Washington (CNN) As Reince Priebus was approaching his final days in the West Wing, staffers had a running joke: if you got between the frenzied chief of staff and the Oval Office, you risked being run over as he darted from meeting to meeting, hoping to force himself into President Donald Trump's good graces.

John Kelly, who now finds his standing in the White House similarly fractured, has adopted a different approach. Sources inside the West Wing say Kelly has attempted no such effort to insert himself into the President's daily interactions. Now less engaged in West Wing decisions and less visible in Trump's day-to-day, Kelly has found himself on a downward slide, sources familiar with the situation said.

Though Kelly used to hold senior staff meetings in his office three times a week, the chief of staff has reduced those to one per week, preferring instead to hold smaller meetings with fewer staffers throughout the day, a source with knowledge of the meetings tells CNN.

Kelly was initially expected to quiet a chaotic West Wing by instilling order and restraining an impulsive President. But his limited influence has been on full display in recent weeks as Trump has shown himself more unleashed than ever. Just this week, he lashed out at the special counsel, his attorney general and his deputy attorney general as part of a larger outburst during a meeting with senior military officials that was supposed to focus on his administration's response to Syria.

Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, was horrified at the highly charged display, according to one person familiar with his reaction.

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