. But the framing matters. You're not asking for confidential data. You're saying you want to understand the business's culture and operations firsthand so you can hit the ground running. I frame it as a due diligence for both sides — you're making sure it's a good fit, and you're also showing that you care about getting it right. Lucas: I've had clients propose it as a 'paid listening engagement' — they sign an NDA, they agree not to recruit anyone, and they commit to providing a summary of their observations to the board. That turns it from a suspicious request into a value-add service. Luna: That's smart. And you mentioned off-the-record conversations — what does that actually look like? Are you taking notes? Recording? Lucas: No recording ever. You take mental notes and write them up later, without attribution. You're looking for patterns, not individual complaints. Sarah told me she asked each person three questions: 'What's one thing you'd change about how decisions are made here?' 'What's a time you saw leadership say one thing and do another?' and 'If you were CEO for a day, what would you do first?' The answers were incredibly revealing. Luna: Those are great questions. I'm going to use those next time I'm evaluating a board seat. Lucas: Exactly. And they work for any senior role — VP level up. The principle is the same: you need to learn the unwritten rules before you sign. Luna: What about the timeline? Two weeks sounds like a lot. Could you do it in a week? Lucas: You could, but you'd have to be more targeted. Ideally you want to talk to 15 to 20 people across different levels and functions. In a week you can do maybe ten. But the key is to include people who aren't in the executive suite — frontline managers, customer-facing staff, maybe even a former employee if you can get a confidential reference. Luna: And you'd want to do this after the verbal offer but before signing the contract, right? Lucas: Yes. And that's another reason to propose it as a paid engagement — it shows you're serious, and it also means you're not losing income while you do it. Sarah's listening tour was compensated at a consulting rate, and she treated it as a separate project. Luna: I love that. So the listening tour isn't just a risk-mitigation tool — it's also a career accelerator. You enter the role with a roadmap. Lucas: Exactly. And if the listening tour reveals major red flags, you have the option to walk away before you're trapped. I've seen that happen too. One client discovered that the company's financial projections were completely disconnected from what the sales team actually believed. He declined the offer, and the company was sold at a loss two years later. Luna: That's the ultimate win — dodging a bullet. So final piece of advice for someone considering this: how do you pitch it to the board without sounding paranoid? Lucas: Say this: 'I want to ensure that I can deliver the results you expect, and to do that I need to understand the real operating environment. I'd like to spend some time meeting with people across the organization to learn what's working and what's not, so I can hit the ground running. I'm happy to share my observations with you after.' That frames it as a service to them, not a request. Luna: And if they say no? That itself is a data point. Lucas: Big one. If a board is unwilling to let you do basic operational due diligence, what else are they hiding? That's probably a dealbreaker. Lucas: So our takeaway today: before you accept that corner-office offer, spend at least a week doing a structured listening tour. Map influence, test values, verify alignment. It's one of the highest roi activities you can do in a career transition. Luna: And if you want to support more deep-dive episodes like this, you know where to find the coffee fund. Lucas, thanks — this was a great conversation. Lucas: Thank you, Luna. And to our listeners, go out and build that listening tour. It could save you years of regret.