What to Do When a Senior Leader Receives a Complaint
Great. That’s the last thing you needed added to your already-full plate.
A formal complaint about one of your senior leaders has just landed on your desk. Now, it has to jump to the top of your list because the stakes feel suddenly high.
Everyone is scanning for risk. HR worries about the response. Legal worries about exposure. Executives worry about reputation, morale, and precedent. And somewhere in the background sits a high‑impact leader who may be shocked, defensive, ashamed, or possibly even clueless.
I’m an Austin-based executive coach. Before this work I was both a large agency owner and a psychotherapist. I’ve seen this dynamic from every angle — supporting people who raised complaints, managing complaints about fellow senior leaders, and being on the receiving end of difficult feedback myself. Today, I help organizations navigate these moments with a broader perspective, more clarity and less collateral damage.
This is often the moment when external, experienced support makes the most sense — creating containment, relief, and forward movement when everything feels tense and stalled.
The Urge to Make It Go Away
Everyone wants to mitigate the fallout — and that urge makes sense. Reputations, relationships, and trust can feel suddenly fragile. But, all too often, that looks like "How can we make this go away?" instead of "How can we understand what's happening?"
Avoiding the bigger picture doesn’t reduce risk — it compounds it. The underlying issues will persist and the risk will increase.
The Bigger Picture
By the very nature of the org chart, senior leaders' actions have a large ripple effect across the whole group. And while the complaint may only point to a momentary misstep, it might also be highlighting an unexamined blind spot, or pointing to a leadership style that has slowly become misaligned with current demands.
When a senior leader complaint surfaces, organizations are immediately balancing competing truths: the concern raised and the value the leader brings — institutional knowledge, client relationships, political capital, and often a long history of contribution.
For HR leaders who can stay in that discomfort, the question is not just “What happened?” but “What needs to change — and how do we create the conditions for that to happen?”
That question leads to deeper questions like "Is this about habitual behavior — or about stress, change, or misalignment in the system?"
HR leaders often find themselves caught in a bind — loyalty to the organization and care for the people involved on each side. On one hand, they are responsible for protecting the organization and supporting employees who raise concerns. On the other, they are wary of escalating conflict or speaking truth to power.
Avoidance Is a Common Reaction
Giving direct feedback to a senior leader — especially one with power, tenure, or strong opinions — can be daunting. Waiting can feel safer than intervening, especially when no one is yet certain what the “right” response should be.
The risk is that this no-follow-through response quietly becomes a pattern, doubling down on the strain in the system.
The Costs of Avoidance
While avoidance is understandable, it will cause more problems down the line.
The person who raised the concern can end up feeling dismissed or perceiving complicity. Trust erodes, silos form and future issues are less likely to be raised directly.
For the leader at the heart of the complaint, avoidance is rarely experienced as grace. More often, it lands as awkward distance, guarded interactions, or vague feedback. That's confusing and degrading. If disciplinary action eventually occurs, the leader may feel blindsided — unaware that complaints have been quietly accumulating without direct conversation.
Indeed, what could have been addressed through focused support and course correction may later require formal discipline, separation, or reputational repair.
Ultimately, avoidance buys time but increases risk.
Where Executive Coaching Fits
These tricky, sticky situations are ripe for steady and experienced support.
Coaching can provide a confidential, structured container in which a senior leader can:
Examine their behavior without performative compliance
Understand how their impact is landing — not just what they intended
Identify the internal drivers that may be shaping external behavior
Practice different responses before reputational and organizational damage deepens
For sponsors, coaching allows corrective action without necessarily escalating to formal discipline — creating relief, forward movement, and a clearer path through what can otherwise feel stuck.
When Coaching Is the Right Move
Executive coaching is especially effective as an initial response when:
The complaint is serious but not egregious
There is no established pattern of misconduct
The leader has historically been effective or high‑impact
The organization would incur real cost by losing this leader
The issue involves interpersonal dynamics, communication, or leadership style
In these situations, coaching functions as a stabilizing intervention — one that protects the organization while giving the leader a genuine opportunity to recalibrate.
When the System Leans In, Leaders Regain Stability and Trust
Handled well, a complaint against a senior leader can become a course correction rather than a crisis — tension eases, conversations become more honest, and the organization can move forward without distortion.
Executive coaching offers a way to preserve accountability while bringing steadiness, perspective, and containment to these types of situations that might otherwise escalate.
If you are navigating a sensitive leadership situation and want to think it through carefully, a conversation with an experienced Austin executive coach can offer space to slow things down, think out loud, and clarify next steps before lines are permanently drawn.
