Luke Murray talks about the emotions that come up when firing someone: anger at leadership, and an uncomfortable relief or excitement nobody admits to feeling. He argues these reactions are normal and worth discussing openly in business.
Last week, we let go of an employee that had been with us almost longer than any other employee. These are particularly uncomfortable for me to feel just in life, and certainly would be a difficult thing to say out loud in a company format. But these two emotions are anger and actually excited. So a couple of things. One could be, hey, I am angry at you boss, for letting this person go, because I disagree. The second thing they could be angry at the boss about is, why didn't you do this sooner? And that's a fair question as well, depending on how open your communication is with the team. The last one, and this honestly feels like the most uncomfortable or the most inappropriate is straight up excited. And this is something I didn't even I thought to ask this. I didn't even consider asking this because it felt so wrong. Can I miss this person and also be glad that they're gone? Well, has anyone ever been in a relationship with someone that they loved and known that they needed to let them go? And if you'd like to know what other emotions came up and how I dealt with them and why it's important to talk about emotions when you let someone go or any other time in business, then click on the link below for the full video. Because at some point you might have to say.
