Thursday, September 11, 2008
Three Most Important Reasons to Fire the Fat (part 1 of 3)
By Christine Regan Lake
There is one heated topic that is off limits to many business owners. That is, of course, whether they may need to fire someone. When the topic comes up there are any number of different responses: ”I’ve just got too big a heart and I can’t do it”, or “She’s been here for so long how could I do that?” This business owner acknowledges that there is a problem, just one that he is not willing to fix.
Then there is the business owner who is just in flat-out denial. Their response will more likely be, “Well it’s not like I’m going to fire them” and it is usually muttered with more than a little bit of defensive tone as if to say, “what are you thinking? as if…… firing someone who isn’t doing their job is a mortal sin. For any of you business owners who are now reading this and experiencing a bizarre, sudden illness welling up in your stomach, I suggest you keep reading. Chances are this is your gut telling you, “Listen up buddy, you need to hear this!”
While your friends and associates may jibe you about being a ‘softy’ or having ‘too big a heart’ to let someone go, all the while lovingly feeding your inner martyr, I’m going to be straightforward and force you to ask yourself some difficult questions. Just realize that all growth comes from when we push past our comfort zone.
The 3 most important reasons you need to fire ALL of your C-Players and half your B-Players. (If you want to see a copy of “The ABCs of Hiring” email me at cregan@redlake.tv and I will email you a copy of the document.)
No Respect
In the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield, “I get no respect I tell you. No respect.” Here is the first and most important issue: Most managers and business owners don’t fire people because they want people to like them and they don’t want to be looked at as the ‘bad guy.’ Here is the root problem with this idea: When you place ‘liking me’ above ‘respecting me’, you sacrifice one for the other. Right about now some of you are shifting in your seat saying to yourself, “No it doesn’t”…really!” But, let’s just explore this a bit more.
Prior to founding Redlake, when I was in corporate America, many of my employers held this same misguided belief. It was obvious from every action that they took that they were more concerned with being the ‘good guy.’ What does that mean? It means they were never prepared to have those ‘difficult conversations’ with a troublesome employee or to ‘fire the fat’ so to speak. As a result, they carried these B and C players in the department year after year even when they weren’t getting the job done.
This is a very frustrating place to be for an A-player. Yes, I am an A-player. I care passionately about what I do and I always want to contribute at the highest level. While in these positions it became obvious to me that while in most cases, I genuinely liked this manager or owner. They were nice guys/gals. But, I didn’t respect them as a manager or as a business owner because I looked to them as the leader to set the highest example and they weren’t doing it. They were more concerned with being liked than with running a great organization and pushing their team to excel at the highest level. It’s like being on a sports team with a coach who doesn’t care if the team wins a championship as long as his players love him. In the end, however, those teams won’t win and his players won’t end up loving their work or their coach.
The biggest problem for the manager or owner is that they are sacrificing respect just to bask in ‘likeability.’ Let me be very clear here: If you have someone on your payroll who needs to be fired and you won’t fire them, your employees don’t respect you. Why would they? You haven’t demanded their respect. Here is the kicker, though. If you truly cared about their deep respect, you would have that difficult conversation, take the action that needs to be taken, so that they perform their job much better and reach their goals. You would then get both their respect and admiration as an effective leader. As an owner, when you place ‘liking me’ over ‘respecting me’ you are destroying the very foundation of your company. Let me ask you: How can a leader lead an army that doesn’t respect him? They can’t. The employees are leading the company and they’re taking your business on a direct course to mediocrity. In your competitive environment, how long do you think your company can survive running on a daily diet of mediocre performance?
Finally, and most importantly, when you allow yourself and your business to be so disrespected by these B and C players who have now embraced the belief that they are ‘entitled’ to a job with you and at some level you feel you have a ‘duty’ to keep them, your self respect begins to erode. Now you are saying: “You’ve gone too far. They respect me and I respect myself.” Do they? Do you? Of the people that have come to mind as you have been reading this and have now been lumping into the B and C player category, what were the last few things that you have asked them to do that they failed to do? Are they not making those cold calls? Are they not treating the customer with respect? Are they showing up late or running out early? What things have they been doing or not doing that you have tried to curb yet still continue. Here is the real scoop, if they respected you as their leader, they’d change their behavior. The problem is that since they know there are never any consequences, they know they don’t have to listen to you. They know you don’t have the stomach to fire anyone. They know they’ve got a job until they quit or the company folds. You’ve proven that to them daily as they ignore your orders and experience no consequences.
How long can you continue to write checks giving your company’s hard earned money to people that aren’t performing and don’t listen to you? Do you think that doesn’t effect your self esteem? Do you think your gut doesn’t know the real deal? Your gut knows. That’s the sinking feeling you’ve been having every time this issue comes up and you force yourself to change the topic. Not yet convinced. Read part two coming shortly.
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