563: When You Need to Fire Someone, with Alisa Cohn

Most of us got into the roles we have because we wanted to make a difference, to support the success of our organization and the people inside it. We didn't get into this to fire people, but that's the reality of leadership and this episode will help when it's time to say goodbye. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 563.

Produced by Innovate, Learning, Maximizing human potential.

Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the most challenging things that leaders run into on a regular basis is the tough situation of when someone isn't performing well and ultimately sometimes when we need to say goodbye. How do we handle that well and what goes into our thinking and our preparation and our mindset as far as how we handle a tough situation like that? I'm so glad to welcome today someone who's absolutely an expert, has been working with leaders for so many years on tough situations like this and so many more, and I know she's going to help us with some wonderful wisdom. Alyssa Cohn has been named the top startup Coach in the World by the Thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith Global Coaches Awards and has been coaching startup founders to grow into world class CEOs for nearly 20 years. A one time startup CFO, strategy consultant and current angel investor and advisor, she was named the number one global guru of startups in 2021 and has worked with startup companies such as Venmo, Etsy, DraftKings, the Wirecutter, Mack Weldon and Tory Burch. She has also coached CEOs and C suite executives at enterprise clients such as Dell, Sony, IBM, Google and many more. Marshall Goldsmith selected Alyssa as one of his Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches, a gathering of the top coaches in the world and Inc. Named Alyssa one of the top 100 leadership speakers. Her articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Inc. And she's been featured as an expert on Bloomberg tv, the BBC World News, and in the New York Times. She is the author of From Startup to Grown Up, Grow youw Leadership to Grow youw Business. Alyssa, what a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you Dave. Thanks for that wonderful introduction and I appreciate being here with you.

Well, the pleasure is mine. I was thinking about your work and how much you have served startups especially over the years and founders of startups and helping them to grow their leadership skills. And I have a theory for Us entering into this conversation that there's something really similar about founders, which some of the folks in our audience are, but not, but many are not, but also the people who listen to this show. And I think there's some overlap. And one of the big overlap areas are that a lot of folks in our listening audience have started their careers with passion, with technical expertise, that they loved their work and they were so good at doing their work that they showed up one day at work and all of a sudden they were managing a team of 20 or 25 people and they realize that although they go to the same place, maybe even sit in the same chair, that the job is really different than the job they started with and the passion and the technical expertise and the training they had. Do you run into that with founders too?

Absolutely. So the I think the difference in what you described between sort of professional who kind of works their way into managing a large team is that with founders, the entry level position is leader, right? The first role they take is the boss. And that is true even if they don't have any real professional experience or not that much professional experience from the past. At the same time, what you just said is so accurate. They come from a sales perspective, they come from a product perspective, they're deep in technology, they're maybe wonderful marketers, and they've doing that for a while and now they're starting a business. And so now what they have to do is lead the business, not just do that wonderful thing they were able to do with the domain expertise. So.

Well, there's a heading in the book that says it's not easy to tell someone they're not doing their job, but that's your job. And it really does become the job of a lot of leaders, doesn't it?

Oh, totally. I mean, in general. Well, you know, my first line of the book is leadership is an unnatural act because you have to learn so many things as a leader which feel counterintuitive. One is giving adults feedback. We don't give friends feedback. Right. Another one is praising people to give them confidence, even though they're the ones who just screwed up because you need them to keep going. You need to fix the problem. And so that's an unnatural act. But then to your point, you know, telling someone they're not doing a great job and helping them fix it is a very difficult thing for anyone to do, especially a newer leader. And yet that is your job at times.

One of the tendencies I've noticed over the years in working with leaders and I Suspect this is true for you, too. Just reading the book book and your experience is that there's a tendency when difficult situations come up with an individual or someone's not performing well, to sidestep that a bit. And I was really captivated by a story in the book you tell of Kevin, I'm not sure if it's his real name, but of bringing on someone into a role and then kind of like working around the situation when. When all of a sudden that person wasn't performing. Could you tell us a bit about that and how that typically shows up when. With a leader, when they're entering into this for the first time?

Yep. So this was a scenario where the CEO had hired a new CTO with great pedigree. And the new CTO said, and, you know, they agreed that he would take a year to get the team in shape and to figure things out and, you know, sort of sort things out. Well, a year went by. There were still issues, and he wanted more time. And the CEO was concerned about the number of people on the team, the morale of the team, and also just the lack of output from the team. So rather than deal with, you know, they taught a few more conversations, but rather than deal with it directly, the CEO pretty much hired another engineer, a senior engineer, to be like a shadow technology team to this, you know, existing technology team. That, of course, became a mess. And over time, of course, the CTO got fired, but it was really two years too late. And I think it's not just that people have to get fired at times. It's not just firing people. It's actually addressing concerns early in a way which is candid and also respectful. And so I think that is the skill that everybody needs to have in terms of being able to give powerful feedback, impactful feedback that makes change, and also letting people know that they're accountable for their behavior and that continuing to showcase, here are the goals you know, you're not living up. Here are the goals you're not living up. So the decisions can be made more quickly without ruining everything in the company.

It's. It's often easier to see it in others. But when we get into these situations, like our tendency, it seems like, as human beings, is to sidestep things like this a bunch. You know, as you were saying that, I was thinking back to a story that happened to me, Alyssa, Years ago. I was brought in by an organization to potentially coach one of their employees. And I sat down. This was a very large organization, and I sat down with one of their Senior executives who was, who I'd heard is very well respected, even though I didn't know her personally. And we had this long conversation about this particular employee that was in a high visibility position and was really causing some problems for them. And not just her, but other stakeholders within the organization and external folks. And so we had talked through, okay, what would it look like to provide some coaching to her? And of course, I asked what I thought was the right question of, well, have you given her feedback already on this? And she's like, oh, yeah, we've talked it through. Everyone's in agreement. She knows she needs to work on this. And I'm like, okay, great. So we ended up having a conversation amongst the three of us, the executive, the employee and myself and Alyssa. It was like we were talking about two different people. That conversation happened with the three of us. And 95% of the conversation was her praising her for all the great work she had done. And there was this one little mention of half a sentence like, oh, there's this one thing you could do a little bit better. And the conversation ended. And I thought, oh, my goodness, she thinks she's been really clear, but here I am listening. If I didn't know the backstory, I would have thought that I was this high performing employee listening to this. And yet there were all these things going on in the background. And yet she really had a hard time just, just not sidestepping some of the tough conversations. And it just seems like that comes up a lot in situations like this.

Oh, Dave. Oh, Dave. Communication. Communication, right. I mean, oh my goodness, yes. It's so funny that you say that people. So there's a distinction between message sent and message received.

Yeah, right.

This happens all the time. Did you tell her? Yeah, yeah, I told. Oh, I totally told her. Yeah, absolutely.

Ye.

And then you go and you say, do you have that conversation with that person? And they say, what conversation? Well, I have the impression she maybe gave you some insight about this and that. No, we just talked about something else. Right. And yet. And yet. So then you're like, you're the one feeling like you're being gaslit all the time. I mean, this happens so regularly. And actually my strategy for that and I want to tell all the managers to think about this when you get into. So did you tell her that? Oh, yeah, I told her. My then follow up question is, oh, fantastic. So what did she say? Tell me that discussion you had. So what she said, because I want to understand if she's kind of ready, willing, and Able to change. And the other thing I always ask, I try to teach everyone to think about when it comes to communication, especially as relates to feedback and change, because feedback is about change. What specific commitments did she make or what commitments did you make to each other?

Nice.

And regularly people forget that less so therefore, what are you going to do by when? What is going to change? Because otherwise we just had this conversation and it was good or not good, but then we don't quite know what great looks like, you know, a month later.

Yeah, indeed. Thanks, though. That's super helpful. I'm thinking about making that a commitment. And what did that person agree to?

Right.

One of the other blind spots that I see when situations like this arise where someone's clearly not performing well and maybe they need to be dismissed or maybe something else needs to happen. But it seems like oftentimes the person in the leadership role assumes that this is an isolated problem I have with just this person or just with this particular project. And I was thinking about that when I was reading this quote from the book you write. The brutal truth about firing is that most often by the time you get around to firing someone, you're probably months late. That means it's become apparent to multiple members of the team that the person isn't doing their job. And. And that to me is like, comes up again and again as a blind spot is the manager assumes that it's an issue between them and that person, but they miss the fact that there's 12 other people watching this not being addressed. And their credibility takes a hit, doesn't it?

Oh, totally. Their credibility takes a hit. And also folks are working around that person, trust me. And folks are not discussing it with you, but they're discussing it amongst each other. They're gossiping about it. And definitely people are wondering why you're putting up with it. So that is definitely happening. And then what I think is interesting, that what you just said is sort of an isolated incident. I think that's also true. People don't know how to handle a pattern of behavior. So I have a framework that I call cpr. So it's content pattern relationship. The content is the thing, oh, you keep doing this thing wrong. You did this thing wrong. You did this thing wrong. Or you need to get me the need to get me the report on time. You need to get me the report on time. We're going to get a report on time. And after three or four times of saying that, you can then step back and say, you know, it's a pattern Every week the report comes late, I ask you to get it to me on time, you tell me you will, but you don't. Now by the way, the most normal reaction to that is I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, no, I know, I know you're sorry. I don't want you, I don't need you to feel bad. What I'm curious about is how can you organize yourself better so you get the report into me on time, times, any experience that you're having. And that is the way that people begin to realize this is serious, this is not a one off behavior. The person realizes that, but you, the manager also begins to realize that.

Oh, interesting. And where does that filter then? To the R, the relationship.

So then the relationship is, it keeps happening on over and over and then it's beginning to make me not trust you when you say you're going to commit to something, you're going to do something, or it's beginning to make me feel like I can't, you know, sort of give you additional assignments. Right. That's kind of the relationship piece because it has an impact on our relationship and your relationship within the group.

Well, this is a great lead into one of the invitations you make to leaders who are in this situation, which is at some point you have to have a straight conversation and, and that you divide that, I think into two parts. One is the will, does the person want to do the job? And then the skill, can they develop themselves to do the job? Tell me about those two lenses.

Yep. So those lenses come from the work of situational leadership and it basically has to do with you. I think of that almost like as a delegation framework. Right. So I'm going to give you something to do and I have to decide how much I'm going to manage you, how closely I'm going to manage you, how much I'm going to check in, how much I'm going to describe to you and prescript to you what you have to do or kind of let you run. So if you have high will but low skill, that's fantastic because I know you want to do it, I know you're thirsty to learn, and then I should be very directive with you and have more check ins rather than fewer because you've never done it before. Right. So you have low skill but high will. On the other side of that, if you have high skill, let's say assume high skill and high will, then I've talked to you at all. I'm Going to give you the thing, you know what you're doing. Let me know if you have problems and I'll see you in a month when it's due. Right now that might be exaggerating, but something like that. So you have to think about your employees from the point of view of what are they capable of. What I think managers, sometimes what they do is they say, I'm not a micromanager, you know, I, this is how I manage. Well, actually, management is about your employees. And all your employees are different in terms of their will and their skill, their need for feedback, their need for praise and confidence building, you know, the desire for autonomy and figuring things out. And your best bet as a manager is to get to know your employees and adjust your management style so it'll work for them. The other thing is that don't give something really high skilled to somebody who doesn't have the skills because they're not going to do it well. They're going to frustrate you. They're going to waste everyone else's time. Actually, I have an example in the book about someone who gave his assistant this kind of complicated report he or this sort of competitive report he want to pull together. He didn't really explain it to her. She went off and bothered all the other executives to get information. She formatted it. She like burned hours and hours and hours. And he just wanted something super simple but didn't explain the context and didn't give her a sense of how to approach it. So he thought, oh, she didn't do it right. But actually he was the one who didn't manage her correctly in this particular task.

Oh, interesting. My sense in thinking about our audience, I mean the kinds of people who listen to a show called Coaching for Leaders have a real heart for being coach like and listening well and empathizing. And so many in our audience want to get better, better at that. They've learned the coaching habit. They've got those good questions going. And sometimes in these situations, I think almost we sometimes overcorrect on being a little too coach like. And one of the things that you said a moment ago, but I remember reading in the book is that sometimes it's helpful to be a lot more prescriptive when you're getting into a conversation like this of like this may be the time to be a bit more directive and prescriptive on exactly what, what should happen next. Am I missing the mark on that or is that land well with you?

I think that's accurate. You know, there's a company that I coached in a coach in a few years ago. And the CMO had hired a vice president of marketing. And you know, that as a senior person, had worked with her before. And what happened was she was not doing just kind of the job that he assumed that she should do, like create the strategy for the team and build the team, that kind of thing. And he addressed it with her very big picture because he assumed he didn't have to be prescriptive. But it turned out she didn't have a sense of what her job was and what she really was going to be responsible for. By the way, they had not been clear on goals. Right. So that, of course, also gets in the way. And so he realized that he had to be a lot more prescriptive than he thought he had to be in order for her to understand what was necessary and how she was going to be measured and how they were going to define success overall. Now, I don't know why. Right. You know, the vice president level, should you be able to do that? Probably, you know, okay. But nonetheless, that's why leadership is an unnatural act. We're dealing with this person in this situation right now to make it successful. The way to do that is to adjust your style and at times be more directive and more prescriptive. And the last thing I would say is that sometimes leaders especially can be sort of abstract and visionary. That's fantastic. But there are times where in all of that wonderful vision, you're not always being clear. And so what you need to do is be ground truth around, therefore, this is the implication, therefore, let's agree on what you're going to go do. Wow.

Well, that's actually a good lead into speaking of being prescriptive on some of the advice you have in the book and one of the things you've put together for people, for all the topics in the book, we're just zeroing on. One of them is scripts, how to actually do it, and the appendix. And I think that is one of the. This is one of the most common topics I get questions about from our listeners and members is, okay, I do need to have a really tough conversation, or maybe I need to dismiss someone. And of course, there's an HR and legal component to this as well, but they're not really sure what to say. How do I actually have this conversation? When you get that question and you think about some of the scripts, where do you. Where do you suggest people start?

Yeah, so I wrote the scripts because when I coach people, you know, my Book is divided into three sections. Managing you, managing them, and managing the business. So the reason is because you probably have a business problem and you do coaching. I understand that. But let's start with you, right? Like, what's going on with you that you let this thing happen, right? Or you. Everyone always has people problems. I understand that. But why have you been shying away from these tough conversations or what's inside of you that you're not communicating clearly? So once we kind of work out your triggers, maybe what you're, you know, not working on or what, what you need to focus on, we can then address what actually has to happen. And what actually has to happen is you have to have these difficult conversations. So, you know, my clients will be like, okay, I'm ready to do that, but what should I say? And I think, well, why don't you just say this? And then I kind of land what they think, what they should say, and what they do is they furiously take notes. So I thought, oh, that's really valuable for people. So I put in the appendix various conversations. Some are how to have one on ones, how to have career conversations, how to tell someone that you're layering a new manager on top of them, how to deliver bad news. And then to your point, how do you fire someone? So that is very difficult. And my, my theme on how do you fire someone is please make sure it's not a surprise. So what does that mean? What that means is you have to start off before you fire them, being clear in what you want them to do, being clear in the cases where there are gaps, what the gaps are, being clear in, how they can fix the gaps, and having a couple of difficult conversations with them up front, and then finally letting them know that this is the conversation before the firing conversation, which is, listen, I've asked you to make sure that you're communicating more broadly with your peers. I've asked you to get a handle on what your team is working on and help and make sure that they're achieving their goals. So far, I have not seen that change in you. And I need to let you know that this is serious, that I need you to make this change. And if you don't, I'm sorry to tell you, we're going to have to part ways.

There's no misunderstanding. That message is there?

Right. And so then when you do, in a few weeks or maybe a month, come back and said, as I told you in our last conversation, these changes have to get made. I haven't seen you make these Changes at this point, I'm going to make. I'm going to go in a different direction and I'm sorry that we're going to have to terminate you. Let's talk about what that looks like.

And then you're on to the next step.

Yeah, and then you're on to the next step. But that, and also, by the way, there's a conversation in there and however you have been able to put your mouth, get your mouth around the words of how to get into that discussion. And that is what is in the way of, for a lot of people.

You write in the book, there's no way to do it painlessly. Don't pretend that it's not dispiriting and awkward and painful. You have to make peace with that before you do it. I highlighted those words because the word for me that comes up a lot when I'm talking to leaders who are in the middle of this is guilt. They feel like they failed the other person, they failed themselves. And the other interesting thing I notice is that they're so frustrated with themselves that this is so hard. And I think about what you wrote and I often have the thought, like, it's supposed to be hard, right? Like, this isn't something that should come easy for us, should it?

Oh, I really agree with that. And it is frustrating that this person that you thought was going to be so great turned out not to be great. It is frustrating that you've lost so much time, right? So there's also that going inside of you. And also, even though this person did not, I always say that, you know, no matter what, work is a contract, right? So we pay you, we give you something to do, we give you meaning, we give you colleagues and comrades and your job is to do your job right? So whatever that is and do your job as measured by these parameters. So the truth is that if you're at the point of firing someone, it's because they didn't meet their contract, they didn't meet their end of the bargain. So it's kind of fair and square. However, they have families. They have to go home and tell their spouse or, you know, other people in their world that they got fired. It's really upsetting. Even if you're prepared for it. What am I going to do now? There's a lot of self esteem issues. This is a human being we're dealing with. So I think it's only respectful to just have a sense of a solemnity of the moment. Which, by the way, is why you can't really say it's harder for me than it's harder for you? No, no, it's much harder for them. Trust me. And they've got to go pull their life back together. However, the other side of that is that they also need to do the reflection on what's it going to take for me to keep up my end of the bargain.

You highlighted something else in this part of the book that I think is really key. You write about checkpoints. Every 18 or 24 months is a good time to do a sanity check. Are these the right executives for the company right now? Is anybody a gating factor? Has everybody grown and you're talking to the CEO in that particular sentence. But I also find it interesting that, like, sometimes we do assume that just because someone's been successful in a role previously or for, for however long or they were successful in the last role, that somehow that will go into perpetuity and that everything will be fine. And it's also interesting to me that oftentimes, even on the front end, we miss the opportunity to really do the checkpoint. So many organizations either have an established framework or an expectation of like a 90 day probationary period. And yet in practice it's a formality in a lot of places. But I'm just thinking, like, I've had so many people tell me over there, like, I knew on day three this person wasn't a good fit and, and then they'd say, well, let me give it six months or nine months just to be sure. And they ended up, you know, going through this whole process and ended up dismissing the person anyway a year and a half later. And I think there's a really an invitation here from you, and I love it, to like take stock and to like, think about some of those natural checkpoints and not be afraid to really check in and address something early.

Yes, addressing something early is amazing. And the idea of I knew on day three it wasn't a fit that, you know, I've heard that myself. And the only change, what we can do right there and then is to address with the person what you're seeing. And so it might be I'm not seeing you lean in to building all the relationships that you need to at this company or I'm not seeing a lot of proactive stance on figuring out what your job is and what you should be doing right now. And if you need my help, what you're doing, getting my help, I'm not seeing you complete tasks. So if you call those things out early, because it's got to be my point to everybody is have clear goals so you can address performance issues and not just have this feeling. And the second is be clear on observable behavior that is working and not working. Another thing I talk about in the book is positive feedback and the importance of positive feedback, especially when someone is new, then, you know, they don't really know how it's going and they're nervous and whatever. It's really helpful to say I really appreciate how much you've leaned in to go out of your way to meet the people here. I recognize that we at times don't, you know, go out and meet new people as well, ourselves. I'm really appreciative. Appreciative that you're doing that, or it might be you've really pushed for clarity on your goals. And I really love that quality about you. Keep doing that even when we don't always hold up our end of the bargain. That's like positive feedback to somebody when they don't really know how they're doing. And I think it's just as important to give that, especially in the in the early days, as it is to be clear on what's not working again, in the early days, so you can correct it.

Alyssa, as you know, this is not a book about firing people. It's just a couple of pages in the book. And the reason I zeroed in on it is because, you know, when I think about growing up, as you cite in the title of the book, as Leaders, this is something I think many of us struggle with, and we need to get better at it. And I so appreciate you walking us through some of these key steps. The scripts in the book, I mean, it's worth picking up just to get the scripts and just to really get a sense of, like, what's some of the language you can use to be really clear where someone's not going to misunderstand what's being said for good or bad. Right. And so thank you so much for zeroing in on this. I hope folks will pick up the book for that. I want to ask you one final question. One of the things I like to ask experts on is what they've changed their minds on, because we're all learning, we're all growing. I know you've been spending a lot of time working with people, writing this book, doing research, thinking about all of the things that have happened in leadership in our world in the last few years. As you've been going through that and speaking and writing. What's one thing in the last year or two that you've changed your mind on.

That's a great question. I think I'm going to answer this. I am definitely a sort of, I guess I would say an eat your vegetables kind of coach like, okay, so do the right thing and do good things and have healthy habits and also be clear on accountability and accountability and objectives will set you free. So I think powerful goals and holding people accountable to the right goals. And over time, and I thought that was like the most important thing. And over time I have realized that actually what I said before, positive feedback and creating an environment of psychological safety is what helps people be the most creative, the most resourceful, give discretionary effort and try and be the most innovative. Right? Try the most things because they're not always afraid of what's coming around the corner. So I think my shift from goals and accountability to psychological safety is the thing that I've changed my mind about.

What changed your mind on it?

I saw over and over again how for the people in the workplace that I'd be coaching inside, how looser they were and therefore how much more freedom they had to bring their really their best ideas to the table and how that affected them when they were feeling loose and safe and how much a feeling of fear and concern and anxiety made them feel tight, I should say. And I myself, there are times as a coach, I've been in a lot of work environments for 20 years and there are environments that I myself feel really loose and able to say what there is. And that's a better environment to get the best out of me as opposed to, oh, I better not upset those people. So I think it's sort of a human capability and what I observed was better work coming out of that.

Alyssa Cohn is the author of From Startup to Grown Up, Grow youw Leadership to Grow youw Business. Alyssa, thank you so much for your work and your leadership.

Thank you so much, Dave. It was great to be here with you.

If this conversation was helpful to you, several related episodes I'd recommend. Of course, Alyssa and I were talking about the last conversation today in a relationship with an employee. But there are so many conversations to be had long before this conversation and often we'll do the work to prevent a conversation like this. One of the best frameworks for that is the accountability dial from Jonathan Raymond. We talked about that in detail Last on episode 464, how to balance care and accountability when leading remotely in that conversation. Jonathan, I looked at the five steps of the accountability dial, how to do it effectively in a remote environment, which of course so many of us are doing more and more these days. And the steps that we can take today to begin to have good, healthy conversations about accountability. Does that sometimes lead to saying goodbye? Eventually? Of course it does. But often if we can be proactive, it helps us to have a lot more ability to be able to resolve situations Much earlier on episode 464 for all those details, you heard Alyssa talk about the importance of helping people to speak freely within the organization. Amy Edmondson would call that psychological safety. Same thing. Episode 404 we talked about how to build psychological safety with Amy Edmondson. What individual leaders can do within their teams, even if the larger organization isn't doing it well, to really create a safe place for people to talk and communicate. And then finally, I'd recommend the work of Kim Scott. She was on episode 302, how to challenge directly and Care Personally. That's the message behind Radical Candor or best selling book and organization of the same name. And it really is about those two things together. Challenging directly. Of course, we all need to do that as managers and leaders and caring personally, not either or both at the same time. Kim talks in that episode about how we can do a better job of that as leaders. Episode 302 for that all of those episodes you can find on the coaching4leaders.com website. If you set up your free membership, you can search for everything on the website since the first episode aired back in 2011 and in addition to that, tons of other resources for free members. One of them is all of my interview notes and highlights from almost every interview that I prepare. Alyssa's is there as well. You can download a PDF of my interview notes of all the highlights that I found most relevant from her book for this conversation. That is inside not only the episode notes, but inside the free membership. Plus every single interview I've done over the last few years where those notes are available. That's just one of the many benefits of free membership. If you set up your free membership@coaching4leaders.com right now, you'll get access to that and everything else. I look forward to seeing you on the website for that. It'll just take a couple of moments to set up. Next week I'm glad to welcome Zunka Ahrens to the show. He is going to be joining me to talk about how to make your reading more meaningful. Join me for that important conversation with him. Have a great week and see you next Monday.