الرئيسية
The firing process is God awful. (No matter how gleefully Mitt Romney
extolled its virtues on the campaign trail.) People hate to cause pain,
so there's major stress involved with letting someone go for
underperformance. Of course this doesn't even come close to the anguish
of the person being fired. Can't this whole process be avoided?
Both
sides may wonder how it ever came to this. Managers question why people
don't see the writing on the wall and voluntarily exit a company.
Employees feel blindsided.
I was in this exact conversation last
week with a coaching client, who had an employee on a serious
development plan. My client's strong desire was that this person would
self-select out rather than having to go through a messy termination
process. However, there was no evidence that this was the case.
I'll
admit that as a manager I've been in that hopeful-wait-and-see place.
And then dismayed when people don't leave on their own. (You know you're
ready for a person to go when their frequent absences make you happy
since that hopefully means interviewing.) My coaching work puts me in
different conversations, and I now see the confusion many employees
feel.
Most people would leave if they knew they were about to be fired.
The
message is usually not nearly as clear as the manager believes it to
be. For one, when we have to deliver negative feedback we often soft
pedal to the point of being downright confusing. Second, there are a lot
of mixed messages leading to a termination with the required
documentation, performance feedback, and remediation time. It's human
nature to believe what we want to believe — and often it's that being
fired could never happen to us. Performance issues can take many elusive
forms, with firing usually due to a cultural or personality mismatch.
Being
fired is so traumatic people never fully recover from it, and it leaves
an aftermath of pain and risk at companies as well. It's far better for
everyone if the employee finds a path to leave on his own accord.
extolled its virtues on the campaign trail.) People hate to cause pain,
so there's major stress involved with letting someone go for
underperformance. Of course this doesn't even come close to the anguish
of the person being fired. Can't this whole process be avoided?
Both
sides may wonder how it ever came to this. Managers question why people
don't see the writing on the wall and voluntarily exit a company.
Employees feel blindsided.
I was in this exact conversation last
week with a coaching client, who had an employee on a serious
development plan. My client's strong desire was that this person would
self-select out rather than having to go through a messy termination
process. However, there was no evidence that this was the case.
I'll
admit that as a manager I've been in that hopeful-wait-and-see place.
And then dismayed when people don't leave on their own. (You know you're
ready for a person to go when their frequent absences make you happy
since that hopefully means interviewing.) My coaching work puts me in
different conversations, and I now see the confusion many employees
feel.
Most people would leave if they knew they were about to be fired.
The
message is usually not nearly as clear as the manager believes it to
be. For one, when we have to deliver negative feedback we often soft
pedal to the point of being downright confusing. Second, there are a lot
of mixed messages leading to a termination with the required
documentation, performance feedback, and remediation time. It's human
nature to believe what we want to believe — and often it's that being
fired could never happen to us. Performance issues can take many elusive
forms, with firing usually due to a cultural or personality mismatch.
Being
fired is so traumatic people never fully recover from it, and it leaves
an aftermath of pain and risk at companies as well. It's far better for
everyone if the employee finds a path to leave on his own accord.