Three ways to lead effectively when you fire somebody

This resource first appeared in issue #87 on 14 Aug 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Offboarding, Managing A Team: Other

Three ways to lead effectively when you fire somebody - Sarah Milstein, LeadDev

If you aren’t communicating effectively with your team, that won’t stop people from thinking and talking about the meaning behind actions; it’ll just encourage that thinking and talking to go somewhere farfetched and ugly, unburdened by facts.

We don’t like to talk about firing, and it doesn’t happen often (enough?) in academia or R&D but it does happen; that relative rarity makes it all the more dramatic. Even someone who chooses to abruptly leave for completely benign reasons causes the same waves. Worse, managers are generally (and by and large correctly) constrained in what they can say about why someone has been fired or left. The combination of drama and relative silence makes for stress and speculation for your team members, even if it’s happening outside of your immediate team, leading to fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Milstein provides some guidance of what to do when you (or someone else) fires someone in your organization”

If you’re the manager on the case, have a communications plan, and communicate immediately
If you’re a manager but not directly involved, reach out to your direct reports once the news is public
If you’re a leader at the company, tell people that this is normal, and regrettable, and it will happen again

As Milstein points out, even if you are extremely constrained in your environment about what you’re allowed to say (and are you sure you’re not allowed to say anything at all, or are you just assuming?), there are lots of things you can say:

You can talk about why you can’t give reasons, and communicate that in a way that (correctly) emphasizes that you and the organization cares about team member privacy
You can talk about the process, including feedback, and that these things don’t come as a surprise - your team members don’t have to worry about waking up fired some day out of the blue
You can recognize that this impacts them both in terms of professional relationships and workload, and can come prepared with a plan for handling work