In this case DD is right. If he is a cancer to your team then cancer is going to do what it does best, spread. If you don't do anything about it your other employees are going to lose respect for you and eventually think that they can do whatever they want.
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I agree with this and employ this approach in my own organization, but we aren't talking about how you treat current/existing employees - we are talking about how you fire someone.
Why are you drinking? I understand the fact that he was family,but if the world of business had a heart, we'd all be rich. Are you one of those emotional drunks?
Sure - but if you actually care about your employees, it will always be hard to fire someone. The only way to be "purely business" is to not care about the employees. My only point is that it's not a bad trait to have it be hard to fire someone.
Thanks for all the replies, i read each one and understand the POV's. I try to keep it pretty tight knit, and he was being this cancer...it is an uphill battle for me at this point, balancing keeping everything legit and within standard while also being younger than 90% of my staff. The next firing wont be so hard I am sure, my cherry was finally popped. I just need to remember that when we are dealing with productivity, its no longer buddy buddy, but time to enforce policy.
I would agree if it were a case of classic downsizing, or even a guy who's just not meeting expectations/quotas. If you care about your employees, you can't let one person drag the rest of them down. It's as much about protecting the rest of the employees as it is the individual you're letting go. It's not fair to everyone else to let this guy collect a paycheck if he's making everyone else's job harder. It's not fun to fire someone, but if the person is a "cancer" as described, there are two options -- cure it, or get rid of it.
If you want to make yourself feel better about this decision and assuming this is a decent person you had to let go - then tell him that you will indicate to prospective employers calling you for references that he voluntarily left the company. This will really help you when you have to let someone go who is a friend or is a good person, but they just can't cut it anymore.
Agree with this statement, especially in how it applies to small business. Being a a guiltless cold blooded hatchet man is the romanticized notion of what a supervisor should be, but I don't think it must be THE prerequisite. "Business, never personal", yes true, but thinking "twice" is not necessarily a bad thing. There's more than 1 way to skin a cat. Even in cutthroat dog-eat-dog business, its still about honesty and straightforwardness. I think its more about being up front with the person, being consistent yet firm with your approach in the reprimanding. Let me them know you're serious and being completely fair with them.
He did get rid of it, but he felt bad about it, especially being the first time. Nothing wrong with that. It is not a bad reflection upon him as a boss. He did what he thought was best for the company AND felt bad doing so. That's O.K.
I've felt bad for laying someone off, never felt bad for firing someone. If they are being fired, they likely did something(s) to deserve it.
He's not the only boss to fell bad about firing employees, at least he actually fires them. As long as I have worked, there is always a few guys that are unqualified slacker, sometimes they have been working for several years even at top Fortune 500 companies. It amazes me that they still have jobs. The supervisors will only get rid of these employees if there is a company wide layoff. You would be surprised by how many slackers are out there.
I spent several years as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies; believe me, I know. But there's a difference between slackers and guys who seem to actively sabotage. By no means do I like being the axe guy, but if someone is so useless and unreliable that letting them go would actually make my job and my team's jobs easier, I won't be all that cut up about it. As Vanilla Rice put it, firing and laying someone off are two different situations. In my experience, the former has never come out of the blue, but rather a process over time where they can get a chance to fix whatever the problem is. If a guy has been given fair warning, yet continues on his course, it's better for everyone involved to just move on. I guess for me, it's not a pleasant experience (and I've thankfully only done it a handful of times), but I never saw the need to drink myself into a stupor afterwards, either.
I understand that for sure. As a first time I guess it was appropriate to kind of feel this way, the next time I wont be so shook up about it. He did, does, and will always deserve the termination, I just need to be better at DOING it because I have to. It will never be pleasant, and it will happen again sometime in the future. We were cordial about it, he understood it was bound to happen, and we both harbor no ill feelings towards one another.
