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Why I Walked Away From a Multinational Leadership Role — And Never Looked Back
- Laith Khoury
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
Not long ago, someone told me:
“You made a mistake leaving that multinational leadership role.”
Let me start with this:
No one — and I mean no one — has the right to tell you what you should or shouldn’t regret.
But sometimes, the lessons behind our decisions are worth sharing.
After 15+ years in HR, psychology, leadership strategy, and business consulting, I’d built a strong career with over 20 professional certifications, a postgraduate degree in psychology, and the founding of SpartanSC — a firm still thriving today, proudly serving major names like Intel Corporation, Fork CPA, Silicon Badia, and Sayegh Group.
Three years into building SpartanSC, I accepted a high-level regional role with a multinational company that needed help turning things around. Their 13-person team was underperforming, demotivated, and disconnected.
My own team at SpartanSC supported the move. My family did too.
I was told I’d report to the CHRO. That never happened.
On my first few days, I asked each team member a simple question:
“What does this business actually sell?”
Only one person — the Learning Director in Riyadh — could answer confidently.
That told me everything.
When your own recruitment team doesn’t know what you’re selling, you don’t have a performance problem — you have an identity crisis.
And that was just the surface.
Instead of reporting to the CHRO, I was placed under a COO with a finance background who never once set foot in the office. The internal politics were thick. It became clear I had been brought in not to lead — but to be leveraged in a power struggle I never signed up for.
Despite this, I led.
✅ I repaired a toxic, cliquey team culture.
✅ I debunked a broken psychometric tool draining resources.
✅ I drove performance to 134% of weekly targets, exceeding HQ’s numbers by over 20% in under two months.
And still — I was spoken to like a junior. Overridden. Micromanaged. Undermined.
Meanwhile, SpartanSC — my company, my vision — was still operating without me.
And that’s when it hit me: I had walked away from something I believed in to fix something that didn’t even believe in itself.
So, before the end of my probation period, I made a different choice.
I walked away.
Not because I couldn’t do the job.
Because I refused to lose myself in someone else’s chaos.
I went back to my business. My mission. My people.
And I’ve never once regretted it.
Moral of the story?
You don’t owe anyone your peace for their paycheck.
You don’t need to justify alignment.
And most importantly:
Never let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn’t regret.
Ever.
Good luck out there making the life changing decisions we all will have to make at one time or another.
Best,
Principal Recruitment Strategist at SpartanSC
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