How I Learned To Fire People

When you see “You’re Fired” as a headline you may immediately think of a famous billionaire / TV Star / Politician. For me it’s a little different as over the years I’ve had to let a few people go. If you read my previous post about “When the People That Work for Us Fail, We Have to Blame Ourselves” you know that I take employees not succeeding hard. It’s a lose/lose for sure and never easy.

That said, how do you best handle firing someone? Or laying them off? What is the best way to handle a difficult situation?

Human Resources has a long list of things you need to have done and do whenever you are ending someone’s employment. Verbal Warnings. Written Warnings. Suspensions. Documenting the shortcomings. Policies and Procedures. All of the mechanics of termination. All great and important stuff, especially in today’s “sue 1st ask questions later” environment. I’m sure if you talk to the HR person at your company there’s a check list you’ll be handed if in fact you don’t already know the steps.

What Would HR do? That’s Someone Else’s Article

The HR policies and procures part of terminating someone? Well I’ll leave all of that to the experts with more experience and knowledge of the steps we’re required to follow. Here’s what I learned was most important at the most difficult time, when you’re sitting in front of the employee about to drop the bomb…

Say What You have to Say and Then… Stop talking.

What? Too cold? I don’t mean you should tell them they’re done and walk away. There is a message and a reason you need to convey. It should be pretty clear to the employee why they are losing their job and it probably should be no surprise (see HR paragraph above). Say what you need to say, say it with compassion and conviction. Then stop talking.

Lets face it. The employee isn’t going to understand and let you off the hook. Nothing you can say is going to make this okay for them or you. You didn’t call them in to start a debate and a long discussion into the merits of letting them go and if you’ve done your job properly up to this point, there’s nothing they’re going to say that will change your mind. So the best course of action right now is to say nothing more and become stone faced.

This when you start doing your best impersonation of the Old Man of the Mountain.

It’s hard to do. Saying nothing is a lot harder than stating your case over and over and with 100 different variations on the same theme. But let me ask… Who are you trying to convince? I think maybe it’s you.

Building the worlds best and biggest case for dismissal might make you feel better and allow you to justify firing the employee in your own mind. That said, nothing you say or do at this point is going to make it okay for the employee. You just ended their job and sending them home with no tomorrow in your employ. If you keep talking it may open the floor to discussion and rebuttal and of course, can only ramp up the emotion surely being felt on the both sides.

So how do you fire someone?  Follow procedure, tell them with conviction the reason(s) why and then stop talking.  Let them say whatever they need or want to and then end the meeting. It’s over.

And then go back and think about how we all got in this position, re-read my article on how we fail our employees when they fail, learn a lesson and move on. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t get easier but, it doesn’t have to be a long protracted discussion. Learn the lesson the hard way and promise yourself not to let that happen again.