237. How To Fire Someone ( While Keeping Their Dignity Intact)

Every new leader eventually has to let someone go, and nobody prepares you for it. Here’s how to handle it without crushing them, or yourself.

Family, the first time you have to fire someone, you’ll feel sick about it. You’ll probably feel like you failed. But after 20+ years of leading teams, I’ve learned that letting someone go doesn’t have to mean crushing them. Done right, it can help them get to where they belong.

In this episode, we cover three things:

1. Why letting people go is part of leading people, and why it will happen more than once

2. The one question that helped a struggling team member find his own way out, before it ever got ugly

3. What to do when that conversation doesn’t work and you have to draw the line

You’ll also hear about a payroll mistake that taught me the difference between someone who lacks ownership and someone who lacks clarity, and why you should look at yourself first before you decide someone “just doesn’t get it.”

Try this in your next one-on-one: ask them to describe their ideal week at work, let them talk, then ask, “Why aren’t you doing more of that?”

Invest in people, and the growth will follow. Sometimes that growth happens somewhere else.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Every new leader has to let someone go

1:03 If you lead people long enough, you will fire someone

1:33 The math of most teams

2:20 The mistake new leaders make

2:50 Decide now how you’ll handle it

3:12 I asked him one question and he fired himself

4:46 What to ask in your next one-on-one

5:18 Ownership or clarity? Look at yourself first

7:31 Drawing the line: the honest choice

8:29 Invest in people, the growth will follow