Episode 097: Stopping the Spin on Employee Turnover Messaging

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, running solo again today. Uh, today's topic, I wanted to talk about something that, uh, I mean, we've gone through this before, but, uh, I was reading the book No Rules Rules from Reed Hastings, uh, about some of the things that, uh, he does running Netflix, which is, you know, that's a fairly large organization, uh, you know, just kind of going through some of the challenges they faced. And one of the things that they're really well known for is their culture, specifically their culture of candor, right? And how they kind of build this, this relationship between all their employees, you know, to kind of have that ability to speak to things that need to be said instead of like, you know, batting around the issue or ignoring it completely like so many of us do. And as I was reading the book, one of the things that they, um, as they're talking about this level of candor they have in the organization the author of the book, you know, because he co-wrote it with a— I want to say she was a journalist or something— asked him the question is, hey, here's a scenario. Actually gave him a bunch of different scenarios, but this one stuck out to me and essentially asked, you know, like, you've got an employee who's been with you a while and they have to move on, right? They're, they're being let go of the company, from the company. How do you message it to your employees? Right. And basically, you know, gave him a couple different options. You know, do you say just what a wonderful person this person is and how sad you are to see them go? Do you cut out and come right out and say, you know, this person's being fired and here's exactly why? Or some option of the two. Right. And I found it really interesting to hear his perspective on which option he would pick and why. Um, because he was very big on, you know, candor. Naturally, that's one of their, one of their big things at Netflix. And in his mind, he's like, leave the spin at home, you know. And I thought about that, like, what would— what have we been doing, you know, when we let people go, people, uh, or transition them out? And what do most people in corporate America or in, you know, other, uh, other companies What are things that they do? And so, you know, as I was thinking about that, I thought back to all the times that we've done that before. And usually I found myself in the camp of, you know, like, I don't want to kick them on the way out, right? Like, they're already losing their job. They don't need to lose their dignity with it. And so I would spin. I would spin like crazy, you know, spin cycle 100% complete here at RTA for a long time. And, you know, like, we'd have somebody leave and it was clear to everybody that they weren't a fit for the organization, or like they weren't doing their job well, right? And in effort to, you know, kind of let them go with dignity, like, I would bend over backwards in my communications as we talked about them, you know, like, oh, they're just, you know, they're a wonderful person and we're really sad to see them go, you know, just to make sure that they felt like their ego was being protected on the way out the door. And even people who quit, you know, kind of the same thing. And people who quit who, like, I was, you know, our motto here, right, which is that I usually don't fire people, I'll inspire you to leave. So, you know, like, we'd have a lot of those kind of turnover, but we would still just message them and like put this praise on top of them to say, yeah, this is what you know, they're just amazing people and we're sad to see them go. When it wasn't true, it wasn't accurate at all, right? When sometimes we were more than happy to see them go and they weren't doing a good job. What was interesting for me is that as I'm reading this book, this is probably, you know, 8 months ago, 6 months ago, I was reading through this, you know, like we had just gone through a couple of reorganizations, you know, where we had let some people go and some we had inspired to leave. You know, like, we were having the right conversations, the hard conversations, and, you know, definitely had some changes internally that needed to be made. And when I came out and we talked about moving some of these people on, you know, like, everybody can cut through that, right? They can read right through the BS and the spin. And a lot of them pushed back, like, whoa, you You know, like, why on earth is this person leaving? And, you know, like, you're just sitting there trying to really hold the line and make sure that you're protecting their dignity. And, oh yeah, like, they're just a wonderful person and all this. Um, and what happens is you end up protecting the ego of the person leaving while harming your credibility with the people who stay. And that was something I had not learned, you know, in my time yet. Because I really was like, I was always taught, you know, treat people better than they deserve, you know, treat them how you want to be treated, that kind of thing. And really kind of bend over backwards to make sure that you're, you're protecting people's dignity, especially if they're transitioning out of the organization. And I think that's probably very typical for HR, for attorneys, because one, you don't want to violate any kind of like non-disparagement clause, right? So if you're messaging to your people about somebody leaving the organization, you do need to make sure that you're complying with HR policy, legal policy. You may be bound by something you can't control. But if you do have some flexibility and you can message to your team about why somebody is leaving, what I have found— and, you know, and I've done this with experience too, I'm going to tell you the kind of follow-up to the story— but what I found is that it's much better to just be straight Shoot straight, shoot from the heart, be honest, you know, don't lie to people about it, but don't be mean. You know, there's no reason to be mean or cruel, but be straight, you know, be honest. Like, hey, this isn't working out with this individual, they have to move on because, you know, like, we just weren't satisfied with the level of performance that we were getting out of this position. And, you know, and you can truthfully say things like We know that they will succeed in another position, in another role, maybe at a different company, but this just wasn't working out for them, right? And he had the— Reed Hastings in his book, as he went through this, this response, basically had the insight to say, look, anything you're going to put in writing, just assume they're going to read it. So write it as if they were reading it, but write it in a way that they couldn't disagree with anything you say. That you could essentially stand on the words that you've written, but also not lie to your people. The people who are staying are the ones that matter most. And don't feel like you really got to put the needs and feelings of the departed over the needs and feelings of those who are still with you. So kind of fast forward on our story. So we went through this phase. We had several people who were moving on from the company, and we messaged it and we spun it like crazy, and it was really jarring for the people who stayed behind. And honestly, what happens for those who stay behind, the biggest thing that they're going through their mind, right, is they're not sure, did this person get fired? And if they aren't sure about that, then the question they're asking themselves is, but should they have been fired? Or, you know, like, well, this was a really good person I don't see how on earth they could have fired them, and we must have really screwed up if they quit, right? And they're filling in the gaps of communication with their own negative tapes and their own stories. Um, and everything that, you know, like we go through, and we've talked about that on this podcast with insecurities and how your mind can just run rampant sometimes. Well, that happens when anybody leaves too, right? Because there's relationships that suddenly are severed, and there's relationships that, you know, have to heal And you got to mitigate that somehow. As we were going through it, right, we got that just a ton of kickback from staff around the messaging, right? And it was just one of those things you're like, oh, if you only knew what I knew, you know, like you guys would be glad, you know, for the moves we made. Um, it was really interesting is because depending on your perspective of how often you worked with these individuals, your perspective on whether or not this was a good move also changed. So I thought that was really interesting too. That was an interesting learning for me, is that sometimes, you know, if we're really close to the problem, um, you know, we understand exactly what's going on. But if we're far away from it, you know, and in a company, you know, like we're kind of a mid-sized company, we're about 50 people, um, and so in those kind of companies where you're, you're not totally isolated, you know, you're not a big behemoth Fortune 500, that has hundreds of employees where people go in and come in as just a daily occurrence, but you're also big enough that you're isolated from individuals sometimes. And what I found was that those who were isolated from the individuals didn't realize that there was negative behavior or that performance wasn't being met or that hard conversations were happening in the background that they didn't— they weren't privy to. And some of this could be entitlement if you want to go that direction, which is You know, people felt entitled to know the reasons why decisions were being made, and I can understand that. But I think the, the kick for me was really understanding that when people see others get fired, right, there's this almost like tribe mentality, like a survival mechanism that kicks in, which is, how do I make sure I don't get fired? How do I make sure that I stay in the good graces of my manager? Right. We talked last week's episode about the, you know, the quadrant, the People Analyzer, as a way to help communicate as managers where you see people on that matrix, you know, to showcase their performance, to let them know, is their job in danger, that kind of thing. But any time that you have a severance or, you know, somebody moving on, it's always going to be jarring for the people left behind. And so you've got to be able to communicate that. Now, how you communicate that, I think, really depends on your core values, uh, how your culture shows up. If you don't have a culture built around candor, if you don't have culture, you know, built around treating people with dignity and respect, you know, if maybe you haven't even codified your core values, um, you know, like, this may not be as important to you. If you don't have a culture, or maybe you, you're really bound by HR or union rules or legal departments that say exactly, nope, you can't say this about this person. This is exactly how you have to message it. And you can't depart from the party script. I would just try to push on those and like, people deserve the truth, right? They deserve to know what's going on and not full transparency. You don't have to be fully transparent, but at least opaque. You know, opaque enough that they can see that you're making the right moves for the company and you can build that, right? And that was almost like our response was, hey, like, you're just going to have to trust us on this one. You know, and most people, they got in line and others, if they couldn't buy into the vision, they didn't agree with the decisions we were making. You know, again, this is me and my bluntness as I just put it right back on them as well. Maybe you're on the wrong bus, right? If you don't like where the driver's driving and you don't like the way that the team is operating, uh, you know, like maybe this isn't the right bus for you. And I think part of that response is definitely justified, warranted, but the other part of that was me then reflecting. And, you know, the executive team and I actually sat back and did this, but reflecting on how we were showing up, because one of our core values is SMART. And in our core values of SMART, which is really about being people smart, There's two things that we really, like, I leaned into. The first one was that we speak the kind truth, right? We're not about being nice at RTA. We're all about saying what needs to be said in a way that's kind and compassionate. The other part of SMART is that, you know, we're empathetic and emotionally intelligent. And so as I'm seeing this reaction coming out of my teams, how am I responding to that and how do I empathize with what they're seeing in their perspective, not knowing what I know. I mean, how can I, how can I fix that? The other piece of our core values at RTA was all about, you know, when we talk about being humble, the number one thing I usually stress to new hires is it's all about being genuine and authentic. Like, you've got to show up with your real self. You can't sit there and put a mask on. You can't, you know, be a politician or anything. And here I was anytime we had a departure, being a politician, right? Trying to keep both sides happy. And so as I looked at our core values and as the executive team and I, we wrestled with this, and then we were reading this book from Reed Hastings, I was like, oh boy, this might be part of our answer right here. And so I sent out a poll. I actually sent out a poll to all the staff. I'm like, how would you guys like to be managed out, right? Like if there was a major you know, termination event or something like that, how would you like it to be messaged? And the way I asked it was, how would you like it to be messaged if it was about you? Right? Like, you can't just think of this as the person who's left behind because I definitely think everybody has that perspective already. What I wanted them to consider was, how would you like it to be if it was you who was terminated? And then I asked them the follow-up, which is, how would you like it to be if it was you who stayed behind. And it was interesting to see the disparity between the two results, but I was really impressed with how many people were like, just tell it straight, you know, you don't need to spin it or anything like that, you don't need to knock me down, but, uh, you know, tell it as straight as you can. So we did. So from that point forward, I let everybody know, hey, if we terminate you, just so you know, you know, the message isn't going to be all fluffy and golden handcuffs, or, you know, pink handcuffs, I guess you want to do that. It's going to be, you know, some of the hard truth. Uh, you know, hey, like, we let this individual go, you know, like, there was a ton of hard conversations we were having behind the scenes, and we realized, like, this just wasn't the right role, right fit, right bus. Especially, I'll tell you, when we get really candid is when it's a core values issue, right? Is when somebody is blatantly violating core values. We're really clear This person isn't living up to our standards of how we behave. And we'll call out specifically, they just aren't showing a hunger that we're looking for. They're showing a lack of hunger. Or like they really struggled with humility. And we don't spin it anymore. We just call it like we see it. And I will tell you is that that has brought back more trust, more credibility. From, you know, from the rank and file, from everybody on the floor of the management team, just because they know that we're treating people fairly. In fact, we had a, you know, we had somebody that we'd brought on and they didn't even make it the 60 days, right? And we could have just said, you know, hey, at this time they've, you know, they've accepted their 60-day buyout offer, which is something we've talked about on the podcast before, something unique we do here, and we could just leave it at that. But like in this case, no, that wasn't a buyout offer. It was a, it was just a straight up, hey, you're not a fit here, you don't belong here, you're not any of our core values. I don't know how you got through the interview process, you need to move on, right? And, and so we did that and we messaged to the team, you know, hey, we've let so-and-so go, um, you know, just there are several things over the past 2 months that It really showed us that they weren't a culture fit, and here's why, you know, bullet point 1, 2, 3. What was interesting about that is I had 3 or 4 teammates who'd never even worked with the guy. They messaged me after and they said, hey, I can't tell you, like, it really meant a lot to me that you let go of somebody who wasn't living out the core values, and they were a member of the executive team, right? Like, they really— they— it meant a lot to them that we were holding ourselves to the same standards we were holding everybody else to. They would never have known that if I hadn't been candid, right? They would have never known that we were, you know, that we were applying the same standard to ourselves as we were to everybody else. And it meant a lot to them, right? It gave me and it gave the executive team a lot of credibility with these individuals, you know, as they reached out to us. So as I'm reading through that, you know, if you're, if you're curious about that, you know, happy to answer any questions you have about how we message, you know, some examples of how we've messaged in the past. Uh, you know, I'll protect the names of the innocent kind of a thing. Um, you can email us at podcast@rtfulia.com. Uh, the book that we read was No Rules Rules. It's from Reed Hastings, uh, about his time at Netflix, uh, running that company, um, and turning it into the behemoth and the juggernaut that it is. Some amazing insights in that book, by the way, you know, things like context over control, um, you know, doing things like the, the unlimited PTO, the no vacation policy, uh, you know, policy. Yeah, I love the way that they say that with the double negative. Um, but yeah, just an overall great lesson that we received from that. And again, look at your own policies, look at your own HR practices, see if there's a way that you can be more candid and more transparent with your people about when team members have to leave. And talk to them, include them in that process, you know, because they may have a different understanding or they may not want that of you, right? But I would guarantee that most people don't like being spun. I mean, we get spun all the time from advertising, politics, whatever you want to do. There's just always seems like everybody's always got an angle. And so I think they could appreciate some real genuine leadership where, you know, we're not spinning them anymore. We're just being real straight. So that's going to do it for today's episode. Again, a little, you know, transparency and candor in our emails and communications with our staff will go a long way. Be humble, be genuine, authentic, you know, speak that kind truth and be willing to lean into it. That's truly, you know, one of the greatest marks of any leader. As being able to handle difficult conversations and difficult news with grace and openness. So until next time.

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