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Richard Calloway said it with the specific gentleness of someone who has decided that tone is the same as kindness.
He said: Margaret, at your stage of career, the energy demands of the VP role may not be the best fit. We need someone who can grow into the position for the next decade. And frankly, we want to give younger talent room to develop.
He said: I hope you understand this isn’t personal.
I was fifty-four years old and I had been at Calloway Analytics for eleven years.
Not in a supporting role.
In the role that had built the client relationships that accounted for sixty percent of the division’s revenue.
I had rebuilt the Western accounts after the 2019 restructuring.
I had brought in the Meridian contract, which was the largest single account in company history.
I had trained four of the seven people currently on my team, including the thirty-one-year-old who had just been promoted over me.
Richard said: you’ve been an incredible asset.
I said: thank you for your time, Richard.
I went back to my desk.
I opened my email.
I found the message from Henderson Executive Search that had been sitting in my inbox for eight months — the one I had declined twice because the timing hadn’t felt right, because I was loyal to the work even when the work’s leadership was not loyal to me.
I replied.
I said: I’m ready to talk.
Henderson had been retained by Calloway Analytics’ parent company.
Vantage Group.
I want to be clear about that because the irony of it matters to understanding what happened next.
Richard Calloway ran one of seven divisions under Vantage Group’s umbrella.
Vantage Group had engaged Henderson Executive Search eight months earlier to find a Regional Vice President who would oversee three of those divisions, including Richard’s.
Henderson had found me through the Meridian contract announcement, which had been covered in an industry publication with my name in the second paragraph.
I had declined twice because I was in the middle of a client retention project and because leaving mid-project was not something I did.
The project had concluded in March.
Richard’s quarterly review had been in April.
I replied to Henderson in April.
The first call was with the search firm.
The second was with Vantage Group’s Chief Operating Officer, a woman named Diana Osei who had built her career in the same sector I had and who asked questions that told me she had read my work rather than just my resume.
She said: the Meridian contract. Walk me through how you structured the retention strategy.
I walked her through it.
She said: that’s exactly the kind of thinking we need at the regional level.
There were three more conversations over six weeks.
A panel interview with two board members.
A final meeting with the CEO.
He said: Margaret, we’ve been looking for someone who can integrate the Western divisions without disrupting what’s working. Your track record suggests you understand both sides of that.
I said: I’ve spent eleven years building what’s working in one of those divisions.
He said: yes. We know.
The offer came in June.
I accepted on a Thursday.
On Friday I gave Richard my two weeks’ notice.
He said: where are you going?
I said: Vantage Group.
He was quiet for a moment.
He said: that’s our parent company.
I said: yes.
He said: in what role?
I said: Regional Vice President. Western Division cluster.
He looked at his desk.
I said: I believe your division is in the Western cluster.
He said: it is.
I said: then I’ll see you at the September leadership meeting.
The lobby of Vantage Group’s regional headquarters had a wall of windows that faced the mountains.
I had been in the building twice before, for meetings with Richard’s own leadership, and I had sat in the visitor chairs and waited to be called back.
Today I walked past the visitor chairs and took the elevator to the fourth floor.
My assistant, a man named James who had been briefed on my background and who met me at the elevator with coffee and a schedule, said: good morning, Margaret. Your nine o’clock is the division heads briefing.
I said: thank you, James.
I walked to my office.
It had the mountain-facing windows.
I set my bag on the chair and looked at the view for a moment and thought about a quarterly review in April and a desk I had walked back to and one email I had sent.
My calendar showed Thursday as Richard Calloway’s first performance review.
I had not arranged that.
Diana Osei had built the review schedule before I started.
I looked at the mountain view.
I thought: all right.
The nine o’clock briefing had seven division heads around the table.
Richard was the third from my left.
He had the specific posture of a man who has been in many rooms like this one and is working to appear comfortable in this version of it.
I said: good morning, everyone. I’ve spent the last six weeks reviewing the Western cluster’s performance data and client portfolios, and I want to start by saying that there’s genuinely strong work happening across all three divisions.
I said: I’m also going to tell you where I see gaps and what I expect us to address in the next two quarters.
I said: I’ll be direct, because that’s more useful to everyone than being gentle.
Several people wrote things down.
Richard looked at his notepad.
I moved through the presentation.
I was not gentle.
The performance review was in my office.
Richard sat across from me in the chair that faced the mountain windows, and I sat behind the desk, and I thought briefly about the specific geometry of this — the man who had told me I lacked energy for the role, sitting in the chair across from the role.
I did not mention it.
I was not there to mention it.
I was there to do the job.
I had reviewed Richard’s division thoroughly.
His numbers were adequate.
Not excellent. Adequate.
The client retention rate was three points below the cluster average.
The team turnover in the past eighteen months was higher than the other divisions.
The Meridian account — my Meridian account, which had transferred to his division’s books when it became a national account — had flagged two satisfaction concerns in the most recent quarterly survey.
I laid all of this out.
Richard said: some of those metrics reflect broader market conditions—
I said: the other two divisions in the same market conditions have different numbers.
He said: the Meridian concerns are a communication issue that we’re—
I said: tell me the plan.
He said: we’re scheduling a call—
I said: when?
He said: next week—
I said: schedule it for this week. Meridian is too significant to let concerns sit in a queue.
He wrote something down.
I said: Richard, I want to be direct with you about something.
He looked up.
I said: your division has the talent to be at the top of this cluster. The gap between where you are and where you could be is a leadership question, not a market question. I’m going to need you to look at your management approach with fresh eyes.
He said: I’ve been running this division for six years.
I said: I know. And some of what you built is solid. But six years can also mean six years of the same assumptions. I need you to question the assumptions.
He said: what assumptions specifically?
I said: that adequate is good enough. That the people who have been here the longest have the most to offer. That energy and experience are opposites rather than partners.
He looked at the desk.
I said: that last one in particular.
He said: Margaret—
I said: I’m not here to revisit April. I’m here to run this cluster. But I am going to need you to operate with the understanding that the frameworks you’ve been using to evaluate people may need updating.
He said: understood.
I said: good.
I said: Thursday next week, same time. Bring the Meridian call summary and the updated retention numbers.
He nodded.
He left.
I looked at the mountain view for a moment.
Then I went back to work.
Richard’s division improved.
Not immediately — change moves at the pace of people, which is slower than the pace of spreadsheets — but over the first two quarters under the new structure, the metrics moved in the right direction.
Client retention came up.
Team turnover came down.
Meridian’s satisfaction scores recovered.
At the six-month review I told Richard his division had shown meaningful improvement and that I expected him to sustain it.
He said: I want to say something.
I said: say it.
He said: I made a mistake in April.
I said: yes.
He said: I was operating with the assumption you mentioned. That energy and experience were opposites.
I said: yes.
He said: I was wrong about that.
I said: yes.
He said: I’m telling you because I think you deserve to hear it directly.
I looked at him.
I said: I appreciate that.
I said: now apply the same correction to how you’re evaluating the people on your team.
He said: I have been.
I said: good. Keep going.
Diana Osei invited me to lunch in October.
She said: how is the cluster?
I said: improving. The Western accounts are stable. I’m optimistic about Q1.
She said: and Richard?
I said: developing.
She said: that’s diplomatic.
I said: it’s accurate. He made assumptions about people based on age and then he examined those assumptions when the evidence contradicted them. That’s what development looks like.
She said: you could have made his life difficult.
I said: I could have. But I needed him to run his division well, and making his life difficult would not have produced that. What produced it was being direct about the gaps and holding him to a standard.
She said: you didn’t take it personally.
I said: I took it seriously. That’s different.
She said: is it?
I said: yes. Personal would have been about him. Serious was about the work.
She said: Margaret, I want to tell you something.
I said: tell me.
She said: when Henderson first brought your name, I looked you up before I agreed to interview you. I read about the Meridian contract. I read the industry piece. And I read a quote you had given in an earlier interview, years ago, that had stayed with me.
I said: what was the quote?
She said: you said that the best thing about being experienced is that you have already made most of the expensive mistakes.
I said: I remember saying that.
She said: I thought: that’s the person I want running the Western cluster.
I said: I had made a few expensive mistakes before Meridian.
She said: I know. That’s why the Meridian approach was so good.
We finished lunch.
I drove back to the office with the mountains visible through the windshield.
I thought about a quarterly review in April and a desk and one email.
I thought about Henderson’s message sitting in my inbox for eight months because the timing hadn’t felt right.
The timing had felt right in April.
After Richard said energy.
After Richard said younger talent.
After Richard said I hope you understand this isn’t personal.
I had understood.
I had just understood something different than he had meant.
I had understood that the door he was closing was not the last door.
I had found the open one.
I had walked through it.
I had come back in six months as his supervisor.
Not to punish.
To work.
The work is the point.
It was always the point.
Age is not energy.
Experience is not exhaustion.
And the people who tell you that you have already peaked have usually not seen your ceiling.
They have only decided where they think it should be.
You decide where it is.
Keep the email from the search firm.
When the timing is right, reply.
Then walk back through the lobby without stopping at the visitor chairs.
The elevator goes up.
Take it.
