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Level 3 – Creating Teams
Use the right technology
- Make sure everyone is working together with the right software
- Make logging in simple for everyone
- Use one password like a master password or password manager
- Use one account for everything instead of multiple accounts for each thing
- Let the workers choose their own technology upgrades
- When managers make upgrades without input, the technology isn’t always used but still costs money to implement
- prevent IT disasters
- Avoid laptop theft by using MyLaptopGPS or LoJack for Laptops
- Use cloud storage and backup to avoid data loss from hard drive failures
- Be aware of safe computer use and teach your subordinates
- Install antivirus software on all of the organization’s computers to avoid a virus going throughout a network
- Stop in-house technological sabotage
- Passwords really do matter
- Separate the roles and responsibilities of IT to avoid one person having all the power
- Have the IT department actively monitor for logic bombs
Motivate your team to success
- When bringing new staff onto the team, don’t drop too much on them
- Many of them will become discouraged from the natural barriers to success
- Each person should be valued and invested into during the training process
- After training them extensively, pay them to quit to avoid bringing disloyal people on board
- Always clarify what you want
- Give them specific goals
- Write out each of the goals on paper as a 250 word paragraph
- Set an appropriate quality of the result and timing for delivery
- Read and re-read each goal to make sure you both fully understand
- Let them know how and when you’ll let them know how you’ll follow up with them
- Great managers give incentives before using punishments
- No matter how a manager leads, actions have to always have consequences for it to feel effective or be learned from
- They’re allowed to learn their own lessons and are rewarded for achievements
- Managers will look past the action into that person’s motivations and emotions
- You can get what you want with force, but you’ll get better results by being kind, passionate, supportive and grateful
- Treat others the way you’d like to be treated if you were in their subordinate position
- Good leaders believe that leadership is earned, not given
- If you do need to deliver a reprimand, forget about the event after the punishment has been delivered
- No matter how a manager leads, actions have to always have consequences for it to feel effective or be learned from
- Everyone is motivated by different things, even when they have the same goals
- Money is always an effective incentive, especially when it’s measured against peers’ income, but it can’t be the only incentive
- They need to be balanced between achievement and challenge, where they feel they’ve succeeded but see more opportunities to succeed
- They are most motivated when their boss is both working harder than they are and cares about their success
- A good subordinate will never feel paid enough to deal with bad managers
- A few major things can motivate workers depending on their personality, and some of them are complete opposites to each other
- Working conditions
- The work itself
- Social recognition for completing tasks
- The social experience of making detailed shared plans of action
- Exclusive control or responsibility of a project or task
- A defined structure and organization for how to do things
- A lack of structure to give them freedom to explore tasks their own way
- Permission to fail while trying to succeed
- Mixing pleasure and fun with business
- Non-cash benefits
- Free time to think and explore other projects
- Short-term goals
- Completion of the project
- A list of clear and tangible outcomes for a project
- Long-term opportunities
- Opportunities for advancement or promotion
- Opportunities to learn and grow
- Fill the organization’s library with multiple copies of business and self-help books, then encourage them to take whatever they want
- Purpose for their work
- A meaningful way that the task will improve someone’s life
- Opportunities for creative expression or spontaneity
- Working conditions
- There are several clear-cut demotivators that will always discourage a worker
- Stifling policies or needless bureaucracy
- Over-involved supervision
- Bad relationships with the supervisor or peers
- Unsafe or uncomfortable working environment
- Salary or benefits feel inadequate
- Little to no social status from the work
- Little to no job security
- Unclear direction about where the project is going
- Very little confidence in personal ability
- Find out what they want by asking directly, since everyone has different tastes and they don’t always say them
- If you do ask for their thoughts, follow up on those ideas or you might be hated for listening without acting
- Contrary to popular opinion, team involvement and great work are not really connected
- If someone does a task well and receives recognition, they will have no problem being on a conflicted team
- To be successful, team members don’t necessarily need more access to a larger team and more resources
- New teams often do worse than old teams because the people haven’t formed into a cohesive unit yet
- Money is always an effective incentive, especially when it’s measured against peers’ income, but it can’t be the only incentive
- There is a coaching aspect to management
- The business term “human resources” is inadequate to describe the practice of management, since people have individual lives and personalities
- Learn the difference between development needs that people need coaching in versus major unchangeable flaws
- Only give directions on tasks, not on the person to be different on something they cannot change
- Good managers understand that their value comes from their team
- Managers are given all of the work and it is their duty and honor to give it to the subordinates
- A good manager’s relationship with the subordinates absolutely must be build on trust and honesty
- The manager is a servant to the subordinates, and their actions should make that obvious
- Advise the team as the project moves forward with the technical skills that brought you into management
- Give orders as recommendations or as a shared need, since overbearing orders will demotivate subordinates
- Most subordinates will become quietly disconnected to their managers if they don’t feel the manager is coaching well enough
- The strategy and values are communicated unclearly or the priorities are conflicted
- The senior team is ineffective at what they’re supposed to do
- The leader’s style is too top-down or too relaxed
- Leaders don’t inspire peers to communicate with each other
- Managers don’t have great leadership or management skills
- There is little to no communication between the manager and the subordinates
- The business term “human resources” is inadequate to describe the practice of management, since people have individual lives and personalities
Constantly improve the team’s positive culture
- Stay positive, happy, confident and energetic
- People working under positive and confident people are more happy
- Happy people are more productive and make happier customers
- All of the components of success are necessary to be someone others can follow
- Everything around us is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and a great manager comfortably adapts to those changes
- There are easy ways to appear fearless
- Make decisions with a decisive attitude
- Understand how to manage conflicts and negotiate
- Take full responsibility for what happens
- Behave as if what you’re experiencing isn’t new
- People working under positive and confident people are more happy
- Stay emotionally available constantly to slowly win over others’ trust
- A leader has to inspire thought to have any reputation with subordinates
- A new leader will fail, and it’s their responsibility to accept that failure to learn from it and move on
- Look at a working environment as a team of people
- A small group should be a team, not an organization or a structured system
- The group will be a community more than a machine
- A larger organization is an ecosystem, not a battleground
- Show your human side and show them that everyone is in a shared win/lose situation
- This is more difficult than it sounds, and it requires being personally successful, charming and happy
- When appropriate, it’s best to fully express many emotions to your team, especially anger and joy
- Positive feelings like joy and happiness should always go towards the person and not just the action
- It can be difficult to share happiness openly, but it always pays off
- Negative feelings like anger need to be targeting an action and never a person
- Anger creates focus on the source of the anger
- Anger generates confidence from the rush of adrenaline
- Any anxiety or fear needs to be channeled into that anger
- Don’t let any of the negative feelings linger for long
- Positive feelings like joy and happiness should always go towards the person and not just the action
- People have feelings and messy characteristics, and managers need to identify with them
- You need to be available to hear their input
- Make a digital suggestion box where they can anonymously send you messages about ideas
- One unconventional approach is to not have an office and use a common area instead
- At the same exact time, you should never lead with your emotions
- Instinct, gut feelings and emotions all have their place, but leading with emotions will set off analytical subordinates
- Do what is best for yourself and the organization, since one person can sabotage all other members of the group
- Living a life of principle will naturally work against this approach
- A leader has to inspire thought to have any reputation with subordinates
- Give consistent advice and constant recognition
- People need to be recognized to feel valued
- Subordinates will perform better when they know somebody actually cares what they do
- It gives an inspiring challenge to everyone if the right people are recognized
- Workers naturally sense when they’re valued or when they’re disposable
- Younger workers need a role model to aspire towards and more opportunities to grow and advance
- Older workers demand respect for their skills and job security enough to retire with dignity
- When people feel valued, they are more inclined to share the organization’s vision
- Some praise is more effective than others
- Only deliver genuine praise, since people know when they’re being patronized
- Don’t use formalized recognition programs, since they are rarely genuine and feel patronizing
- To inspire achievement don’t praise the accomplishments, praise the effort put into it
- Try to catch them doing something right when they don’t think you’re watching
- Surprise them to keep things interesting
- Deliver a random praise for performance
- Give unexpected gifts
- The recognition will cause more impact when each gift is tailored to the person receiving it
- Cash gifts always work, but they are not the only way to give rewards
- Try celebrating instead of a reward, which is essentially recognition but more fun
- This is NOT dinner with their superiors, since that’s mandatory personal time taken away
- When delivering fixed incentives directly tied to performance (such as sales commissions), avoid anything that favors underachievement
- Giving inadequate praise to higher achievers will create team dysfunction
- Foster healthy competition by giving non-cash incentives that are fun and lightweight
- Something that people really want will make them sabotage each other
- Not everyone or every organization will respond to competition with enthusiasm
- In general, give praise in public and criticism in private
- Never mix constructive feedback into praise, that can be saved for later
- Create a culture of worker appreciation
- Inspire them to thank each other
- Give incentives for them that catch others doing well
- Only deliver genuine praise, since people know when they’re being patronized
- Deliver praise as frequently as possible and intentionally set aside time for it
- Tell them up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing
- Praise them immediately, not later on
- Tell them what they did right, being specific is more effective
- Tell them how good you feel about what they did right, and how it helps the organization and the other people who work there
- Stop for a moment of silence to let them “feel” how they did
- Encourage them to do more of the same
- Shake hands in a way that makes it clear that you support their success in the organization
- Deliver criticism by warning them beforehand that you’re going to let them know how they are doing in no uncertain terms
- Give the first half of the reprimand as a clear warning
- Correct them immediately
- Tell them what they did wrong, and be as specific as possible
- Tell them how you feel about what did wrong, without any mistaking how you feel
- Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them know how you feel
- The second half of the reprimand should encourage them to do better
- Shake hands with them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side
- Reaffirm that you think well of them even though you don’t think well of their performance in that specific situation
- Remember that when the reprimand is over, it’s over, and never bring it up again if they improve
- Give the first half of the reprimand as a clear warning
- Tailor each performance review to the individual person
- Standardized performance reviews with graded scales often don’t show strengths and weaknesses as well as written or spoken language
- Create a good performance evaluation program
- Set clear benchmarks up front
- Be specific about expectations
- Make the expectations personal, such as self-improvement or giving growth metrics for personal development
- Give a culture interview where you see how they have changed and fill it with fun or abstract questions
- Schedule frequent meetings to make annual meetings a cap of planned discussions
- Pick the right times and places that are lowest stress for them
- Make the meeting count
- Start with the good news
- As much as possible, only make objective judgments
- Track individual performance improvements based on their prior results
- End the meeting by looking forward
- Foster opportunities for them to face their fears on their own
- Overcoming hardship is the greatest way to improve
- Don’t focus on intentions or hopes, only on methods or results and accept their alternative views on them
- Methods and results can both often be seen as immovable rules, but this is rarely ever the case for both
- Foster opportunities for them to face their fears on their own
- Standardized performance reviews with graded scales often don’t show strengths and weaknesses as well as written or spoken language
- Though competition among members can be good, too much will destroy relationships
- Competition by its very nature will create distrust and insecurity
- Never show a worker’s performance compared to others, only to their past self
- People need to be recognized to feel valued
- Help them improve their career
- Provide career development resources
- Share personal network connections
- Give hard-to-deliver feedback if their behavior is stifling their growth
- Spend more time in one-on-one meetings to allow them to talk out their challenges
- Give them the opportunity to fail and have a learning experience for it
- Help them enjoy their personal life by ensuring they’re spending enough time for it
- Model this behavior before giving input about it
- Make sure they’re not working late or on weekends
- Consider helping them using your personal connections if they are truly valuable to the organization
Give directions clearly and quickly
- As a manager, you need to get to the point when instructing
- Start with what the person needs to do, and then give explanations about it
- Point at things to remove any uncertainty about what you’re talking about
- Don’t debate for any longer than you have to, just give orders to clarify the boundaries
- Remember what you told them previously
- Many bad managers give conflicting instructions and forget that the worker was trying to do both
- Make it a priority to invalidate your previous commands
- Have them repeat the task if you have any doubts that they heard
- Many times the person is distracted while you’re speaking to them, so they’ll mishear a portion of the command
- Though it may seem redundant, this is necessary to ensure both people see the same thing
Managing crisis is a major part of management
- Most people don’t handle crisis very well
- The crisis can come in the form of a conflict, an external problem, a subordinate’s failure, your failure, another department’s failure or simply something nobody could have predicted
- Try to create a culture that can weather problems well
- Encourage open discussion and disagreement to allow issues to be seen by the whole group when one person sees it
- Welcome any conflicts that come, since they become dysfunction when not dealt with
- Invite constructive criticism to hear what people really thinkain
- When managing conflicts, be ready to give orders instead of simply debate
- Train everyone for perfection
- Have them practice tasks, then have everyone else criticize them
- Don’t just grade what they know, but also how they perform
- Constantly review the behaviors you’re rewarding
- Pay attention to whether you’re showing favoritism or have a bias towards someone
- Treat everyone with a professional dignity
- If this means letting someone go gives severance pay, it’s worth the cost
- Be involved in the community
- Participate in as many activities and causes you can when things are going well
- Have your own communication channels functioning well and communicating the organization’s message to everyone
- Get direct customer feedback instead of simply having the workers disagree over whether an idea is good
- Cultivate a culture of innovation
- Fuel everyone’s passions
- Foster autonomy in everyone
- Foster innovation by increasing the diversity of the team
- Encourage open discussion and disagreement to allow issues to be seen by the whole group when one person sees it
- Crisis can’t be fully avoided, however
- Assume the problem is worse than it appears
- Even if you’re over-reacting, it’s safer to cover the unseen risks than let a small unresolved problem become a bigger one later again
- Assume that there are no secrets and that everyone will hear about the problem
- People are social, and they like to talk about bad news more than anything else
- You become part of the problem in the public’s eye by trying to hide it
- Also assume that the results of everyone seeing this is that you will be portrayed in the worst possible light
- Since most of society looks at authority figures negatively and you’re an authority figure, the bias is stacked against you from the start
- Assume that you are guaranteed to have to make changes to people and processes
- The issue will happen again if you don’t take action to add or remove elements to the system
- Sometimes the problem is a repeat from a past problem, and it might be that you made the wrong call
- If you made the wrong call, find anyone you’ve accidentally wronged and try to make amends
- When making changes, offer incentives instead of ultimatums
- You will survive this if you are motivated to, and you and the group will get stronger for it
- Assume the problem is worse than it appears
Run meetings like a science
- A meeting uses everyone’s time, so add up everyone’s hourly wage together to figure out how much the meeting will cost
- Only hold meetings that are absolutely necessary for one of the following reasons
- Sharing information to a group where everyone can understand
- Get information from a group about ideas, thoughts or expectations
- Answer any questions anyone may have
- Get the group involved in the decisions being made
- Brainstorming ideas or solving problems
- Networking among everyone at the meeting
- Selling an idea, product or service
- Showing or giving support for others
- Many meetings are periodically used for keeping track of everyone’s status
- A daily status check-in that lasts about 5-10 minutes, usually with only a few people
- Weekly discussions for 40-80 minutes that talk about short-term obstacles, usually with the entire team
- Monthly strategic meetings take even more time and talk about big-picture matters, will usually involve executives and have long discussions
- Quarterly reviews will connect big-picture goals with the day-to-day decisions, usually off-site and from a dynamic and holistic perspective
- If a group meeting can be cut down to 15 minutes, then use an alternative communication method
- Use an email brief, letter, memo, text or any other written communication for anything that doesn’t have to be in a meeting
- There are many web applications to streamline or modernize meetings like Jell, Solid and Stormboard
- Only hold meetings that are absolutely necessary for one of the following reasons
- Prepare thoroughly for the meeting
- Define the specific purpose of the meeting
- Determine who needs to attend and why
- Make sure everyone knows the purpose of the meeting before they go to it
- Create the structure of the meeting with its purpose in mind
- Use Robert’s Rules if necessary to maintain pacing and enforce communication
- If it’s informal, decide and enforce how the meeting will stay focused
- Set the location and time of the meeting to match the desired results
- Morning meetings aren’t as effective for people who have late-night lifestyles
- Afternoon meetings should provide lunch or be after lunch time
- Evening meetings are typically unproductive because everyone wants to leave
- The location should match the setting the meeting is calling for
- Set the time at an odd time, like 5 minutes after the hour, to account for late-comers
- Try a meeting standing up to prevent needless distraction
- Create an agenda that is displayed for everyone before the meeting starts
- Send out the agenda and materials at least 24 hours beforehand to give the members time to read the materials
- Clarify to everyone that they are supposed to read the materials before going to the meeting
- Clarify everyone’s responsibilities during the meeting
- One specific person should direct the meeting
- Have someone take notes during the meeting who understands the meeting’s purpose
- Only have up to 3 agenda items
- Use the Rule of Five to only discuss with each member 2 current tasks, 2 future tasks and 1 important task that is somehow stuck or not happening
- Make a schedule that acommodates others
- Give extra time to explain and extra time for discussion
- Give 5-10 minutes at the beginning to allow others to refresh their memory on the materials you’ve given
- Specify the ground rules for the meeting about what is and isn’t permissible to discuss
- The most effective hour-long meetings don’t use conventional presentations
- Information meetings are guided by a 6-page typed evidence-based narrative
- Successful meetings asking for any input don’t use presentations at all and provide all the information beforehand
- An effective non-presentation meeting with a shared vision can be over in as little as 20-30 minutes
- Send out the agenda and materials at least 24 hours beforehand to give the members time to read the materials
- Confirm that everyone is going or not going to the meeting, and have backup plans when people can’t make it
- Keep the meeting on-track
- Bring snacks or food to give energy and focus the team’s thinking
- Start on time, and don’t stop the meeting to explain for anyone who arrives late
- Keep to the schedule for the meeting
- Only discuss the topics that are on the agenda
- Schedule any other thoughts for a different meeting by creating a list with all of them on it
- Meetings should be run openly
- Be vulnerable and emotionally present during the meeting
- Find similarities between yourself and them and share mutual difficulties
- Dysfunction in a team will often stop open dialogue or make dominant personalities overrun the meeting
- Use creativity tricks to foster healthy dialogue about potential options
- Be vulnerable and emotionally present during the meeting
- Clarify the next actions that need to be taken
- If there needs to be an agreement in the group, count a vote ranked for each of the possible options
- Specify deadline dates, times or expectations for the tasks
- Openly talk about the risks connected to the tasks
- Be clear about who is doing what actions
- Followup the meeting
- Any notes should be distributed to everyone
- Keep track of anything that was promised during the meeting
- If the meeting seems unnecessary, take it off the calendar or change its format
- As an alternate idea for creating new ideas, try the Stepladder Technique
- Give the task or problem to all the members
- Ask them to think of a good solution to the problem
- Give them plenty of time to make their own opinions on a good answer
- Create a core group of 2 members and have them discuss the problem
- Add a third member to the core group
- That third member shares their ideas before hearing the thoughts of the other 2 members
- After all 3 have shared their ideas, discuss the options together
- Repeat Step 3 with each new member until all members have been involved
- Reach a final decision after everyone has been brought in and presented their ideas
- Give the task or problem to all the members
Take some extra precautions when managing a remote workforce
- Keep communication more frequently to compensate for not physically seeing the person
- Connect with your virtual workforce more often
- A daily or semi-daily meeting is usually necessary, especially in larger teams
- Plan your connections with them ahead of time to make up for spontaneous meetings that would have come in person
- Stay flexible, since everyone has their own schedules and will often have other things to work around
- Instill a culture of trust to ensure people are holding themselves personally accountable
- Connect with your virtual workforce more often
- Drive performance on data instead of feelings or instinct, since it’s impossible to get a gist from a video chat
- Use your top performers to coach and lead other workers
- Find ways to make it more personal by looking for opportunities for personal interactions
- Honor their birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, etc. and make it fun
- Meet in person routinely and set aside part of the budget for it
- This builds connections and bonds that distance can’t build
Correct subordinates when it’s called for
- Great leaders have to make hard decisions
- Conflicts are inevitable, and it’s necessary to let most of them play out
- Workers become bad workers very slowly, so it takes a lot of awareness and sensitivity to notice
- The ability to tactfully and appropriately punish and dismiss bad workers is a large portion of any business success
- Try to stay out of subordinate disagreements
- Don’t listen to them when they want you to mediate a problem
- It wastes everyone’s time, especially yours
- It creates divisiveness among the members from the appearance of lobbying
- It fosters a political culture that fights for your favor
- If you do have to get involved, abide by a few rules
- Information is free, and anyone can talk about anyone and anything
- The involved people must try to resolve the situation with a win-win answer
- If an agreement can’t be reached, the problem can then be brought to the manager
- It needs to be presented as a shared narrative with the possible resolutions
- Unresolved trade-offs need to be clarified
- If the manager gives a resolution that one of them doesn’t like, that person will sort it out without the manager
- Only after it’s still unresolved, they can take it to the manager
- If anyone doesn’t want to agree on the situation, then the manager can take forceful action
- Don’t listen to them when they want you to mediate a problem
- Firing has risks to it
- Firing and rehiring is often much more resource-intensive than giving a new motivation or cracking the whip
- It costs more directly
- There is an extra cost to advertising, recruitment and training new hires
- Legal risks can come from firing the wrong way
- Financial performance is universally weaker
- It has indirect costs
- Deadlines are missed and workflow is interrupted
- The reputation of the team is hurt
- Customer service is decreased
- Less knowledge is shared among the group
- It’s destructive to team morale
- There are more absences from stress
- Other team members become unsettled and start leaving
- Relationships are damaged
- It costs more directly
- Firing and rehiring is often much more resource-intensive than giving a new motivation or cracking the whip
- There are different ways each person will loses their dedication to the group
- Burned out from working too much
- Works frantically until exhaustion and then vents about it
- Does unrewarding tasks and cynically avoids doing the job
- Feels too much stress and too much responsibility and loses all motivation to keep going
- Decreased professionalism at work
- Doesn’t respect management any more
- Customer service is no longer a priority
- Behaving as if they’ve already accomplished enough to not have to work anymore
- Gossips about anyone not in the room with them
- Takes all of the credit for good things and deflects everything bad to anyone else
- Increased hostility in the work environment
- No longer doing favors like staying later or coming early
- Saying “that’s not my job” about anything outside of their job description
- Treats their experience like it’s a physical commodity and insults less experienced people with potentially more skills, performance or achievement
- Uses peer pressure to make harder workers feel bad
- Disengagement from the work
- Calling in consistently, not coming to work or taking days off
- No longer caring about the quality of the work or fulfilling deadlines
- General sense of apathy about the work
- If someone isn’t performing it might be an attitude problem or an isolated incident, but several people underperforming should be a red flag about your management
- Burned out from working too much
- A bad worker comes in a few forms
- Incompetent and ineffective
- Often very happy as workers, but very low performers
- Disorganized and passive to taking any action
- Resistant to any changes
- The answers should drive them to work more effectively
- Use steady support
- Make plans for their improvement
- Give extra training
- Provide constant supervision by tracking their performance
- Demand accountability from them
- Train them more and give them more mentoring opportunities
- Lazy and uninterested
- Unmotivated to do any tasks or fulfill any deadlines
- More reserved and quieter
- No longer interested in advancing their career
- Bad at keeping track of time spent on projects
- Wastes time on the internet or phone
- Consistently gone from work
- The answers should inspire them
- Find their hidden resentments
- Give very clear expectations
- Do unscheduled checks on them
- Increase their rewards for succeeding or give them a portion of the organization’s income
- Give them special assignments to expand their scope of responsibility
- Selfishly overworking
- Refuses to hand projects off to others
- Unaware of personal limitations
- Undermines the confidence of other team members
- The answers should make them want to be a team player
- Force them to hand off projects
- Reward their ability to work in a team
- Give them more time to relax and encourage paid time off
- Socially engages more than works
- Distracting and loud for the rest of the team
- Unfocused and uninterested in the work
- Immature and unprofessional to the point of causing social backlash
- The answers will lead to them being more focused
- Consistently redirect them back to the project
- Clarify expectations about behavior
- Take advantage of their interpersonal energy and skills
- Socially disrespects everyone
- Bullies or intimidates subordinates and peers
- Doesn’t obey rules and has problems with authority
- Manipulates and sabotages relationships
- The answers should provide clear boundaries
- Enforce a safe environment
- Take complaints about them seriously
- Carefully document negative behaviors and try to find the likely motivations
- Trust your instincts about what they say and do
- Incompetent and ineffective
- Before firing, try to motivate them more
- It’s an exponentially higher cost to keep a very bad worker than to find a new one
- Sometimes they simply need a pay raise that’s overdue, since most people don’t feel comfortable asking for it
- There are many good reasons to fire someone without looking into it further
- Sometimes the role and the individual can’t naturally match
- Maliciousness towards anyone else, especially subordinates
- A worker who has gotten old enough that they really need to retire
- Doesn’t improve no matter how many times they are corrected or spoken to
- Constantly disrespects and subverts the workplace culture
Learn how to fire workers correctly
- Keep the cost of employee turnover in mind
- Losing an employee can cost $10,000 all the way up to 1.5-2 times the employee’s annual salary
- These costs come from everything it took to get the worker to their peak capacity
- The costs of hiring them, including lost time in interviewing and sifting through resumes
- The costs of hiring them and training them
- The costs of the new hire learning and developing to understand the intricacies of the job role
- The costs of the time spent with an unfulfilled role
- It’s still simple to assess the costs of a larger group
- Associated Costs x Turnover Percentage x Number of Workers
- If at all possible focus on growth, impact, and care
- Growth is important for everyone, but especially for younger workers
- Impact is also important for younger workers, but matters to everyone
- Care is important for everyone, but older workers will be much more sensitive to being uncared-for
- Sometimes you will have to lay off workers
- Delaying this action only makes it harder, since your relationship with the workers will often improve over time
- Cut deeply to allow more time for future growth and healing, since one major layoff is easier to handle than 2-3 smaller ones
- Do a few things to make firing go smoothly
- Plan ahead to make sure that their transition out will be easily taken care of
- Be certain and intentional, since firing should be the last action of a long process
- Be unapologetic and own up to it, they doesn’t care how much it hurts you and they should know why they’re getting fired
- Say “I’m sorry, but I have to let you go” without any further apology or explanation
- If they turns it into an argument, don’t turn it into a back-and-forth conflict
- Don’t ask if there’s anything you can do for them, since it’s obviously to give them the job back
- However, if they were laid off from a lack of work, do everything you can to get them work elsewhere
- Have a witness during the conversation to ensure that they don’t make false claims about what you said
- This may seem patronizing, but it’s necessary
- On the other hand, don’t do something condescending that makes them seem like a criminal like escorting them to the door
- After you’ve fired them, learn from your mistakes
- You will make hiring mistakes, own up to them and move on
- Increase the effectiveness of your interviewing process
- Use personality tests more and pull from your network more frequently for leads
- Look for their motivations when hiring, not their skills
- Use job descriptions that have more performance requirements and less required skills
- Focus on better quality candidates instead of a larger quantity of them
- Look at the culture of your organization more closely
- Find ways to improve it for the future candidates
- Make sure your relationship with future candidates is better than with the terminated worker
- Make hiring managers formally accountable for the quality of the people they hired
- Avoid paying a salary premium to make up for an unhappy work culture
If someone quits, they’re not leaving an organization, they’re leaving its management
- They will leave if they think they aren’t valued or aren’t being listened to
- Others are given preferential treatment
- Work was taken from them and given it to other workers
- Peers receive opportunities that they aren’t allowed to attain
- Someone else took the credit for their accomplishments or ideas
- Someone will change jobs if they don’t see opportunities for growth or professional development
- The job isn’t what they expected
- There is a mismatch between the job and the person
- They don’t feel they received enough feedback or coaching
- There’s little to no recognition for their work
- They don’t feel they’re paid enough or don’t have adequate benefits
- People leave when they feel their values no longer coincide with their leaders’ values
- Management is exercising morally questionable or unprofessional practices
- They’ve lost trust or confidence in senior leaders
- The organization is confusing and uninspiring, or is badly managed
- They’re stressed from too much work or a work-life imbalance
- Others are given preferential treatment
- Have an exit interview to find out why they are leaving and what would inspire them to stay
- After they choose to leave, it is difficult to keep them in the long-term
- If you give them a counter-offer that they take, they might easily disrupt the rest of the team
- It’s best to gracefully let them go and maintain a good relationship, which opens up the possibility of a future recruitment someday