Leaders must prepare for the axe – and wield it with compassion 

It took getting fired for me to realize something was deeply wrong with my life – but it took a front-page interview about my experience to find out I was far from alone.

Somewhere, halfway through my executive career, a senior leader pulled me aside and said, “Anita, you have to lower your voice, speak more slowly, and adapt to become one of us.” Being a successful female executive in an environment crafted by men, for men – in my case in the fast-moving consumer goods, packaging, and waste and renewables industries – meant I had to understand how to behave as a “masculine” leader to gain access to that world.

It was a game I learned to play well, and I enjoyed the performance. I wanted approval. I wanted to win. It became my proud corporate mask, and I climbed the ladder and delivered the results. I loved my jobs, and the power and access they gave me. For example, as Managing Director for two territories at Elopak, an international supplier of liquid food packaging, I drove strategic turnarounds and won new business to ensure Norway and Sweden remained among the firm’s most profitable units.

I was in the room, part of that cynical, fake environment, where everyone plays a role, blindly follows the leader, and lives silently in fear of being fired.

The years went by and, at some point, that approach to leadership life – which, for many of us at the top, is all too common – started to take its toll: The 19-hour days managing two business units, the endless travel away from family and friends, the ill health, kept at bay with endless prescriptions for antibiotics, and the malnutrition and hair loss from never eating properly. I would go to the bathroom at lunchtime for a few minutes, sit in the cubicle, wolf down a snack, and obsessively answer emails. Of course, caught up in the cyclone, I couldn’t see that I had lost myself – the person I really was, the leader I wanted to be.

And then, out of nowhere, during one of several stints as a successful executive for a multinational company, it all came crashing down around me.

My boss called me into his office. “Anita, we have come to the end of the road,” he said, uncomfortably.

“Please repeat that,” I replied, astonished.

“We have come to the end of the road.”

I froze. It was impossible to understand what was happening or why. My performance was as good as anyone else’s. There was no warning that this was coming. I was stunned. Despite the shock, I knew my rights. I left the company with a healthy payout, but there was no explanation to give me the closure I needed. And the money did nothing to shake the humiliation out of me.

From hiding the truth to sharing stories

To cover my shame, I kept the whole thing secret. I lied to my husband, friends, and neighbors, who would see me leave in my car each day as normal. But I wasn’t going to the office; I spent days on end pretending to be at work. I spiraled. I had lost the entire identity I had crafted for myself. I did not know who I was any more.

It was only through gathering the courage, at last, to talk to a few other CEOs who had lost their jobs that I realized I was not alone. At first, we were like bars of soap, sliding around each other and boasting about the incredible performance we had delivered. But then a deeper, shared truth surfaced. We started to open up about the trauma of our experiences, particularly our exits, as leaders in toxic corporate cultures. My experience felt like a fairy tale compared to some of the brutal stories I heard about the rise and fall of leaders across Europe – treated like God-like geniuses one moment, and village idiots the next.

I wrote a column for one of Norway’s largest business papers about what had happened to me, which turned into a front-page interview – “Leader shame” – that changed my life. My phone exploded with messages and calls. Scores of former executives wanted to share their stories with me.