Responsibly Hiring And Firing Process

08 Jun Responsibly Hiring And Firing Process

Define what are those two greatest leadership challenges?

Hey everybody Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, your coach and consultant in the world of organizational and leadership development as well as the psychology of success through peak performance.  And welcome to our leadership Lead Strong video series where we work to increase the influence and impact in leaders in the environments in which they lead and operate in.  And so welcome to today’s post, we’re titling it how to responsibly overcome your two greatest leadership challenges.  So a couple key words I want you guys to focus in on, ‘responsibly’ how to responsibly overcome these two greatest leadership challenges.

So first and foremost we have to define what are those two greatest leadership challenges, and quite frankly I believe your two greatest leadership challenges are hiring and firing.  And I believe if you have a lead in any sort of environment whether you’re a startup trying to transition to having some leverage within your business, whether you consider leverage, assistance, whatever, or you’ve lead at a high level you understand that hiring the right people for the job that you’re looking to attract to is quite a challenge, like yeah we can hire anyone but that’s not responsible that’s not taking the responsible route.  And then we find that we may have hired some people that didn’t pan out or they looked a lot better in the hiring process than how they’re showing up day in and day out and it’s time to let them go, it’s time to set them free back into free agency, the industry or job world that they’re currently operating in.  And what I find is there is a lot of ways that leaders take in the firing process but once again they don’t do it responsibly.  

So we’re going to break this down today and hopefully we bring some value to not just your business and your organizational life as a leader but as well as your personal life.  So let’s look at this, let’s look at the hiring process; actually let’s take a step back and let’s kind of look at it as an overview and look at the responsible process.

The responsible process is defined by the logical process.  You see I believe and we’ve done a video on this and we’ll post the link to that video in the comments below here a little bit later, I did a video on how leadership is a logical process or it’s an emotional process driven by logic.  What does that mean?  Leadership is influence; John Maxwell says leadership is influence nothing more nothing less; and so what are we influencing?  We’re influencing emotions.  Why?  Through the psychology of success what we understand is logic makes them think, emotions make them act.  Let’s say that again:  Logic makes them think, it gets people thinking, emotions make people act.  So if influence is defined by the power to affect someone’s character or actions, actions are driven by what?  Emotions. So leadership is a emotional process, it’s a process by which we influence emotions to get people into action because psychology tells us, logic gets them thinking, emotion gets them acting.  So it’s an emotional process driven by logic.

So what does that mean?  You as leaders need to have a responsible logical process by which you hire people and you fire people.  And how are most leaders showing up?  They’re showing up an emotional process, yeah…an emotional process driven by emotions.  What does that look like in the hiring process?  Many leaders are out there, they’ll do a interview process or they’ll put an ad out there, marketing, they’ll talk to their friends and they’ll say “Oh I’ve got a great friend that’s looking for a job.”

Well here’s the thing, that’s fine there’s nothing wrong that, I could probably do a whole separate video on that, but typically how leaders handle the hiring process is they’ll interview two, three, maybe four people and then they’ll fall in love with three out of the four, or two out of the three and then they’ll hire the one they like the most.  No logical process whatsoever, it’s strictly emotional.  Sometimes you’ll hire the first person that you interview, why?  Because their whole job is to influence you; to influence you to make you believe they’re the next greatest thing since the creation of bread, and you fall in love with them; and because you don’t have a logical process to evaluate against you’re like, “Oh I love this person they’re the greatest.  When can you start?”  And you take that process because you’re in an emotional state, you’re in pain.

Most leaders wait until they absolutely need someone before they hire and so they’re in a pain state which is emotion, so we have an emotional process driven by emotion; and then you engage in the hiring process and you may have one… you definitely have one step, you have one interview; you may have a follow up…most don’t even have a third follow up.  And so what happens is in those one to two step hiring process is that you have …you fall in love with them because their whole job is to influence your emotions.   And then you fall in love, which is another emotion, an emotional process driven by emotion, and you have no logic to get you thinking to say “Is this person really the right person?”  We’ve done a video on this, we’ll post this one on the links too or in the comments below that what do we hire to?  We hire to three matches, are they a match for the role?  Are they a match for the organization and your culture?  Are they a match for your leadership?

See that’s a logical process because when you understand that then you understand that you have some criteria that defines how is this person a match for the role, what’s their experience, what’s their personality assessment, what’s their behavioral assessment, what are their skill sets, what are the results that show up.  Prime example, last night was Round One of the NFL draft and they talk a lot about predictive analytics, if you have game film that you can analyze these people how they show up and yet they still go to the Columbine … or the Combine, excuse me, the Combine…that was different thing…they go to the Combine and they have all these assessments and then people are evaluated by their assessments and then you hear everybody talk and the analysts last night, “Oh he runs a four-two-40,” like we’re supposed to be impressed by that.  It’s logic, so they have a hiring process, they have a process by which they’re going to recruit to their organization driven by logic.  Why?  So they don’t fall in love with someone, so it’s not an emotional process driven by emotion, it’s an emotional process driven by logic.  There are some very strict criteria that they’re evaluating against which in essence is a score card.  You define that score card when you’re not in an emotional state, you say “This is the person that’s an ideal candidate for the role.  This is a person that’s an ideal candidate for my organization based off of our culture, our predefined culture, not people-defined culture.”  That’s another video coming up by the way. And then, “This is the process that I define as a match to my leadership based off of my leadership personality.”

You have all three of those criterias on a scorecard and then you engage in the recruiting and selecting process, and then you have your interviews, you have multiple step interviews to evaluate as much data as you need to determine whether or not they are a match for your scorecard in those three critical areas.  And then what I would tell you is to responsibly evaluate, have an evaluation process that determines how much of a match are they.

You see there are people that will say “Oh coach this person is a match.”  Well how much of a match?  How much criteria have you predefined and how much of that criteria are they a match for?  Are they a 60% match?  Are they a hundred percent match?  Because here’s what I’ll tell you, someone who’s a 60% match on your predefined criteria, not just one assessment like a personality or a behavioral assessment, “Oh they’re a 85% match on the behavioral assessment I gave them; I’m hiring them.”  That’s not responsible.  So the responsible process of hiring is understanding that this is an emotional process, this is a process by which your job is to sell them, their job is to sell you, it’s a sale going on, it’s an influence of emotions.  An emotional process has to be driven by logic.  When it’s driven by logic by having those three critical areas we defined – match for the role, match for the organization, and match for your leadership; and then you have the very specific criteria that defines exactly what a perfect match or as close to a match that you’re looking for looks like and then you evaluate against that, that’s being a responsible leader.  Leaders I’ll tell you right now if you’re out there what I like to call “shotgun hiring” one shot one kill, you just…birdshot spray like bullets fought, projectiles flying everywhere, “Oh I got someone!”  Boom, bring them in; you hire by pain.  Pain is an emotional process.  You hire because you fell in love with them, that’s an emotional process.  That’s irresponsible.

You don’t hire because you fall in love with them.

You don’t hire because you fall in love with them, you hire them because you fell in love with the criteria you created first before you ever spoke to someone.  And then that person matches or is a close match, as close of a match as possible to that criteria.  Then and only then do I believe you have the right to fall in love and hire someone.  So that’s the hiring process, emotional process driven by logic.  The logic is we define…we predefine what the fall-in-love phase is which is “If this person shows up I’m in love; if this person doesn’t show up, not so much in love.”  I may really like the person, it’s okay to really like them but it’s not okay to hire them.  So that’s a responsible process, fall in love with criteria.  I fell in love with that woman right there, that’s my wife, I love her to death.  Thank you so much for showing up on our video as well.

So let’s look at the firing process.  

I think this one’s probably the more critical one, I think this really defines leadership.  You know some people out there, I’ve heard Gary Kelly…you hear me talk a lot about Gary Keller, I really love this guy, I think he’s an absolute genius.  I’ve studied him, he’s built the Number One real estate franchise by agents choice to align with, so I like to study success, and he’s successful; so I speak a lot about him in just kind of a reverence of him to understand that he’s a great business person.  And I heard him say one time that don’t judge me by who I hire, judge me by who I fire.  And so he has this ideology about hiring and firing process where he says hire slow which is because you have to go through a very detailed hiring process to evaluate someone to the fullest extent to extrapolate all the criteria you need to evaluate against your perfect match… hire slow, fire fast.

Now two things we’re going to look at is as far as the irresponsibility and the responsibility of a leader in the firing process.

One – People hold on to individuals underperforming or non matches in their organization longer than they should.  Why?  Pain.  Once again, emotion.  They hold onto them because of pain, they’re like “Oh man if I fire them then I got to go back into that hiring process and that took long and I don’t have any candidates on my bench, and blah blah blah.”   So their hope, their whole foundation of leadership is built on hope, “I hope this person changes,” or “I’m going to try and fix this person,”  like all of a sudden you’re in the business of fixing people.  You’re not God, you’re a leader, your job is to hire the right people, fire the ones that aren’t matches, right…and I don’t want to say right or wrong.  Hire the closest match, keep the matches, raise your leadership lid to keep those match, people… the ones that you’re ultimately looking for to keep them in your organization, and let go of the people that are not a match to the role, organization, and your leadership.

So the first thing that most leaders do that’s irresponsible is they keep people longer than they should; they hire fast and fire slow; and Gary tells us to hire slow, fire quickly. So right there can help us transition and increase our leadership capacity just by reversing how we’re operating.  Operating in an emotional process driven by logic, not emotion by emotion.  And then hire slow, fire quickly.

Now when we look at firing quickly how do we evaluate whether or not we should fire someone quickly?  Guess what?  By the criteria that you defined before you even hired them.  That criteria, are they still showing up as a match for the role?  Are they still showing up as a match for your organization?  Are they still showing up as a match for your leadership?  The second they are not you need to start… listen to me, you need to start having a conversation with them because the second most irresponsible thing I believe all leaders do is they fire people and people go, “I just got fired, what the hell did I get fired for?”  They have no idea that they’re even doing something wrong.

Leaders if you’re not having conversations where people are not meeting your expectations and you fire them and they walk out of there like baffled, that’s a leadership fail, that’s on you; you failed to have a conversation.  Failure to have a conversation is a failure in your leadership and it’s not, “Well I’ll wait a couple days to have a conversation.”  No, you have the conversation in the moment, and if your emotions are too high to have it in the moment then you have it when you calm your emotions down, that’s called EQ, your quotient to measure your emotions and how you control them.  Control your emotions, calm them down and then have the conversation as quickly as possible.  And so I believe there should be a lead-up process like “Hey you’re not meeting expectations, remember all those criteria we defined and the results that we’re holding you accountable, you’re not meeting them.  I’m going to give you a second chance and I’m going to hold you accountable and there’s going to be a time frame by which you’re going to accomplish this.  Failure to do so what do you think is going to happen?”  They’re going to tell you “Well you’re probably going to have to let me go.”

“Okay, what’s that conversation going to sound like?  And if you don’t show up in this time period meeting this particular criteria results and expectations predefined then what’s the conversation going to sound like?”

“Well it’s going to sound like, “Well  hey Bill sorry but things aren’t working out and we have to part ways.”  

“So there’s going to be no surprises right?”
“Nope, there shouldn’t be.  Okay.”

See I believe a responsible process is there’s a lead-up phase, and you’re probably saying, “Well Chris that’s not firing slowly or quickly.”   I believe it is right, you give people a second chance to step up, to be the person that you thought they were in the hiring process and you have that conversation because it’s responsible to give people a second chance because that’s just what we should be doing in life.  That’s what Jesus does for us, that’s what I believe we should do for all people, definitely in business.  But if they choose not to take that second chance for their benefit then yes it’s time to let them go.  But the key thing I want you to take from this guys is that the conversations need to be had so that when it’s the final conversation there’s no surprises, that person should walk into work that morning knowing they’re going to be held accountable to a result, they should have measured the activities and results and they should quite frankly wake up that morning going, “I’m going to be fired today; I’m going to put on my suit and tie on; I’m going to put my shirt on; I’m going to shave, brush my teeth, look pretty, do my hair, but I know I’m going in just to get fired.”  And that’s okay because when you sit down and you go “Hey tell me what the expectation of what we’re measuring and holding accountable to?  Well here’s the result; alright, here was the goal; what was the result? Okay what did we say was going to happen in this time period if you fell short of the goal?”
”Well you were going to have to let me go.”
”Alright what did we predefine that conversation to sound like?”
”Well Chris I didn’t meet my goals so it’s time to move.”

“Okay. So are you prepared to move on?”
“Yeah I guess…it kind of sucks.”

“Okay man. Hey we love you, you’re still welcome to come out and visit us, hang out with us but it’s time to move on, you’re just not a match for the role, the organization or the leadership because you didn’t meet the predefined criteria. “

That’s a logical process, it’s a logical process on the hiring side, it’s a logical process on the firing side, and leaders I believe…look everybody has their model by which they can follow for hiring and firing but if you don’t have one those are two easy ways how to overcome, how to responsibly overcome your greatest challenge in hiring people and your greatest challenge in firing people.

Is it easy?  No, it’s not easy but success is simple, it’s simple, it’s a simple process.  Success is simple it’s not easy.  If you’re trying to serve easy understand something, you’re not trying to be successful.  If you’re trying to be successful, understand it’s not going to be easy; the conversations aren’t easy, the process of defining that perfect match is not easy; holding them accountable is not easy; but that’s why we become successful leaders is because we’re willing to fight, not flight.  If you want to fly, if you want to run from difficulty just understand you’re choosing easy and comfortable and that’s not where success happens.  If you want to be successful lean in, be okay with falling short.  Some people call it failure I just call it falling short because that’s an opportunity to learn.

Yeah it’s only fair, like it’s a leadership fail if you don’t have the conversation and give them a second chance, if you just drop a ball and like “Oh I’m letting you go, you’re not meeting expectations.”  You’re firing on emotions.  “Oh Gary Keller told me to fire fast.”  He did but there’s a process, there’s a logical process by which that happens.  So I think the key is especially if you once believed they were the right person; and they once believed you were the right leader, are you giving them the second chance?  Are you having the conversations with them that inspire and empower them to correct course?  Do they understand the ramifications of them hitting their goal and them falling short?  Because if they don’t and you fire them, boom!  Big F for your leadership.  But if you do, I promise you you’re going to be a great leader, you’re going to have massive influence within your people, you’ll have massive impact in your people, in your organization and in the world.

So hopefully we brought some value to your business and your life.  What I’d love to hear from you guys two things:

One – What are your takeaways and ahas from this?  We’ll continue the coaching process through the comments within this post.

But secondly, what’s your greatest challenge that you think you need to overcome in the logical process of hiring and firing?  I’d love to help you out with that.  Feel free to share that and I promise you my team and I will continue to coach you along the way.

So thanks for joining us.  Remember one thing, God loves you, so do I.  Lead strong.  Have a powerful rest of your day.  Take care.

About the author:

Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!

To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com