MBA935 Q&A Wednesday: I had a lot of firings recently. Am I a horrible boss?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that brings you business lessons, strategies and answers every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. If you're just getting started and you want to make sure that your business idea is a good one, that people actually want to buy what you have to offer, then check out our Idea Validation course. It's a seven part video course with a workbook to make sure you nail your business idea. It's absolutely free. Just go to 100- MBA-NET Today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A episodes, I answer a question from a listener. Today's question is I've had a ton of firings recently. Am I a horrible boss? Oh man. I know how hard that could be, how it forces you to ask that question and reflect upon your own management, we're getting into it. I'm going to talk about what are the possible reasons why this is happening. But right off the bat, the fact that you're asking this question means you care. And that means you're not a horrible boss. We all have room for improvement when it comes to management, we're going to find out why this happens. What are some of the reasons why sometimes we have this kind of run of bad fits, people that just don't fit into our company or what we need. Also, we're going to talk about, is there any ways to avoid it? If so, how so? So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So one of our listeners, Martin, asks, I've had a lot of firings recently. Am I a horrible boss? First of all, Martin, you are not alone. This happens to a lot of us as business owners. This has happened to me where I've had to make a few firings in the same week. Whoa, that's not a good feeling. I know that week was a hard one for me. But the important thing is that you learn from the experience. You find out why you had to fire them. First of all, we have to recognize the fact that they didn't just hire themselves. Right? We hired them. We have to take responsibility for the fact that we decided to hire them and put them a part of the team. So we took on that responsibility and obviously they didn't work out. Are there ways for us to make sure we don't make the same mistake? Of course there are. But before we get into those ways, I want to say something. This is going to happen. Doesn't matter how good your company is, no matter how successful it is, no matter how good the reputation is or the workplace environment is, you will have to experience firings. This is just part and parcel of having a business. Google, which is known to be one of the best places to work, fires people. They fire them. It happens. Same thing with Apple or Facebook or whatever. That's because you just can't know for sure 1000%. Somebody's a great fit from just a few interviews and looking at the resume. You gotta put them in action. You gotta put them in the team. You gotta put them in context. Our jobs as the leader of the company is to try to get as close as possible as making sure they're a good fit. And then we let them shine. We let them show us what they can do. Now let's learn from this experience. We gotta take a look at what happened. Why did we fire them? In my opinion, the ones you really need to focus on are because of competency, like they couldn't do the job. They might have been a really sweet person and had a good attitude, but if they didn't have the skills to pull off the job, that's something we could have weeded out beforehand and I'll talk about how in a minute. But if we're firing people because of attitude or insubordination or they're just not trustworthy, it's kind of hard to weed that out, especially if this is the first time they're doing it. Meaning that you might have checked references during the hiring process and they're all pretty good and everybody was fine with them. And when they got to your place, they decided to do something wrong. So don't beat yourself too much about that. But take a look at the environment, the culture in your business, make sure that it doesn't cultivate or encourage that kind of behavior. So what about competency? If they're just getting fired because they just can't do the job, which is most of the time, that's in my experience. You know, I've had people on our team that are so sweet, so lovely, really wish we could have kept them on. They were a big part of the team in terms of our culture, but unfortunately they're just not pulling their weight. They couldn't do it. They didn't have the tools to make it happen. So what I did is I started to do something called a probational period. And you can set how long this period is, but basically it's just like a short term contract where you say, hey, this is a chance for you to see if you want to work with us and if we want to work with you. Now, this could be a few weeks, it could be a month, it could be three months. That's up to you. But I would say it has to be at least a few weeks. Because. Because it takes just a week to understand everything they need to do to do their job and, you know, get all their credentials and their email and all that kind of stuff. But the point here is that this is a test, this is a trial. We need to see how they do with your team, with your company, with the job at hand, with the responsibilities they're about to take on. And it's just very clear from the start, you are not completely hired yet. You're on probation. And we just want to see if this can happen, if this can work out. It's kind of like an extended interview or a practical interview. I do this with our development team too. Before I hire them full time or hire them on an hourly basis, I give them a set project to say, hey, here's a project here. I want you to finish this project. Let's take a look at the code. Let's take a look at what you've done and how long it takes you to do it. I also want to see how they work with the team. They get paid for the project and everything, but I don't commit for a long term, and I know if this person can do it or can't do it. This also sets expectations for them because they know, hey, I got to do my best here. And then also after the probation's over, after that contract's over and they're hired full time, this is the level of work I expect all the time, right? So if you slack off, I know you're capable of more. So these probational periods, these trials, these small contracts really help narrow down. So if during this contract or probation period, you have to make a fire, you have to fire them because they just are not doing the job right or they can't do the job, then you shouldn't beat yourself up over that. That's not a real fire. That's kind of like they didn't pass the interview and you did the right thing there. And there's really no way to know if somebody's able to do something or will do well in something until you actually put the matter in their hands. They actually go ahead and try themselves, and you get to see them in action. That's the best way. I kind of equate this to, like, tryouts on a sports team. You know, like, I played basketball in high school. During Thanksgiving break, we had basketball tryouts, right? And the coach would choose the players that would play on the team based on how they performed on the court, not based on their resume or what they said in an interview. I need to see them in action. So this theory is kind of like, you can hire quickly, but, you know, you need to make some decisions during that probation period. You may need to fire fast. You may need to hire fast. Like, wow, this person's really good. I want to hold onto them. Number two, review your interview process. What are you doing to make sure this person knows what they're doing? You need to make sure you're asking more than questions. You actually get their hands dirty. So what we like to do is we like to have a initial interview, see if they're a cultural fit. Because if they're not a cultural fit, forget it. They're not going to make it. They have the right attitude. Because I can't change attitude. I need to make sure they have a good attitude. If they have a good attitude, great. They move on to round two. Round two, they're really asked a lot of technical questions about the role. Let's say, for example, this role is a design role. They're going to be a designer. So before the second interview, I would tell the candidate, hey, take a look at this webpage or take a look at this feature in our app and tell us how you would improve the ui, the user experience with the design. Prepare your answer, prepare your presentation for the next interview. So when we run the next interview, it's not just a bunch of questions they're presenting. You want to get them talking about their work and you want to see what they actually would do. So you kind of give them a task. And if they're not willing to do that, then they're not a good fit. Now, sometimes you need to do this without any preparation beforehand. So say, for example, the roles, a customer service role. Have some typical customer service questions you get for your company and get them to answer them immediately. And don't get them to answer it verbally, get them to answer it by writing it down. So I would, you know, get on a Skype call and say, hey, I'm going to send you three questions right now, one at a time, and I send you one question on chat. I want you to reply to me just like, I'm a customer and you're just sitting there on Skype and waiting for their answer in text. And then give them the next question and then the next question. That's a real example and it's during the actual interview. Lastly, you need to make sure you check for commitment and attitude and positivity. You can't just ask the candidate, hey, are you a positive person or do you have a great attitude? Yes. You could ask them like situational questions like, hey, can you tell me a time where you had a difficult time at work, but you had a great attitude about it and you turned it around? That's fine. They're always going to praise themselves. They're always going to give you the best story possible. You need to ask people that worked with them. So get references, call them up. Now you can do is ask for these references before the second interview. You don't have to do this last because you want to make sure the attitude is great and ask questions like, how would you describe them if you were starting a company? Would you hire them and why? Now when they're answering the question, the reason why they have to be on a phone call or on a Skype call is you want to hear how they answer the question, not what they say. Now, if they Say, yeah, I would hire this person. They're great. You know, I really enjoyed working with them. That's different from like, oh man, I would definitely hire this person. They were amazing. I can't believe we let them go. The way they express themselves really shows how genuine it is and how much they really mean it. So you need to hear for tonality on a call. Email is just not going to do it justice. Thy ticket, lady Jennifer of Coolidge.

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Alright, so once they're hired, you need to set up expectations. You need to make sure they know, hey, this is how you win in this job, right? This is what success looks like. If you do this, if you take on these responsibilities, that's how you keep your job. That's how you succeed here. That's how you're happy here. That's how we're happy here. I know that sounds very blunt, but people need to know what to do. They need to know how do I be successful here? And you need to lay it out perfectly. Why? Because if they don't know what they need to do or what is expected of them, then if you see them underperforming, they don't know they're underperforming. And it's going to be hard to fire them because it's kind of not fair. They don't know what they're supposed to do. To make it crystal clear, here are your responsibilities. And these can be bullet points. They could be tasks, they could be what you expect of them. They could be things that they need to be completed by a certain amount of time. This is how you win this is how you do well at this job. Make that super clear. Check back in with them as much as possible every week, every two weeks as they're, you know, going through their first month or so in the job and go back to that list of expectations. Make sure they know this is the formula for doing well at this job. All right, Marin, thank you so much for asking that question on Q and A Wednesday. I hope that helped. I hope that answered your question and helped others who are listening today. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me at omar100mba net so I can be able to answer your question here on Q and A Wednesdays. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Firing somebody is not fun, but keeping them on when they are not serving you and your customers is going to hurt you big time in the short term and the long term. Part of being a great entrepreneur is making tough decisions. And sometimes you got to make these decisions. Sometimes when you do all this due diligence, all the things I mentioned in today's episode, you still have to fire somebody. And that's okay. You just have to do it so it helps you, your customers, and the rest of the team learn from the experience. So when you replace them with a new hire, you have a better chance of having a superstar. All right, thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode one that a lot of you have requested. I'm going to be talking about the five top cities for digital nomads. If you're somebody who loves to travel and run your business on the road, what are the five top cities? The most affordable ones, the ones that have the best standards and have kind of the best lifestyle. We're going to be talking about that in tomorrow's episode, so make sure you hit subscribe and I'll check you then. Take care.

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