Firing is Firing

There are a lot of misconceptions about firing employees. Here are some common ones:

• Firing an employee means I have failed as a manager
• Firing is a last resort
• Firing is the final punishment for a bad employee
• Firing is a necessary evil
• Firing means more turnover and turnover is bad
• Firing an employee makes other employees fearful, angry, or sad
• Firing is risky
• Firing means having an ugly confrontation with the employee I am firing
• Firing is mean
• Firing is something you only do to bad people

None of these statements is true. Or, at least, none of them is true when firing is done skillfully in the context of a selective organization.

But right now, you might be looking at some these and thinking, "wait a minute, I think that really is true!" That’s understandable, I used to believe a few of them myself. Our society has attached a lot of stigma and negative emotional baggage to the idea of firing. Plus, at many poorly managed companies employees are fired so ineptly or harshly that it makes these statements seem true. And to make matters worse, some seminars and books teaching management skills actually promote  ideas like these. There are several items on this list that I was taught as gospel when I was first learning to manage. At the time I completely believed them.

But they’re all just a bunch of destructive nonsense. If you think like this, you will never be able to fire effectively, because nobody can do something well if they think it’s hateful, scary, and constitutes failure. That's going to seriously undermine your success as a manager because firing the right people at the right time in the right way is an incredibly important and powerful skill. You can’t be great manager without it.

To get good at firing you need to be able to think clearly about it: why to do it, when to do it, and how to do it. It will be much easier for you think clearly about it if you can clear away all the nasty preconceptions that have become attached to it. In future posts I will address many aspects of firing as a vital tool in building a selective organization.

For now, let us resolve to call firing by its name. We can use the word "fire" without wincing once we remove the stigma from it and see that not only is it necessary to a well-run company, it can also be done thoughtfully, compassionately, and effectively. It is shorter and clearer than bureaucratic code words like "involuntary termination." In fact, the sooner we stop being afraid to say the word "fire" the sooner we will stop being afraid of the idea of firing and the sooner we can start thinking more clearly about how to do it well. This is a lesson we can learn from Harry Potter.

My three kids are fans of the Harry Potter series. In these books the villain is an evil wizard named Voldemort. Almost all the characters in the books are so terrified of Voldemort that they won’t even say his name out loud. They refer to him as "you-know-who." Only Harry is brave enough to call him by his name, which makes everyone else very uncomfortable. What they don’t realize is that as long as they can’t bring themselves to say Voldemort’s name they will remain too terrified to prepare themselves to confront him. Their habit of avoiding his name reinforces their fear and robs them of their strength. Once they start saying his name out loud they start regaining some confidence and a sense of power and they can start thinking clearly about how to deal with him. The lesson is: if you want to gain mastery over something, say it’s name plainly and discuss it directly, don’t make up code words for it and talk around it.

That is why, in this blog, we will refer to firing as firing.