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Classics: How Do You Know It’s Time to Fire an Employee: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Dec 03, 2024

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we revisit our conversation about when it’s time to say goodbye to an employee. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Strategic Counsel Summary
  • Transcript

Strategic Counsel: Classics: How Do You Know It’s Time to Fire an Employee

People decisions are hard to make for many managers & leaders. Making the choice to fire an employee can be difficult, other than obvious egregious misconduct. So often, team members are kept on – especially if they are a high performer – when they should really be let go. Rather than keeping someone on the payroll who could be harming your team, listen in & learn how to clearly identify when it’s time to say goodbye. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • 4 things to look out for when deciding whether to fire an employee
  • The celebrity bar scene in Nashville
  • The role of trust in the workplace
  • Deciding what you’re willing to concede to
  • How to tell if someone is objectively underperforming?

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

  • Classics: How Do You Know It’s Time to Fire an Employee
    • [0:32] Welcome to Strategic Counsel: Classics
    • [1:24] It can be hard to decide when to let someone go
    • [2:20] The role of trust in this process
    • [6:48] Are they degrading teams and cultures within your organization?
    • [7:09] Am I feeling anxiety they’re going to deliver on time?
    • [8:07] Do they refuse to be managed?
    • [12:36] Who delivers while being teachable?
    • [14:23] Are they on board with team culture?
    • [16:13] Culture is too easily broken
    • [18:32] What else is going to be a surprise to me or what else is going to undermine it?
    • [19:56] Do they consistently fail to meet expectations?
    • [23:12] How we define success based on our expectations is different
    • [25:51] Expectations have to be built-in and communicated
    • [27:10] Recap of how you know it’s time to fire an employee
    • In the Trenches
    • [28:12] One of my employees is always late on deliverables and sees me making bad priority calls, but the work is actually pretty good. Should I fire him?
    • [31:49] Working with creative folks
    • [35:50] How long should you try to fix it before deciding to fire someone?
    • [41:06] What do I need to consider legal-wise when thinking about firing someone?
    • [44:55] What do we do with this person?
    • [49:11] How do you objectively judge that someone is underperforming?
    • [51:55] What things are we willing to give on vs. not?
    • Strategic Counsel Shoutouts
    • [53:50] The celebrity bar scene in Nashville
    • [57:53] Creating an experience of connection
    • [1:01:13] When is it time to fire an employee?

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01

Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team, and your business. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast.

 

00:31

I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we have another Classics episode that coincides with a recent new episode we did all around the topic of how to recruit top talent in this competitive landscape. And today’s episode is what happens on the other side when it’s time to part ways with someone in your company. We have you covered there as well with this episode, How Do You Know It’s Time to Fire an Employee?

 

00:57

This can be an incredibly hard decision to make, and having a framework for evaluation is key to assessing the situation from an objective lens that will then ensure you’re evaluating the right things in making this decision. Hear about how we approach this assessment, especially when it isn’t as clear cut as egregious behavior that cannot be accepted in the workplace, and is more gray with arguments on many sides. And with that, let’s get to how do you know it’s time to fire an employee.

 

01:24

A real uplifting episode, but very important. Very important one, we think. Happy holidays. Yes. I mean, and the reason why is because people decisions are probably some of the hardest ones we need to make as managers, leaders, and owners, which is why one of the biggest mistakes these same managers, leaders, and owners say they make is keeping people too long. Yeah, and besides egregious misconduct, it can be really hard to decide when this point is, especially when you’re not in the same place.

 

01:53

if within our personal brand we tend to be highly empathetic or peacemakers. So we plan to dig in to very clear signs that it’s time to fire an employee to help make this path a little shorter and a little easier. And note that we’re using employees here as like our kind of our catch-all, but this can be frankly anyone you have contracted to do work for you, whether it’s an agency, a freelancer.

 

02:20

or even volunteers, and that’s a hard one because you’re not actually paying them, but sometimes you need to fire volunteers too. Yep. All right, with that, let’s get into, how do you know it’s time to fire an employee? First, you can’t trust them. Yes, and trust- Easy enough. Yeah, very, easier said than done, Bob. Yeah, right? Yeah, very fair. But trust is imperative in any productive relationship, and if you can’t trust a person, you really, really need to say goodbye.

 

02:47

And being untrustworthy can show up in a number of different ways. So first, if there’s unpredictable behavior and actions for this person. So if you can’t trust that they will behave appropriately in front of clients and a team setting and stakeholder management engagements, you name it, they become more of a liability than an asset. So you have to say goodbye to that. You can’t take the risk that they’re going to go rogue in the middle of a very important meeting, all right?

 

03:13

The second is they have incomplete deliverables or they’ve missed deadlines. And this is really, really like a very crux one because if they aren’t achieving the basic function for what you hired them for, which is deliverables, I guess a deadline, then there is no trust there, right? And that is like the reason reason that they are there. Third is they undermine the team and the culture of the team.

 

03:39

And again, this comes down to the trust and cohesiveness of your team in general. You can’t build a highly functioning team if someone is going rogue again all the time and revealing what’s going on in your team or talking about team members with others, especially in a negative way, and especially in a pursuit of gaining some sort of advantage. And then there’s obviously the ones that we all kind of think about when we think about trust, which is lying and stealing and negligence and misconduct.

 

04:07

Those are the little bit more straightforward reasons and the very big reasons why you can’t trust somebody. But the other ones seem to be a little bit softer, a little bit harder to quantify. Now, what you need to be making sure of is that you’re being honest with yourself, that you are indeed setting clear expectations and providing direct feedback on what is acceptable behavior and actions, what is acceptable quality of deliverables and timings.

 

04:33

And then what is what you expect of the team culture? If you’re not setting those basic expectations, it’s really hard to gauge whether or not that person is actually being conducive to your behaviors and actions, your culture, your deliverables. And then also, you have to be very careful that you’re being consistent in these because that’s the other trap that you fall into is that sometimes you are…

 

04:57

doing it one way, one day, and the next day, you totally change it up. And if somebody can’t consistently predict and be able to establish how they’re supposed to behave within your expectations, you can’t build trust either because they don’t know what the trust is. Yes, and I, you know, when Anne wrote this episode and I read this first one, I chuckled because it seems so obvious, right? But I think the really unfortunate thing is then as I take a step back and I think about it,

 

05:27

there are so very many instances where you clearly cannot trust someone, and yet that person keeps getting away with it over and over and over again. And I’ve talked before on the show about how agencies typically don’t have really great HR protocols, that we aren’t built like corporate agencies and there isn’t as much infrastructure from that standpoint. And so…

 

05:54

this very foundational thing around trust, where you would call someone to the mat much more quickly or earlier or whatever in your personal life, right? You don’t do it in the work environment and you don’t do it especially if there aren’t like hard and fast rules against it. And so because trust is one of those things that yes is so foundational, but is also just so subjective, I guess, in some ways.

 

06:23

around diagnosing that that’s the problem. And so I think that this one really shouldn’t be what it was for me at first of just like, oh, well, of course, when you really dig into it and you think about it, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times we had people that had bad behavior in meetings, didn’t show up with what they were supposed to, all the things that Ann is talking about here, multiple times over long periods of time.

 

06:48

and they still kept their job. And I think that this one really is the core of degrading teams and cultures within organizations because it is so foundational to who we are as people and our relationships, that it is a very big indicator of whether things are going to go right or wrong more broadly than just in the situation of this one person.

 

07:09

Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, like, sometimes it’s hard to diagnose. The way that I always could diagnose whether it was a trust issue is if I felt anxiety in situations where I’m like, oh, this person’s going to be in this meeting. Am I worried that they’re going to say something that they shouldn’t say? I have this big deadline coming up and I’m having this person on. Am I worried? Am I feeling anxiety that they’re going to deliver on time? I mean, that is how you start kind of…

 

07:39

diagnosing that you have a trust issue. If you’re not like, oh yeah, not a problem, I’ll just give them a couple of pieces of feedback in how I want to manage this, or how I want to show up here, or how I want this deliverable done, and it’s not gonna be a huge issue. There’s an absence of anxiety, that’s the thing that you’re looking for, but that’s the way you want to feel. But if you’re feeling that anxiety, it’s almost always a trust issue. Oh, absolutely. All right.

 

08:07

How do you know it’s time to fire an employee number two? They refuse to be managed. And the word refuse is so very choiceful here. It’s very choiceful. And I’m going to tell a personal story that’s going to totally exemplify that. But I just want to be clear, though, that this doesn’t mean that they’re not responding well to your micromanaging, because nobody would. So you have to be reasonable in the fact that.

 

08:32

You know, people need to be managed in certain way and you gotta make sure that it’s actually not you. But what we mean here is that there’s an inherent disregard or a lack of respect for the structure, for the rules of engagement, for processes in general, or for the people around them, and they don’t respond well to feedback. That is like the really big piece of this here, okay? Now, admittedly, and I know this is gonna come to a huge surprise to everybody,

 

09:01

and everybody who knows me from PNG days is gonna laugh is that I was actually very hard to manage. I know, it’s a big shocker, I know. But I was always trying to push the status quo. I had a very direct approach. I didn’t take well to the world no at all, all right? So I was kind of like, you know, my managers would tell me, be like, oh gosh. I mean, it’s just, they just knew that, you know, I was always gonna be pushing it. But I did have respect that there was a limit.

 

09:30

and in a boundary and I accepted the feedback that if I was told I was going too far that I needed to pull back, right? So I always respected the fact that I had a boss that there was a structure that I could push to a certain point But once I was like gotten to that point I had to pull that back and that was my own self-awareness that I had to make sure that I was honoring that now the good thing is is that

 

09:54

I had really good results, right? So they allowed me to push a little bit more because I always delivered and I delivered in a big way. So they gave me a little bit of grace, but like I said, I had to earn that grace too. I couldn’t go in day one and just like really push it. I had to kind of like prove myself along the way. And I’m like, remember you said that before, look what I did and I was able to do that. I’m like, all right, here’s a little bit more leash. Here’s a little bit more leash, okay? Now I say all that to make the distinction that people can be difficult.

 

10:24

to manage or they can be trying to manage. But if the response of the feedback, correction and guidance, then they are manageable. You may just need to become a better manager. And that’s what we talk about a lot about, there’s good managers and there’s bad managers. A lot of people have their ideal person that they like to manage that makes it easy for them. But most of the people that you actually want to work for you are going to push the status quo. They are going to be going up against it. There are going to be like trying to bring new thinking in and you should embrace that.

 

10:53

I also want to make the other point that this has nothing to do with whether or not you like the person or not. You really need to not confuse likeability with manageability. I know we all would like to love the people that would work for us. I have not liked everybody that worked for me. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate managing some of the people that worked for me. But I would not want to go out and have a glass of wine with that person after work. But I did appreciate the results that they were able to bring. I appreciated the role they were playing.

 

11:20

on the team, so don’t let your personal feelings interfere with making the right decision here. Yeah, I mean, I think all of those are really good points and I think that this one, the setup is right of making sure first that it isn’t a you issue or a personality issue. Because like Ann just said, you don’t necessarily like everyone that works for you. You also…

 

11:49

maybe aren’t always the best manager for people that you don’t necessarily like all that much. And so I think you have to take a look at yourself first, but I do think that the first two points around the inherent disregard or lack of respect for the structure and how you want people to perform and then not taking feedback based on what those expectations are, those are the really critical things.

 

12:16

I think when you boil it down to that, it gives you a lens to look through where you can fairly quickly assess that because I do think that there are a lot of people that don’t play well with others and it really is for those very specific.

 

12:36

reasons. They think that they know the way to do it and they think if they bulk the system and they’re the squeakiest wheel and all these things. Well, they know better than everybody else, right? Yeah. Yeah. That they can get their way. And in fact, they’ve probably had success. So that’s the point of this episode, right, is to make sure that we’re all clear on not letting people get away with the behavior for so long and firing them when it really should happen. And so I think that…

 

13:02

If you look through that lens and you approach it from that more objective standpoint, you can get to whether it is a refusal or some other indicator that’s going on. Yeah, I think that is a really good point that you have to really manage the fact too that you can have personality conflicts. The objective here is not to make everybody just like you or make everybody little carbon copies of you, but to bring out the

 

13:31

the best in people and sometimes it’s good to, you know, kind of fuel that rebelliousness and you know, and that could be a really good way to spark your organization or spark your culture but it’s the crux of it is always, I’m going to probably use that word a lot today, the crux of it is always they are not willing to accept the feedback and adjust accordingly when you provide it out there.

 

13:56

assuming you’ve set, again, very clear directions and expectations for how to behave within the organization, because they can’t read your mind. Yeah, and also don’t take the excuse that this is just who I am. Oh, yes. Yeah, if you’re going to take that excuse, you have to go back and listen to all the personal brand episodes that we have and do all the personal brand worksheets, and then we’ll have that conversation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. How do you know it’s time to fire an employee?

 

14:24

Number three, they can’t get on board with the team culture. April. Always the culture police. Culture police, here we go. Yeah. Well, and I mean here, you know, the saying about one bad apple is really true, but it can also be a little bit judgmental because it assumes the person is then doing something wrong and this may or may not be the case. It might just be.

 

14:49

that it’s not a good fit with the culture. So similar to how we talk about personal brand that your characteristics are neither good nor bad, that’s similar to what we’re saying here is they are who they are and that doesn’t fit with the culture of the organization. So for example, and this is always the example that I love, if your team’s culture is candor and a person can’t give or accept feedback and doesn’t have a willingness to get comfortable to that because that isn’t next.

 

15:15

anyone’s natural state of comfort. I always love that excuse too. I just, I really don’t like confrontation. Yeah. That’s gonna be a cause for dysfunction, right? So as people start to try to interact with a person that is not going to get on board with the candor of the team, you’re gonna have all kinds of breakdowns both for those people and for you as the manager and for the person that is on the team. And so…

 

15:45

I think that a lot of times because we want to err on the side of not building teams where we’re all exactly alike or all the inclusivity. Yeah, yeah. Not cutting somebody out because they’re different or making sure that everyone feels appreciated and valued. I mean, those are all important things to some degree, right? But here what we’re saying is it’s the person that just…

 

16:13

when they’re in the room to the earlier point and made about anxiety, that you all of a sudden your anxiety spikes because you’re like something’s gonna happen. Right? And when it comes to culture, culture is a really hard thing to build and a really easy thing to break. And so making sure that you hold yourself and your team accountable, every member regardless of whether you have someone that’s a little bit more of a black sheep.

 

16:41

You have to make sure that you hold them to that. And okay, if they have a hard time, but they’re willing to get training or practice, if it’s a confrontation thing, or if it’s giving feedback in general, I just don’t like to do that, or I have a hard time taking it, but you can get them to work on it, that’s a different thing. But if it’s something that you can’t change, then it just kind of is what it is, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then the other thing I’ll say on this is,

 

17:09

It’s also really hard if the person is a strong performer. Yeah. Because you want people, right, like we said earlier, that are gonna be able to meet the deliverables and the timelines, and those people can be hard to find as well. And so when you get someone like that that’s a strong performer, there’s also a lot of times more allowances around that person and their personality and how they fit with the culture. And so…

 

17:36

Again, because culture is a hard thing to build and easy thing to break, you really need to look more on terms of fit with the culture above and beyond and before whether they’re able to deliver their work. Yeah, and I mean, I’ve told this story before too, but this was my situation when I came into fabric care and I was brought in because I was a strong performer, but I was not fitting in with the culture. And I was told on very…

 

18:04

very clear terms that if I couldn’t get on board with the culture, I was going to be moved because the culture was more important than any one person. And that is so important, especially as a manager, a boss, an owner to realize is that you’re only as strong as your culture and as strong as your team. And if you let somebody in that’s gonna put a chink in the armor, then everybody’s going to realize that

 

18:32

now the whole thing has been weakened. And then you kind of see some dissension start to happen because people are like, now what I thought this was is not what I think it is. And so what else is going to be like a surprise to me or what else is going to undermine it? And then the trust is all again broken down and that cohesiveness that you need in order to build strong team culture starts to really diminish.

 

18:58

And then your reputation as being a leader also starts to diminish because they’re like, you let this person in, they’re causing like all this havoc and you’re doing it at the sacrifice of the rest of us. Do the rest of us not mean anything to you? Because you’re kind of making it seem like that that person’s important, nobody else matters. And if you need any other examples of this, look at any sport team. I mean, look at any basketball team, look at any football team and just, you can pinpoint.

 

19:26

When you think about the team and the team structure and the team culture, when you have that one person who believes it’s all about them, even if they happen to be a strong performer, the whole thing breaks down. So I can’t think of anything else that’s more important than making sure you maintain your culture. And if somebody cannot fit within that, they have to be, and they can’t be managed in order to do that appropriate, which I was managed, I wanted to change and I did.

 

19:56

then you have to say goodbye. Yep. All right, how do you know it’s time to fire an employee number four? They consistently fail to meet expectations, April. And first, you need to have clearly set expectations. Very important. So let’s start there again on you as the manager to have clearly set expectations. But we also know that expectations can vary by the role, by the person, all of those types of things. So that’s where we can get a little bit gray.

 

20:24

So for example, some people you hire because they produce what’s expected reliably and consistently. So for example, tradesmen, electricians, plumbers, roofing guys, contractors, you hire them because they can consistently and reliably deliver a service. If they show up on time and they maintain an acceptable level of customer service, then they meet the expectation. If they don’t, they don’t meet the expectation. Those ones are pretty straightforward, right? But…

 

20:53

As we mentioned earlier, people need to meet the expectation for which they were hired. And this is the contract that they and you enter into. And this is something that you can always come back to when it is being broken because when you accept that job description and you sign the paperwork to work for the company, you are entering into the contract to do the job you have been hired to do. Now will they meet expectations on day one?

 

21:19

No, probably not. They’ll need onboarding and training and learning the culture of the organization and acclimating to the way it’s done at your organization. But expectations should be articulated for how long they have to make this happen in addition to what the expectations are. And you can usually figure this out based on people that have been in that role previously or how you’ve watched others be onboarded. I mean, they’re usually

 

21:48

things you can look to to say, oh, this should generally take this amount of time. And we would finally say, make sure the expectations are reasonable, appropriate, and achievable. If you’re setting unrealistically high expectations that nobody can meet, then that is, again, on you as the manager. If you expect everyone to be a very high achiever, you are going to end up disappointed. We are not all high achievers in this world, maybe in this room, but not in this world. And this is also on you. So again,

 

22:16

We talked before about making sure that you, you know, turn the lens on yourself and make sure that you are clearly setting expectations and timing against which they need to be met. But outside of that, you need to be consistently checking in and ensuring that the person is working toward the goal of meeting expectations regularly and pragmatically with the timeline in mind, or checking in to make sure that they are consistently doing so once they’re up to speed.

 

22:46

Yeah, and I think your example of the tradesman is a good one because it just clearly brings forth that, like, not all expectations are necessarily created equal. No. So for example, like, you know, you and I both have cleaning people, your expectations for what success looks like for your cleaning person is different than what mine is. Mine is like, if they come in and everything is clean, it may not be exactly the way I would do it, but it’s all clean and I don’t have to do it. Yep.

 

23:12

If it has to be like, you know, down to like the T and like, you know, not like seeing anything here, you know, and that’s you. What are you saying, Harriette? I’m just saying we have different expectations, right? But you clearly articulated yours to yours. I’ve clearly taken mine to mine. But our success and how we define success based on our expectations is different. And I think that’s really, really important to understand about all your employees because a lot of times we get into the trap of thinking.

 

23:37

Everybody, like you said, has to be an A performer. And if they’re not an A performer, then they’re somehow lacking. Well, maybe your job doesn’t require them to be like a very exuberant overachiever. Maybe they just need to do like the status quo and be able to do a really good job at that and a reliable job at that in order to be able to meet expectations. So don’t set your expectations like that they have to be overly…

 

24:02

produced and overly, and such a high performance for every single task you have, because it will lead to disappointment, because you’re not gonna be able to find people like that, nor do you necessarily need people like that, and nor can you necessarily keep those kind of people happy in the jobs that they’re producing or what you need them to do if they have that mindset. So be realistic that fit the person with the job and set your expectations accordingly.

 

24:31

Yeah, I agree. And I think too that sometimes we take for granted because we have our own expectations, stating those expectations. And what I mean by that is, so for example, I’ll use the cleaning person analogy, right? So I used to share the same cleaning person with my brother. My brother is gone at the office from seven to seven. So as long as she was in and out during that time of the day, it was totally fine.

 

25:01

For me, I was waiting around for her to arrive at eight. She never would get there at eight. It would always be 815, 830, and I would go through the roof to the point where I finally had to be like, look, if you can’t be on time, this isn’t gonna work. And so same family, totally different expectations. And I think it just illustrates the point of making sure that you’re clear on what you.

 

25:26

value as a manager and what those hot buttons potentially are and building those into the expectations because for me Promptness is a really big one. Yeah, and I’ve always been the type of manager that’s like I understand things happen from time to time and all that kind of stuff But I don’t really take very many excuses for being late It’s just not and and I’m not late. I mean I

 

25:51

start to freak out when I’m gonna be five minutes late for our weekly three hour meeting with me and Anne. Like, you know? And so I think those things have to be built in and communicated as well. Even if they’re different across the organization, you as the manager need to set those expectations and state, you know, this is something that is very, very important to me and that I value and is part of the culture of our team. And I find it disrespectful if you don’t do it. Yeah, I think that’s totally right on because what a lot of people will do is one, they’ll be passive aggressive about it.

 

26:21

they won’t state that the expectation. Yes, exactly. But then they’ll hold within him some sort of disappointment that this person did not uphold some sort of expectation that they never clearly articulated. Yeah. Or if you don’t have that expectation, if being late is fine, then you can’t ding people for being late. Right. Or if you’re late all the time. So yeah, so you have to muddle the behavior that you want people to follow, for one. But two, it was like,

 

26:49

It’s totally fine then if you’re like, if you’re five minutes late, okay, that’s why we run on Hawaii time. Or we run on like whatever, you know, like we get there, we get there. Now. Hawaii time, that would be hours. Yeah, well, you know, that’s why I said, it’s like whenever you’re there, you started like, you know, it never mattered. It’s like, oh, we’re on Hawaii time. It’s like, all right, okay, whatever. Well, this Hawaii girl wants to go back for a drink, but okay. All right, so just to recap, how do you know it’s time to fire an employee? You can’t trust them.

 

27:16

Trust is imperative in any productive relationship if you can’t trust a person’s time to say goodbye. Refuse to be managed, they have an inherent disregard or lack of respect for structure, rules of engagement, process in general, and other people around them, and they don’t respond well to feedback. Or they can’t get on board with the team culture. There’s no judgment here, but they’re just not a good fit with the culture, then they may not be a good fit to keep with you and your organization.

 

27:44

or they consistently fail to meet expectations. People need to meet the expectation for which they were hired. That’s the reason why you hired them. But you need to make sure that you set expectations. All right, our next assignment’s In the Trenches, where we give real world examples and they’re specific to industries and situations, but with broad application for anyone to digest and put into action, and we’re probably gonna have a lot of good examples from our world. All right, first In the Trenches question.

 

28:12

One of my employees is always late on deliverables and sees me making bad priority calls, but the work is actually pretty good. Should I fire him? All right, so here again is where we say, have you been clear in writing down, not just talking them. Documenting, yep. Writing them down and sharing your deliverables and the priorities for which you want them to a bye-bye.

 

28:35

This is really, really important because this is your reference point. This is your reference point. And then the contract as we talked about for you and for them in order to make sure that expectations are being met. All right. So if you have cleared to find those, then maybe you can play the game a little bit because if they are a good performer, it may be worth cutting them a little bit of slack and seeing if you can manage it a little bit differently. All right. So let’s talk about a couple of ways that you can do this.

 

29:03

So first you can try building in a little bit of cushion. So if the work you really need to be done by Friday, for example, you might tell him that you need to work on Tuesday. Right, so you build in a little bit of cushion, knowing that they’re gonna be a little bit late, then that might work in order to get them to actually deliver it when you actually need it. You may need to set up some more frequent check-ins to assess progress so that there are no surprises to you.

 

29:31

So some people you might be able to meet once a week with. Some people might need to meet twice a week with in order just to make sure, hey, are you getting this? Is it, you know, where are we on this? Making sure they didn’t get distracted, making sure they didn’t get off track. I mean, a lot of people, especially creatives, tend to do that where they kind of go down into a little bit of a hole, and you have to kind of bring them back out, right? So you need to make sure that they’re kind of keeping on track. Nothing wrong with that. You just have to be more mindful about it. You could choose to tie his compensation

 

30:01

to on-time delivery. Incentivize him for this, incentivize for that delivery that could work really, really well. If he has to put in an all-nighter in order to deliver it because he’s a procrastinator, that’s on him. That’s not on you. You should not feel sorry that he had to stay up all night. And when he tells you, I had to stay up all night to get this done on time, great, that’s your job. You have to choose to procrastinate, you choose to procrastinate, all right? Now, make sure also that they understand that when their piece is late, how it impacts everything.

 

30:29

A lot of times we get so narrowly focused on our portion of the deliverable that we forget that other people are actually part of this puzzle too. So make sure that they’re clear about that. Sometimes when they have some empathy for how their piece is impacting the overall project in general or other people’s pieces, that tends to give them a little bit more of appreciation for delivering on time.

 

30:53

Also evaluate if they’re hurting the culture. Back to what we were just saying before, if you start condoning lateness, then everybody is going to register that that is not a big deal for you, all right? So one or two things can happen. Either one, everybody else starts being late, and then that just starts being a cascading effect of your inability to set that as an expectation.

 

31:19

or they get disgruntled because they’re all on time and you’re allowing this other person to be late all the time. So now you’re being inconsistent and it could potentially cause a culture issue here. But at the end of the day, if you tried a lot of these things and if the person doesn’t adjust or you find yourself really over-investing your time and energy to the detriment of your productivity, to the detriment of your team, you may just need to let them go. Yeah, and this one is a little tricky because it does play in the nuances a little bit and

 

31:49

can allow you to try some different things in order to get the person on track. And I will say my friend Gina is one of the most masterful project manager resource allocator type people that I’ve ever worked with in my life. Because to the point about creative folks, right? You get…

 

32:10

all different kinds of personalities and what makes them good and what makes them able to work in the environment they require can be across a huge spectrum. And so one of the things, well, outside of getting to know the ins and outs of, you know, 40 people on the team or whatever, which I found so impressive, the other thing that she did really well was manage people that were just like this, where you could not question that their work was stellar.

 

32:37

but you had to dig into the reason that they weren’t delivering. And so there was one guy I remember really specifically who if you could just give him one thing to do at a time, he always got it done on time and it was really good. Now, his list might actually be 10 things long for the week, but she would just assign him the first thing on the list and then say, this is how much time you have to get it done.

 

33:07

He would get it done, absolutely no problem. If he was in the resource meeting, which we had to opt him out of, and he got to hear all 10 things that he was gonna have to do in the week, he could not handle it. It was just too overwhelming. It was just too much. And so he would spend his time swirling around in his head about what to do first and how to manage it all and how am I ever gonna get this all done and all the stress around all of that, where really he just needed someone to help him with, this is the next thing you need to do.

 

33:36

This is the next thing you need to do. And honestly, I used to joke with her like, you know, you’re pacifying him, you’re treating him differently, all those kinds of things. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t his job truly to manage his schedule. His job was to be a doer of the creative deliverables. And so once she cracked the code on that, he became a top performer. Everybody wanted him on their team because he was super solid.

 

34:06

at getting the creative work done in the right way. You just had to manage how that was going to happen. Now, I will say on the other hand, there have been plenty of folks that you try all this and none of it works. So to the point of this episode, that is not always a possibility, but it is a possibility in certain situations. Yeah, and I think that’s masterfully done too, especially to invest a time in an understanding and being so astute and how these people like to work.

 

34:34

and making it work for everybody, right? Because the other thing is, it’s like you don’t have to treat everybody equally. No. Right? And now it’s like kind of that’s sometimes that’s the rub, but then the expectation is, is like, I don’t treat you guys equally. You know, I treat you guys based on how I need to be treated in order to be able to deliver and be able to deliver and feel good about what you’re delivering. That involves a different level of engagement with each one of you in order to make sure that that happens. Now, as long as people are clear on that,

 

35:04

you know, they should feel good that everything is coming together to create a really big impact. Yeah, and I mean, there was definitely some push and some flack and, you know, you put more on my plate than his, etc., etc. But then to your point, you know, she would go and have the other conversation, which is, look, you get the really big high profile opportunities. Yes, that puts more responsibility on your plate. But the…

 

35:30

That is what you want. That’s what gives you energy, all those types of things. He’s never going to get that because he can’t handle that much work and that much space and that much grayness. He has to be more specifically told. So do you want the type of work he gets, or do you want the type of work you get? And that would usually shut down that conversation. Yeah, that’s really smart. All right, the second in the trenches question, how long should you try to fix it before deciding to fire someone? April, you want to take this one?

 

36:00

My favorite answer, it depends. It sort of depends. It depends on the person in the role and your need and where you are in all of that. So I think both Anne and I can agree that at points in our career, we probably invested in people we thought had potential or were manageable and trainable and had a desire to learn and all of those types of things longer than we probably needed to. And so I will say that.

 

36:25

the amount of time, and this is a blanket statement, right? There can be exceptions to every rule, but 90 days is it. I think that over the course of how many employees I’ve been through over the years and how many of these types of situations, which is unfortunate, 90 days is kind of the threshold that the organization has for a person that is eventually not going to work out or.

 

36:53

where you can see progress and that the person is actually making change that will be sustainable over time. I think there are instances where we make bad hires and the person just turns out to be a bad fit for the team. I mean, I’ve had people over the years that interview exceptionally well and the person shows up on the first day and you would swear that’s not even the same person. I mean, there’s been situations like that, right? Where you’re like, is this a…

 

37:22

person we hired? Like, are we sure? You know? And so those things do happen. And in those instances you can identify it pretty quickly, but then you still have to give it an amount of time, right, in order to document and give them some time to figure it out, to set the expectations, to see if they can get a fit. But overall, we really do feel like three months or 90 days is the longest period of time. And I mean, I think that…

 

37:52

If you let it go any longer than that, the thing that people often don’t think about is that you’re wasting that person’s time as well. And so I think so often we get nervous about having to fire. We get scared about having that reputation. We worry what the people on the team are gonna think. But if a person is truly not a good fit for an organization, letting them go is the kindest and most productive thing you can do for them. I agree.

 

38:20

because then they have the freedom to hopefully reflect on the situation and the fact that it wasn’t a fit and go and find something that is better for them. And I’ve been in a situation recently where I was coaching and this exact situation was going on. And what I kept saying back to the person was, remember the amount of time and energy and use of people’s…

 

38:47

patience and all of that that you are wasting on the organization, you’re also wasting on the person. And at this point, they know that they are not capable of performing the job. That has been made abundantly clear. You have three very specific incidents that you have documented, had the discussion about, and it’s kind of the three strikes rule. I don’t know why you’re waiting another fill in the blank week, whatever. Well, so-and-so has to weigh in and this… No.

 

39:14

You call so and so on the phone and you tell them it’s time for the person to go. And once all of that happened, you know, within short order, you know, after the feet dragging stopped quite frankly, it was such a relief to everyone, including the person. Yeah. So I think you just have to keep that in mind also. And just think about it from a human standpoint. I mean, the person may react a certain way in the moment, angry or upset and cry or those types of things.

 

39:43

Think about how you would want to be treated in the situation, and if you would really want to keep a job that you’re not qualified for, I think most of us would say no. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. Because I think a lot of times we drag our feet, because it makes us feel bad. Yeah, exactly. And that’s just not fair to the person. It’s not as fair to the organization. It’s not fair to your team. When you’re holding onto somebody because you don’t want to have to do the hard thing, it’s going to make you feel really bad. Actually, that happened to my boss when my role was

 

40:11

being eliminated, she go, and I said, you know, about how I was feeling about it, and she goes, well, you know, I feel bad too, and I’m like, I don’t really care how you feel about this situation, it has nothing to do with you, you know? That’s also the worst thing you can say. Right, I totally agree. When you’re letting someone go, you don’t tell them that you feel bad. Right. Don’t ever do that. Yeah, don’t ever do that. But I also wanted to bring a point here too, because a lot of people, I know when we’re talking about firing people, they probably have like a ton of anxiety, the same about,

 

40:37

you know, not being able to trust people, but when they say, oh my God, there’s such a shortage of workers out there. There’s such a shortage of quality workers out there. Or it’s like a highly competitive environment for these workers. It’s now like a workers environment where they’re demanding- Workers market. Workers market, where they’re demanding like really high compensation and benefits and stuff. I’m like, the only thing I can say here is that if you build the right culture, the people will come.

 

41:06

I haven’t seen an incident where that has not happened. If you hold on to people because you’re afraid of having to replace that person or you don’t wanna go through the effort of having to replace that person, you’re putting everything that you’ve built at risk. So build it and they will come. All right, the third in the trenches question, what do I need to consider legal wise when thinking about firing someone? And of course I get this question because we’re not lawyers, so we’ll say that. I do come from a family of them, but I feel like I always get the legal ones too. Anyway.

 

41:36

We aren’t going to give legal advice. You should consult a lawyer. You should consult HR. Get your appropriate procedures and processes. Document, document, document. But here are the things that we can say you must do based on our experience being in these situations. So I just said document, document, document. That’s the first thing. As soon as you think there’s an issue, you have to start documenting everything. This includes the feedback you’ve given.

 

42:05

results that have or have not met expectations, violations to the process, and the more specific you can be here, the better. If you just make general statements, it can be harder for people to internalize. It can also be harder for you to be able to point to instances where it happened instead of just making grandiose statements and generalizations, and that can be how people can unfortunately take it sometimes. Make sure there’s a third party witness to everything that is going on. It can be HR.

 

42:35

It can be another team member, just someone that can corroborate the procedure and back you up so that it doesn’t become like a he said, she said type of situation. And then make sure that person documents it too. On your end, be very, very careful in language and behavior. Do not give the other person any ammunition to use against you. When you go to let them go, for example, be very direct in saying you are being let go.

 

43:05

for these very clear, pre-prepared points, no more than three, as to why. Don’t get into a debate, don’t try to justify the discussion, keep to the message track, do not vary from it so that you can avoid saying the wrong thing. Summary, do everything by the book. Follow all procedures, all policies, and then all advice from legal and HR. And again,

 

43:34

I will say it one more time, document, document, document. I will give an example which still completely blows my mind, but it is an example that I keep in my head because I think one, it’s a case study of when things go wrong. Mm. But super applicable to this episode. So someone was hired for an account that no one wanted to work on.

 

44:03

The person was a terrible fit for the culture of the organization. They were placed on premise at this client and expected to work there. The expectations were very clearly stated. The fact that the person was not a cultural fit was debated, debated, debated. Eventually it was decided since this person was not going to be in the office that it was okay. Big mistake in red flag right there.

 

44:33

And the one thing we did do right was we were explicit in the fact that this was a very tough environment this person would be going into. We had tried to other people, those people had basically done their, you know, it had run the course, but they had put their time in and we just couldn’t in good faith have either person go back.

 

44:55

Lo and behold, shocking, didn’t work out. Now, caveat to this whole thing, we probably should have let that client go. That was a bad decision for different reasons that we took. But in any case, so now this person is in the office, right? What do we do with this person? So we put them as a supporting role on a team because it had been shown that dealing with clients probably wasn’t the best thing.

 

45:24

in a client service position, spoiler alert, you have to be able to deal with clients, but in any case. And so we brought this person back into the organization and the problem started right away. And really it was the person would just fly off the handle, like literally lose their mind when something would go wrong, anything, it didn’t matter. And I mean, it sounds like I’m, you know.

 

45:51

sensationalizing this story. Like I said, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, but it’s a thousand percent true. Like just kind of black out and get really, really angry and aggressive. And so we documented half a dozen incidents that happened within a two week period. We had an initial meeting about it and then the person was to meet with their manager twice a week. Then it got elevated to me because it was not working out. And

 

46:20

We reset the expectations every time and still at the end of that two week period, the person had already been part of the organization for about six weeks. When we told the person they were being let go, they were completely flabbergasted and did not understand why. So that’s a crazy example, right? But you never know how people are internalizing things. Right. You know, I have to think that like in the episode.

 

46:47

it wasn’t as bad in their head as like what was actually going on in the room. I’m sure there was a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes about why they thought that was appropriate, you know, all of these kinds of things, but it can happen. And so in order to stay on an objective level about the situation, that’s why the documenting is so important and the witnesses and all of that kind of stuff. Because then you can get to the point of having that conversation. So when I had to let her go, you know, I said.

 

47:16

Okay, so we outlined this thing, you didn’t do that. Then we had further conversation after each incident. You didn’t change the behavior. We’ve now had a total of six, here’s all the six, therefore you’re being let go. And even though the person flipped out, I didn’t say another word. And then HR was just like, here’s the paperwork and the blah, blah, blah. So yeah, and I think you made a really good point. I hope everybody heard too is that.

 

47:46

You develop the plan, and a lot of people call it the 90 day plan or whatever performance plan or whatever you wanna call it or whatever format you put it in, but you do do that with them. And this shouldn’t become a surprise to somebody who’s like, what, I had no idea. That piece of paper went with us everywhere. Right, and so you have to outline what your expectations are again, what progress looks like, and then how much time they have in order to deliver that. And it’s done daily.

 

48:14

Like very much daily where you’re tracking on a day-to-day basis and have like the respect to actually invest in that with that person because I mean again that’s the human element of the culture you’re trying to build is that okay we’re gonna try to make this work if it doesn’t you know what’s gonna happen at the end but it shouldn’t be like a big huge surprise unless it’s like something like dramatically like

 

48:41

that you can’t not let go, like, you know, something like that. So, yeah, so make sure that, you know, you’re tracking, it’s not something you’re internalizing and all of a sudden you walk in one day and you’re just like, hey, you know, you’re fired kind of thing. I mean, yeah, and this one was like the biggest slam dunk. Yeah. Like the reasons to hire were all wrong, so that was the big mistake right at the beginning, but I mean, yeah, exactly, we were meeting with her every single day for two weeks. So, anyway.

 

49:11

I still can’t believe that happened. Anyway. The fourth in the trenches question, how do you objectively judge that someone is underperforming? And we talked about this a little bit, but let me hit it on the head so everybody can be very clear. Summarize, this is our final in the trenches. This is our final in the trenches. I mean, and it seems like an obvious answer, but you know, if you’re, again, like what we said in the beginning, if you’re a highly empathetic person or you tend to be a non-confrontational person.

 

49:37

things like, well, she’s only 15 minutes late to everything, or, you know, he’s really busy, or it’s really just not a big deal. I mean, how many times have we said that, right? And frankly, it isn’t a big deal. It isn’t something that you can actually judge performance on if you haven’t set the expectation that being on time is a performance criteria. So it goes all back to what we were saying, is that you can’t judge performance.

 

50:05

if you haven’t established what performance looks like, whether it’s ongoing or whether it’s in a 90 day plan because you have a performance issue, whatever that is. So you have to be able to set that up and whether again, like we said, it works like a work plan, a scorecard, a job description. The format isn’t important, but what is important is that you set KPIs, just like you do for your business, in order to make sure everybody understands what the performance expectations are and what the success looks like.

 

50:34

And this also makes them very, very clear about what you’re evaluating. Like we said, there could be a gazillion different stings. So make sure you’re doing your due diligence and setting those expectations. Now this obviously includes things that they deliver and the quality and timing by which they deliver these things, but it’s also in how they deliver them. And the how is dictated by what’s important for the brand of the business. So these are the softer things and these are really hard to define, but they’re very, very critical.

 

51:03

These could be things like customer service, culture integration like we talked about, communication, collaboration. So you really need to be able to set these criteria up as well in your performance based expectations just like you would a specific deliverable. Yeah, I think that this is a good one actually to end on because…

 

51:28

This whole time, I think the conversation has been centered around subjective versus objective and really trying to get to that objective place. And so I think you’ve heard the formula throughout, which is set the expectations, state the expectation, reinforce the expectation. And if you do keep it that simple and you diligently work against it that way, then even if you are setting different expectations for different people,

 

51:55

the process of evaluation is the same every single time. And so I think that the importance of this question is people do have a hard time objectively assessing performance, especially if you have people that are good at some things and not great at others. And so then it becomes, what things are we willing to give on versus not? And so I think that this is exactly right. And I love the reference to key performance indicators, because I think that puts a different lens on it, which

 

52:24

can make you think about it in a different way. Yes, you set up key performance indicators for your business. Why wouldn’t you do the same for each employee based on the goals of the business and the culture of your team? So, in any case. Yeah, and I think that’s a fantastic point. I also think, again, this is another one where we say, don’t be the problem. Yeah. Stop accommodating or stop making excuses. That’s not like saying that you can’t adjust,

 

52:54

don’t make those excuses for these people if it’s a really big issue for you because you are non-confrontational that you can’t make those excuses, okay? All right, so our third and final segment, something that was becoming quite popular that we’re gonna do on this one, we’re gonna do a marketing smarts moment. Now remember, this is something that we’ve seen recently, wherever we happen to be, and it’s something that is kind of hitting us as…

 

53:22

a company, a business, a person that exercising or not exercising well, they’re marketing smarts. So the one I’m going to talk about today since I just came back from Nashville. Party weekend. It was a party weekend. So you can probably hear it in my voice and the fact that I’m kind of- You’re suffering now. So yeah, so it was well worth it. But anyway.

 

53:50

So what’s becoming really big in Nashville, especially over the last several years, is this celebrity bar scene. So they’ve taken these bars or they rehabbed these bars, and now they have the, actually the celebrity singers, their names associated with these bars. Now, it’s…

 

54:10

interesting because it does provide some level of wayfinding. Like, hey, I’m going to be at the Kid Rock Bar. Like, you know, everybody kind of like can then orient around the Kid Rock Bar. Now, there’s also classic iconic bars in Nashville, like Tootsies and Legends and stuff like that, that also people orient. Now there’s becoming so many bars downtown, that sometimes it’s kind of hard to figure out where things are, right? So it does provide some wayfinding. It also draws interest from fans. Like if I’m, you know, I happen to be a big, huge Luke Bryan fan, like,

 

54:39

I wanna go to Luke Bryan’s bar in Nashville and see what his bar’s like. Ironically, I’m not a big fan of Luke Bryan’s bar, which is a different conversation for a different day. Not on brand. And I’m actually gonna get to that. Oh, sorry. Well, no, it’s good. But it’s good, it’s good because you’re right on. Is that what’s missing in some of these bars is the inherent connection back to the celebrity for which they have the name for. All right, and that.

 

55:07

really was a miss for me. So I’ll give an example. So Miranda Lambert just opened her bar. I’m not actually a big Miranda Lambert fan, to be totally honest, but her bar was totally idealistically her. It was a tequila bar. It had pink accents. It had fringe. It had chandeliers. I mean, it was just like, it felt like her. It felt girly, and it felt like her. And it’s like, it’s something that I can identify with my head, and I remember.

 

55:31

that I had a really good Margarita there, there was a really good band that was playing there in the honking talk and on the stage, you know? And so I’m like, oh yeah, I want to go back to Miranda’s bar. Now, when I went into Kid Rock’s bar, which you would expect Kid Rock kind of being who Kid Rock is, the bar was very just bland. It was a very generic bar. I mean, I can’t even remember in my mind which one it really was. The only thing I can remember, and I’ve been there, it’s because I also been there before, was up on the rooftop. There’s a big, huge,

 

56:01

picture of him with these two girls, but there was nothing else about it that was like screamed to me, Kid Rock, Signature Kid Rock. I mean, actually I’m confusing it with the Honky Tonk Central bar that was actually on the corner as well, couple bars down, it’s just these kind of long, kind of like row bars. I’m like, it just all was the same, even how the tables were laid out and how the windows, I mean, it was just all the same. So I’m not sure I would go back there because it didn’t give me the experience that I would expect from a Kid Rock bar.

 

56:31

I mean, I could go to another bar and get the same level of like, you know, drinks and, you know, there’s good music everywhere. So it’s not like it was like, you know, specifically unique in that way either. And I bring all that up because, you know, we as businesses too, we kind of think about that celebrity or, you know, some sort of awareness driving or popularity driving.

 

56:59

endorsers or influencers being a way of being able to elevate our brands as well, whether it’s like a naming right on the stadium. We had a big conversation over the weekend about Gillette, and Gillette’s been the head of naming rights of the Patriot Stadium forever, for as long as I can remember. What benefit does that really have on the brand? A lot of us as businesses want to endorse being title sponsors for certain events, so we get that awareness and we have the association with the popularity.

 

57:28

and we’re hoping that drives visibility. And they’re hoping that through all that, somehow we kind of like seep into the consciousnesses of our consumers and that they kind of think of us or associate ourselves with that. And yes, it can work to some extent, but the thing that we have to be very, very careful of here is that it can be very expensive. And especially if you’re not willing to go the extra effort to create the experience, it’s kind of like.

 

57:53

Is my money better spent someplace else, right? Where I can create an experience, where I can create some sort of connection with my consumer in a way that my product makes sense. They’re not shaving anybody at Gillette, you know, in the city, it’s like in the Patriots. I mean, it does give them some newsworthy, like snippets every once in a while, and it builds a good partnership. It’s like a clout thing almost. It’s an advertising thing, right? And so it’s like, well, how long does that actually work? I mean,

 

58:21

So just some questions in my mind, and this is what I put back to you guys as businesses as well, is think about the next time that you’re going to go do some sort of something promotional in that context. And if you are gonna choose to invest in doing that, because it is a lot of times an expensive way to go, make sure you are creating an experience and making sure you’re working with that in a partnership kind of way in order to develop something that your consumer is gonna see you, and they’re gonna see you in context.

 

58:51

of that business or that sponsorship or that promotion and being able to really internalize it in a way that’s gonna be meaningful to them. Yeah, I mean, I think it is really interesting because when I think about Nashville and I haven’t been in several years, I haven’t really seen- Because you don’t like country music. We’ve had this discussion. I like Nashville. No, I don’t like country music, but I like going to Nashville, still. Every minute I was there, I was like, April’s gonna hate this. April would hate this.

 

59:18

But anyway. Okay, I’m not offering an opinion on Nashville. I’m offering a business opinion on this situation. Oh, okay. But I will say that when I think about my experience there and when you mentioned the more iconic places like Tootsies and others, I have a picture of that in my head and a feel in my gut about what that experience was like for me. I think that all the things you said are, of course, spot on about

 

59:47

you know, putting someone’s name on it or someone’s brand on it or whatever. But I think my caution too is sort of to the city and that area of town around the magic that I think happens there and not building in too much distraction and whether they have full control or whatever, right? But if this continues to happen and it continues to be a letdown, to me that changes the overall experience of the place because how many of those will you step into

 

01:00:17

the tried and true ones, or the population, the consumers may force it back the other direction. But I just think it is a pretty big watch out and it’s a phone it in situation, which is why it isn’t working. And so I think that the reason I like Nashville is because it isn’t always all country music. So in theory, Kid Rock, I mean, to me he’s not country proper the way that I think about it. And so that would be somewhere I might like to go.

 

01:00:45

Not that I’m a huge fan of his, but using him as an example. But if I walk in and it’s nothing like him, even as a non-country singer, I’d be like, what the heck, what’s the point of that? I’d go back to the ones that are more pure country, but that I know when I’m gonna get there. Yeah, and they’re starting to become franchises too. I think like, with like, Dirk’s place, they’re going to open like five of those. I mean, actually they had one in Scottsdale I didn’t even know about. But I mean, you’re kind of wondering, well, is it gonna be like Toby Keys Bar and Girl, too, where like…

 

01:01:13

those over extended, we had one in Cincinnati, it kind of went under, you know, so. I mean, it could have been any country singer. It could have been any, yeah. So I think that’s a really, really good point. And kind of thinking about, again, it’s the experience, it’s not just the name. Exactly. Right? Just to recap, how do you know it’s time to fire an employee? First, you can’t trust them. Trust is imperative in any productive relationship. If you can’t trust a person, you’re gonna have to let them go. They refuse to be managed.

 

01:01:43

That means they have an inherent disregard or lack of respect for structure, rules of engagement, process in general, and others around them, and they don’t respond well to feedback. They can’t get on board with the team culture. No judgment here, but they’re just not a good fit with the culture, so they’re probably not going to be a good fit for the organization. Or they consistently fail to meet expectations. People need to meet the expectations for which they were hired. That means you need to actually set the expectations, though.

 

01:02:13

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