How to Fire Someone--The Kind Leadership Way (Challenge #86)

No jokes in this cold open, kind leaders, because this is a serious topic. This episode idea came from one of your fellow listeners who responded to a recent call I made for episode ideas. They suggested a simple, painful topoc, that all of either have already faced or will face sooner or later: How can you kindly fire a team member?

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where every Monday morning I teach you to heal your school or library in the next ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational and library leaders who want to build a better world without burning out. 

Kind leaders make the tough decisions without becoming jerks. We plan effective systems that help us get the job done with less money and effort. And we’ve learned that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, any vision becomes possible. To be clear, Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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Roughly speaking, there are two ways that a leader chooses to part way with an employee—via a layoff that does not reflect a team member’s performance or conduct, and a firing, which is a dismissal due directly to a pattern of unacceptable actions. I’ve done both, and they both suck, albeit in slightly different ways. A firing can feel sharper, more personal, and like you failed the struggling team member in some way.  Feeling bad or guilty or reluctant doesn’t mean you’re an indecisive leader, or even less that you shouldn’t terminate this employee. It means you’re an empathetic human being who wants to end your working relationship with this employee as humanely as the circumstances permit for all concerned. However, assuming your standards are appropriate, and that you have taken the appropriate and required steps to coach your team member to change their performance and/or conduct, firing an unsuccessful employee is an act of kind leadership. Full stop. 
 
 You are making a healing decision for yourself, because the type of leader who would listen to a podcast like this is also the type of leader who has tried coaching, feedback, and all the other steps in your power to help a team member succeed, and has probably had some sleepless nights about the situation along the way. You are making a kind decision for the vast majority of your team, because they are doing what it takes to get their jobs done well and treat others with respect, possibly with the same or even worse obstacles that your unsuccessful team member is facing. And finally, hesitating to fire an unsuccessful employee is potentially a healing experience for the person being fired, because they are being forced out of a work environment that does not work for them, and you are giving them the opportunity and perhaps the wakeup call needed to grow and change in the ways that will set them up for success down the road. Cold comfort, perhaps, but a little something you can hold on to when the day comes. 

So, we’ve determined that firing our team member is the best possible decision in what is a bad situation. Next up is making a plan for the firing process itself. Hopefully, you don’t have to fire people very often. If that’s the case, then you need to make sure you know everything you need to know and confirm that there’s no anything you don’t realize you need to know to conduct an effective termination process that gets the job done efficiently and effectively. When I had to deal with my first termination, I knew that it began with calling the employee into the office and ended with them leaving the premises, but I was pretty hazy on all the details in the middle. Fortunately, most of us in education have some sort of Human Resources department or legal counsel office that can coach you through the process and make sure all the necessary hoops are jumped. Hopefully you have been able to consult with them throughout the corrective action or performance improvement process, but either way reach out to them again and have them walk you through whatever process is in place for your organization. I know we don’t like to be a bother to other folks who are at least as busy as we are if not more so, but HR would rather be called in early and needlessly than to have to untangle legal consequences if something is handled improperly. HR can also help you prepare for and think about any concerns you have about ensuring the meeting stays on track, coordinate with security staff where appropriate, and may often attend or even lead the dismissal meeting depending on the circumstances.

In addition to knowing the dos and don’ts of the firing procedure, and handling any paperwork that needs to be done in advance, Think about the steps you take in planning any difficult conversation, and follow them to plan for the termination. In fact, this is one of the few times I would recommend having a script for your conversation (in fact, HR may even have one they want you to follow). Keep the meeting short and to the point—remember that the decision has already been made, and you are just informing them of it. In many cases you can simply sit the employe down, remind them of whatever corrective process they’ve been involved in, and inform them that they are being terminated. In addition to your script, you should have thought through likely questions and prepared answers to them—ideally in writing as well as a backup, as the employee may be too emotional to remember what you said, or even to ask questions. Don’t let things drag on, certainly no more than ten or 15 minutes. Then proceed with whatever process is appropriate to have them collect their belongings and leave the premises.

Once the employee has left you can exhale, but your job’s not quite done yet. As soon as is practical, inform the rest of your team that the terminated employee is no longer with the company, and the plans you’ve made for handling their workload in the short term. HR will probably advise you on what questions you can answer and which are considered confidential, but always check with them if you’re unsure. If in doubt, don’t share. Accept and allow for some strong emotions from your team and your community in the next few days, perhaps in surprising forms and from surprising people. However, keep your own opinions and feelings to yourself and to your trusted advisors, and concentrate on gently but firmly guiding your team onward and upward.
 
 And with that—here’s your kind leadership challenge for this week. I can’t share everything about firing an employee in a ten minute podcast, so I didn’t even really try to do more than touch on the general principles I consider most important to creating a kind, or at least not unkind termination process. So I’m going to give you some homework! Brainstorm a question or two you have about handling an employee termination, whether a general best practice or the specific processes at your organization, and research the answers! There are a lot of good resources out there. And if you really want to think things through, use my mastering challenging conversations checklist to make up a game plan for a mock firing, script and all. You can access it by heading to kindleadershipchallenge.com/conversations and entering your email to download it. I hope you’ll never have to use this conversation plan, but it’s one of those things that you should at least think through before the crisis hits. 
 
 Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge, and for growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively in your own organization. And if you know someone who might find this episode helpful, hit share in your podcast app or send them over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/86. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.