Michael Lombardi encourages organizations to hire slow and fire fast. Yes, the football guru is echoing these days an important lesson found in many books, articles and speeches. It's frustratingly clear, however, that some folks in leadership positions still have difficulty learning this lesson.
The coming recession will find more people competing for far fewer jobs. For a little better and much, much worse, economic conditions will advantage employers over employees and job candidates. Nonetheless, leaders will still wait too long - years, sometimes - to remove individuals whose chronic abusiveness, negativity, unreliability or inflexibility risk metastasizing throughout the organization and causing significant damage. Chief among the items on any damage report of this kind is losing talented and productive employees who simply will not work with malignant bosses and colleagues and hold the organization in contempt for harboring them and not seeing the obvious. Even in a recession, very talented people have options and they will leave.
Of course, firing somebody is never an easy or welcome task. There are proper and caring ways to do so, however. Failing to do it because a leader fears, for example, losing the revenue that some very difficult people can seem to produce in the short term while all else burns around them is no excuse. Neither is the fear of litigation, as long as the firing process is undertaken correctly. More often than not, some folks in leadership positions just fear having difficult conversations with people who so clearly need intervention, counseling and course correction.
Here are six suggestions to help you fire fast, once you've given the individual a fair and helpful chance to change:
Unfortunately, most people don't change very much as adults, despite our hopes to the contrary. It's possible that the individual will not be able or willing to change. With a fair process undertaken and documented, however, the individual should be fired. (To foist him or her onto another unit within the same organization is not the right move, by the way.) I can think of many cases over the years in which a leader was far too slow in recognizing a poisonous personality and even slower in doing something about it.
The problem should be identified within three to six months of employment and resolved within nine to 12 months of employment. Even that timeframe seems like a luxury to leaders serious about building an organization and a culture about which they can be proud. Instead, these issues often linger unaddressed for two, three or more years - or not at all - before something explodes and there is no choice but to terminate. Sadly, the destruction these extremely difficult people leave behind is incalculable.
How does an organization hire somebody like that in the first place? Sometimes, they just move too fast. Too often we hear the refrain, "I just need to get someone in here," as if filling an important position is just another checklist item along with ordering new computers. You don't simply want someone; you need the right kind of person.
In that spirit, here are four suggestions to help you hire slow:
The coming recession will find more people competing for far fewer jobs. For a little better and much, much worse, economic conditions will advantage employers over employees and job candidates. Nonetheless, leaders will still wait too long - years, sometimes - to remove individuals whose chronic abusiveness, negativity, unreliability or inflexibility risk metastasizing throughout the organization and causing significant damage. Chief among the items on any damage report of this kind is losing talented and productive employees who simply will not work with malignant bosses and colleagues and hold the organization in contempt for harboring them and not seeing the obvious. Even in a recession, very talented people have options and they will leave.
Of course, firing somebody is never an easy or welcome task. There are proper and caring ways to do so, however. Failing to do it because a leader fears, for example, losing the revenue that some very difficult people can seem to produce in the short term while all else burns around them is no excuse. Neither is the fear of litigation, as long as the firing process is undertaken correctly. More often than not, some folks in leadership positions just fear having difficult conversations with people who so clearly need intervention, counseling and course correction.
Here are six suggestions to help you fire fast, once you've given the individual a fair and helpful chance to change:
- The best leaders know how to read weak signals that somebody is not right for the position, the culture and the organization. They listen and observe. They detect problem before eruption.
- They ask good, probing questions. They help the individual diagnose the problem, if they are capable of doing so.
- They provide coaching and meaningful feedback, often in real-time teachable moments.
- They model in their own words and deeds the behaviors expected from their employees.
- If all else fails, they document the situation and ensuing process in partnership with HR and Legal, as needed, and
- They intervene, provide tough-minded counseling, outline a probationary period tied to specific performance expectations and give the individual a fair opportunity and the support needed to change behaviors and rise to the required standards.
Unfortunately, most people don't change very much as adults, despite our hopes to the contrary. It's possible that the individual will not be able or willing to change. With a fair process undertaken and documented, however, the individual should be fired. (To foist him or her onto another unit within the same organization is not the right move, by the way.) I can think of many cases over the years in which a leader was far too slow in recognizing a poisonous personality and even slower in doing something about it.
The problem should be identified within three to six months of employment and resolved within nine to 12 months of employment. Even that timeframe seems like a luxury to leaders serious about building an organization and a culture about which they can be proud. Instead, these issues often linger unaddressed for two, three or more years - or not at all - before something explodes and there is no choice but to terminate. Sadly, the destruction these extremely difficult people leave behind is incalculable.
How does an organization hire somebody like that in the first place? Sometimes, they just move too fast. Too often we hear the refrain, "I just need to get someone in here," as if filling an important position is just another checklist item along with ordering new computers. You don't simply want someone; you need the right kind of person.
In that spirit, here are four suggestions to help you hire slow:
- Reach real agreement among your team members on highly specific expectations for the position and reporting relationships as well as the type of person to occupy it successfully.
- Ask questions in the interview process that test candidates' emotional intelligence.
- Ask how candidates might handle specific, hypothetical situations involving difficult types of people during interviews, and
- Listen carefully to what references say "between the lines" or don't say at all.
We often have this proposition backwards. Take the right amount of time out of the gate to find a good fit, but move reasonably fast if it turns out that employee is causing real damage. It's a mistake to hire the wrong person. We're all guilty of that one. It's far more egregious, however, not to admit that you are wrong.
Image courtesy of HR Payroll Systems.