How to Fire Someone Without Stripping Them of Their Dignity
Sometimes you just reach the end of your rope.
Many women stepping into leadership roles have a hard time with difficult conversations, like job terminations. They’re afraid of hurt feelings or making a soon-to-be-former employee feel small in the process.
But there comes a time when you, as a CEO, just have to let someone go. You’ve given them multiple chances, and for whatever reason, it just isn’t working.
You don’t have to lose sleep over how to give them the pink slip, though. There’s a way to do it quickly and humanely.
In this episode of the Pleasurable Profits podcast, you’ll learn my formula for firing someone, politely but also firmly. I’ll teach you the mindset you need when approaching your employee and how to let them go while protecting your business (because yes, there could be danger there girl, if you’re not careful).
3:02 - The valuable lesson about work relations that my first sales mentor taught me
5:07 - Who’s actually responsible for firing people
8:16 - How to best approach someone you’re about to let go (rookie managers especially need to beware of this)
10:13 - The simple, straight-forward formula you can use to fire someone
12:34 - The potentially costly mistake you must not make
Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
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Transcript for How to Fire Someone Without Stripping Them of Their Dignity
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Hey, party people. It’s Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership coach. How are y'all doing? I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. Oh, my goodness. I want to start a series and whenever I say I'm going to start a series, that means like two episodes, y'all, so don't get your hopes up too high. These are maybe two or three episodes around one of the things that come up a lot when I am working with women around stepping into their leadership is difficult conversations and haven’t navigated conversations in a way that feels good to you and to the person who you're having a difficult conversation with.
Now look, when we're having tough conversations, feelings are bound to get hurt. Let's just get that out of the way. You are not responsible for someone else's feelings and emotions. People are responsible for their own feelings, emotions, and triggers. I've talked about this before.
As a leader, I am not suggesting that you wreck your brain on how you can deliver tough information or have a tough conversation with someone where their feelings don't get hurt. Because the truth of the matter is you have no control over someone's feelings getting hurt.
But what you do have control over is your energy behind how you deliver things and making sure that when you do set out to have these tough conversations, it is your priority that you accept that their feelings may get hurt, however, you will not strip someone of their dignity if that makes any sense. You don't want to strip people of their dignity. That's a big thing that I think I've seen done poorly in the past, and actually quite frankly things I've done poorly in the past.
We're going to start with a doozy right out of the gate. How to fire someone? I know some of you are already rolling your eyes. You're already like, “Oh, my gosh, what is going on here? I don't ever want to have to fire anybody. I just want to make sure that I hire the right people and I'll never have to fire them.”
Well, let me share a story with you. Fred Getz, you guys all know that was my very first sales mentor. I've talked about him in many episodes. One of the things that he shared with me very early on because we worked super close together, like I said he was my mentor, he was guiding me, we spent a lot of time outside of work together hanging out, and just one day just out of the blue, he basically said, “You know, kid, I like you a lot but we're never friends. We would never be friends.”
I don't know what prompted him to say that because obviously, I didn't think that we were friends, but I think he shared it with me so that it could be the lesson that I just learned and took with me in life. What he said to me specifically, I realized I cut myself off, was that we would never be friends because he was like, “Because I might have to fire you one day.”
I remember thinking at that moment, “Wow. Okay,” well, guess what happened? He had to fire me one day. That was his way of setting boundaries, and also just being kind by saying, “This is a business relationship. Don't ever get it twisted. I don't care how many dinners we have, how many jokes we tell, how many stories we share, how many times we laugh, I am still your boss.”
One of the other things that he shared with me that I think would be helpful in this conversation was that we don't fire people, people fire themselves. That is one of the things that I share with my clients right away when they come to me and they're like, “I think I have somebody on my team who I need to fire,” and they're losing a lot of sleep. They've got a lot of anxiety around it. They've got a lot of nerves, because they're like, “Oh my gosh, I have to fire someone.”
I immediately tell them, “Now, first of all, you're not firing anyone. They fired themselves, their performance or lack thereof, whatever they did to violate policies, procedures, company culture, whatever it is, they did that, not you.” That's the second mindset shift that I want you to make. The first is, if you hire people, there's going to come a time when you're going to have to fire somebody.
You might as well get in your head that it doesn't matter how nice I am to people, it doesn't matter how close we are, just like Fred told me, one day I might have to fire you. Keeping that in the back of your head I think gives you some space emotionally.
The second thing is you don't actually fire anyone. People fire themselves. Those two things, if you actually grasp that, it will make this process a little bit easier for you. Now, my whole thing is when you get to the point where you're ready to fire someone, preferably you've had a couple of developmental conversations where you've given people the opportunity to turn their behavior around, I'm going to talk about that more when we talk about performance conversations in a couple of episodes from now.
But you've given them a chance, you've been very clear about your expectation, what's not working, and more importantly, what you expect, if they, after walking away from those meetings, decide to do the opposite of what you told them, they fired themselves. It's just really that simple.
Because you were clear with them, in the words of auntie Brene, “Clear is kind,” because you took the time to actually set out where they were underperforming and gave them the opportunity to change it and they did not, this firing conversation, they should be expecting it. It shouldn't be catching them off guard.
That is a humane way of firing someone. We don't have to strip people of their dignity. We don't have to make people feel like they're small or less than because just because someone is a bad employee for you doesn't mean that they're a bad person or that they're incapable of being a good team player or employee somewhere else. It could just be that your environment, your job just wasn't a good fit. Guess what, that's okay.
But it is my responsibility as the CEO of this business to aid you in your transition. That's what I'm doing. When you bring them in to actually fire them, the best thing to do is to keep it short and sweet. If possible, you want to have a witness there as well. I know that can be difficult for us as small business owners because I know some of you who follow me, it’s just you and two other people or you and one other person, so it may not always be possible to have a witness, but if it is possible, I would have a witness there as well.
Really, there’s nothing to discuss. I call this rookie mistakes. Guys, I used to coach hiring managers through this all the time when I worked in HR. It was like the guiltiness, which is why I address that mindset piece upfront because I've seen it manifest in rookie managers before, it's like they feel the guilt of it and they feel responsibility for it and they're all nervous about it so they get in there and they want to start having a conversation with the person.
They want to tell them why they're firing them. They want to listen to the person's rebuttal like, “No, no, no,” turn to your neighbor and say, “Stop that.” When we're at the termination conversation, there is nothing else to discuss. The discussions happened in the performance conversations. When we're at the point of termination, there's nothing else to talk about, except, “Do you want us to know your stuff, or if I'm going to go in and watch you pack up your desk, which do you prefer?” That's really it.
I'm getting ready to give you the formula. The formula. It doesn't matter what you're terminating someone for. Here's the formula: “Hey, Susie, thanks for coming in taking a few minutes to talk to me. As you know, we've had a couple of conversations about your performance, and today is your last day. I have not seen any changes. It's clear to me that this is just not a good fit for either of us. That doesn't mean everything you did was all bad. But that does mean that this is not a good fit for you. We're going to pay you until x number date, whatever date that is, it's going to be direct deposit or it's going to be a manual check that's sent to you,” however that is, you just want to have that communicated to them so they'll know.
I always say it's good to know if you do PTO, and they've got unused PTO or vacation time, just having that already there so you can tell them, “Hey, you're going to get paid on the 15th of the month, that'll be your final paycheck and on that paycheck will be 15 hours of PTO that we're paying you out for. We really wish you well and hope that things work out for you.”
It's really that simple. It's really that simple. Notice in that conversation, I didn't leave space for rebuttal. It is very much so a one-way conversation at that point and it should take you no more than five minutes. You should be able to walk that person on about in there. By doing that, you're not throwing fuel on fire or sorrow on top of sorrow, I guess that's a better way to say it, throwing sorrow on top of sorrow.
If they're leaving and they're going to be hurt or disgruntled, you getting into a long drawn-out conversation where they're like, “Well, you didn’t and this happened and I didn't understand and it wasn't clear,” and all those sorts of things, that banter is not helpful for either you. You being the leader, you need to direct that conversation in the way that it should go.
The other thing is by keeping it short and sweet, don't ever apologize for it. Don't ever apologize. Don't ever say, “I'm so sorry that it came to this.” This is the HR side of me. This is the corporate HR side of me. By saying you're sorry, if Lord forbid you were ever taken to court on a wrongful termination type sue, you saying you're sorry could be brought up as some ownership on your part, like some culpability on your part for what may or may not have happened with that employee, so don't ever apologize. Because again, see point number two, you don't fire people, they fire themselves.
You can do it. Also, I feel like when people get super emotional in termination situations where people are crying and they just feel really bad, they feel down, it could turn into an argument, it could just get really ugly, and people walk away feeling demoralized, I believe that we can treat people with dignity even when they're not working with us anymore.
I feel like you can affirm people even as you're terminating them. I feel like you can give people your blessing as they go out the door. It's a skill that gets easier when you adapt those two mindsets, that inevitably, I'm going to have to let someone go and number two, I don't fire people, people fire themselves.
Keep it short and sweet. Don't over-talk. Preserve the person's dignity. Wish them well. If you have questions about how to do this, this is the type of stuff that I hold space for in my one-on-one containers when I'm working with leaders, it's like having a concierge physician, I heard that term in one of my mentoring groups this week and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that's what it's like having someone in your back pocket when you need them,” which is why these containers are so powerful is because as small business owners, sh*t comes up every day that you may not have had experience with.
It's nice to be able to talk through and have a sounding board with someone who gets you, not just at an emotional level, but also has navigated those waters and succeeded. If you are interested in leveling up your leadership, why aren't you in my inbox? Why don't I see your name in my DMs?
Go, run over to @lesliedlyons on Instagram, and literally say, “I'm ready to lead,” and I will happily get you more information. Alright, my loves. Next week, we'll be talking about how to navigate more difficult conversations. I will see you there. Until then, have a great week, and you know the drill, grace and peace.