Peter Sorgenfrei covers three reasons to fire someone: they ignore feedback, they hurt team culture, or they consistently miss deadlines. He says be direct, reference what you've already told them, let them react, and offer help like recommendations or introductions.
How do you know when it's time to fire your first employee? Not the first person you hired, but the first time you have to fire somebody. It is never fun. It never gets fun. But here are some red flags or things to look out for when you're thinking about whether or not this person needs to part ways with your company. Number 1 is, are they resistant to feedback and are they not growing? Right. So have you done what is within your scope to help them grow and take the feedback that you're giving them and changing the ways of doing the things differently than they're doing? Have they gotten that opportunity and have they not taken it multiple times? That's one red flag. The second red flag is, is there a poor cultural fit? Right. So are they in some way negatively impacting team morale either by You know, talking over the water cooler in a certain way or disrespecting members in terms of their workflow or in other ways affecting team morale. If there's a poor cultural fit, sorry, and you've tried to address it with them and they're not doing it, that's red flag number 2. And then red flag number 3, of course, is if they repeatedly miss, let's say, deadline or the quality of their work is not up to par. If they're not able to, back to point number 1, to kind of listen to what you're giving them and doing something about it, then you need to let them go. When you need to do that, and maybe that's a topic for another video, it is important that you do it in a compassionate way. But it's a firm way, right? So typically what I would do when I've had to do this, I would sit somebody down and instead of starting to talk about all sorts of other stuff, I would start with saying, I'm sorry, we're going to have to let you go. And I will now talk to you about why that is and what we're going to do from here. So there's no guessing. We take it right off the bat. That's why we're in the room. Most of the time, people get upset, obviously, when they get let go. So it's important to sort of let them be upset and be with them in the upsetness and talk to them about it. Folks will say something like, it's unfair. Why this? Why not somebody else? Why me? And most of the time, actually getting into all sorts of detailed explanations is not a great idea. You can just say, well, we have been working on all these things with you. These things haven't improved. We've had this conversation for a while. And unfortunately, I think you would be better off working somewhere else than here. What we are going to do is to help you get there. We'll be happy to, you know, if it's give recommendations, help with networking, all sorts of other things. In my experience, what happens with most people that you've had to let go, they actually end up somewhere better, somewhere where they're more motivated and therefore deliver a better performance than they did with you. So when all is said and done, in most cases, people end up in a better situation than they were when they were with you. But as they're sitting there, obviously, that's difficult to grasp. So those were some red flags to look out for when you need to consider whether or not to let somebody go. I hope it was helpful. As always, if there's something you want me to record a video on, or if you want to know more about this topic, let me know and I'd be happy to share more on it.
