The Chameleon

When Public and Private Interfaces Don’t Match

by Jen McCoy

In the world of technology, an "interface" is a shared boundary where two separate components exchange information. For a system to work, that interface must be stable. If you send a command, you expect a consistent result. Leadership works the same way. Your team needs to know that the "you" they speak to in private is the same "you" that shows up in public. When those two versions of a leader disconnect, trust erodes, confusion spreads, and the system begins to fail.I call this leadership archetype The Chameleon. And early in my career, I learned the hard way just how destructive it can be.

The Story of Sarah

I was leading a major initiative to bring automation to our IT support structure. My mandate was clear: modernize our tools, reduce manual overhead, and lower costs. To do this, I had to partner closely with Sarah. Sarah was a Senior Leader over Operations, specifically the Help Desk. She had been in her role for a long time, and her organization reflected that stability. The Help Desk hadn’t changed its mission or processes in years. Her team was comfortable. They knew "the way it’s always been," and they took pride in their manual, high-touch methods, even if those methods were becoming obsolete. On paper, Sarah and I should have been the perfect partners. I was the architect bringing the new tools; she was the operator who needed them to scale. In our one-on-one meetings, Sarah was my biggest cheerleader. We would sit in her office, door closed, and she would nod enthusiastically as I walked through the automation roadmap.

"This is exactly what we need," she would tell me. "My team is drowning in manual work. We have to modernize. I’m with you 100%." I would leave those meetings feeling aligned and confident. I’d go back to my team and say, "Green light. Operations is on board. Let’s push the code."

But then, we would step into a larger room. I remember one specific leadership session with her direct reports present. I presented the exact same plan Sarah had praised just days before. But as soon as her managers started grumbling—expressing fear that automation would make their jobs harder or less personal—Sarah shifted colors. She didn’t defend the plan. She didn’t reiterate the vision she had shared with me. Instead, she leaned back, mirrored their concern, and said, "Well, we have to be very careful not to disrupt the secret sauce of this team. We can't just automate everything."

I sat there, stunned. The person who had told me "we have to modernize" was now publicly signaling "we must protect the status quo."

The result was organizational chaos. My team was building tools that her team refused to adopt. Her managers were telling their staff, "Don't worry, Sarah won't let this happen," while I was telling my stakeholders, "Sarah is fully committed." We were stuck in a loop of wasted effort and friction, all because the interface was inconsistent.

The Root Cause: Why Leaders Become Chameleons

It is easy to label leaders like Sarah as "liars" or "manipulative," but that is often too simple. In my experience, the Chameleon is rarely acting out of malice. They are usually acting out of fear. The Chameleon is often a leader who is deeply uncomfortable with conflict. They define "leadership" as "agreement."

1. The Peacekeeper Trap Many Chameleons grew up—either in childhood or in their early careers—believing that their safety depended on being liked by everyone in the room. They may have been the middle child who had to mediate between fighting parents, or the junior employee who was punished for delivering bad news. They learned that survival meant mirroring the strongest emotion in the room.

2. The Imposter Syndrome Deep down, a Chameleon often fears they don't have the authority or the knowledge to make a definitive call. If they pick a side, they might be wrong. So, they hedge. They agree with the Innovator (you) because they don't want to look stuck in the past. But they agree with their Team (the status quo) because they don't want to lose their loyalty.

They are trying to be all things to all people, not realizing that in leadership, if you try to please everyone, you end up protecting no one.

How to Detect a Chameleon

As an emerging leader, you need to spot this behavior early before it derails your projects. Here are the "glitch" signals to watch for:

• The "Offline" Deferral: In public meetings, when a hard decision comes up, they constantly say, "Let’s take this offline." They rarely state a firm position in front of a crowd.

• The Echo Chamber: You notice that they tend to agree with the last person they spoke to. If you speak to them last, they agree with you. If their nervous manager speaks to them last, they agree with them.

• The "Vibe" Mismatch: Your gut tells you something is off. You hear rumors that their team believes the project is optional, even though the project plan says it’s mandatory.

Strategies: Working With (and Overcoming) the Chameleon

If you find yourself partnered with a Sarah, you cannot rely on verbal trust alone. You have to build a system that forces consistency.

1. Document the Private Interface After every 1:1 where they agree to a change, send a summary email immediately. "Sarah, great chat. Just to confirm, we agreed that your team will adopt the new tool by March 1st. I will proceed with the build based on this." Make the invisible visible.

2. Force the Public Collision (Gently) Do not let them play both sides. In meetings, respectfully pin down their stance. You might say, "Sarah, earlier we discussed that automation is critical for hitting our budget goals. Can you help the team understand how this change fits into that vision?" Invite them to repeat their private words in the public square.

3. Don't Take It Personally This was my biggest lesson. I used to get angry at Sarah. I thought she was sabotaging me. Eventually, I realized she was just scared. Once I understood that, I stopped looking to her for validation and started leading through the ambiguity.

4. Be the Constant The antidote to a Chameleon is consistency. If they are shifting colors, you must be the solid rock. Be the leader whose "public" and "private" interfaces are identical. It might make you less popular in the short term—people don't always like hearing hard truths—but in the long run, it builds the one thing the Chameleon can never have: Trust.

The Cost of the Chameleon Trap

If you are reading this and feel a twinge of recognition—if you have ever found yourself nodding along with a plan you didn't believe in just to keep the peace—you need to know where this road ends. Becoming a Chameleon feels like a survival strategy. It feels like "diplomacy." But in a technical organization, where systems rely on binary truths (it works or it doesn’t), ambiguity is technical debt. And like all debt, eventually, the bill comes due.

When you fall into the Chameleon trap, three things happen to your leadership "operating system":

1. You Introduce Latency When your team knows that your "Yes" in a meeting might turn into a "Maybe" in the hallway, they stop moving fast. They hesitate. They wait for confirmation. They double-check. You become the bottleneck in your own organization because no one trusts the first signal you send.

2. You Get Bypassed This is the most painful consequence. Smart employees (especially high-performing engineers and problem solvers) despise ambiguity. If they realize you will not defend a decision, they will stop bringing decisions to you. They will start going around you to your boss, or they will make decisions in secret. You retain the title of "Leader," but you lose the permission to lead. You become a "Pass-Through Entity"—routing data but adding no value.

3. You Lose Yourself The ultimate cost is internal. When you spend 40 hours a week suppressing your true strategic thoughts to mirror the room, you eventually forget what you actually think. You lose your "Source Code." I have seen brilliant strategists turn into empty suits because they spent a decade avoiding the friction required to sharpen their own ideas.

The hard truth is this: It is better to be respected and disagreed with than to be liked and ignored.