[phyller]

I think this was another case of the truism that HR doesn't work for you, they work for the company. The pep talk from the HR VP was probably to try to get his honest feelings so they could determine if they really needed to let him go or not. Not so that the CEO could be affected by his feedback.

I also agree, everyone wants to believe they are the type of person who is open-minded and receptive to criticism, but that doesn't mean they actually are.

[matt4077]

I think this is an overused cliché, at least when applied to this situation, I. e. individual top-level executives.

Individuals don’t behave like machines, especially not when dealing with people they have known for a long time. That idea is readily accepted by most anybody when evaluating the CEO here, as far as I can tell, who would seem to be putting his emotions (pride) over the interests of his company. If we readily accept that he is guided by emotions, it’s inconsistent to assume someone in a similar situation (the HR head) would be completely immune from emotions and act machine-like, with Machiavellian calculus.

The only way to make this work would be to posit a difference in the ability of negative emotions to influence us, vs positive—pride vs loyalty, honesty, friendship, etc. since I’ve seen more people lose money loaned to a friend, than make money stealing from friends, or seeing the willingness of people to die rescuing others, I can’t really subscribe to such an arbitrary split.

[phyller]

I'm not sure I understand your point. My thesis was that both the CEO and HR VP were not being guided by emotions, but logic. They didn't feel that their colleague was on board with the CEO's plan. Before they did something that could have negative consequences like firing him, they wanted to see if he was willing to get on board, or if he just fundamentally disagreed and was going to stick to his guns. When he was asked and directly answered, it was clear that he was never going to truly be on board. So he was let go. No emotion required. Though, I do believe humans are emotional more than logical, and I wouldn't be one bit surprised if emotion was involved too.