A good leader cares about his team. Who would want to work for someone who didn’t care?
I have a good friend who is a caring leader and a successful businessman. I was talking with Jim a couple months ago, and he talked about a challenge he accepted a month before while attending a trade convention. The challenge was this:
“Imagine that someone contacted you, and wanted to buy your business. They made you an offer that was hard to refuse. You quickly realized that you could retire early if you accepted this offer. It was in cash, and you accepted.
After about a year, you received a call from the same person, and things weren’t going well. They were desperate, and wanted you to know if you would be willing to buy the business back for 10 cents on the dollar. You were twitching to get back to work, and you took the offer. Here is the question: Now that you own the business again, who would you hire back? Is there anyone you would not hire back? If so, why is this person still working for you?”
It was a day of reckoning for Jim. He did have a manager that he would not hire back in that scenario. He knew what he had to do. He let him go. The person who has since replaced the dismissed manager is doing very well, and the business is doing much better. Jim, like many I know, said the same thing after he let a sub-performer go: “I wished I had done it sooner”. If he had, it would have saved him a lot of grief and money.
Here is the message: If someone is consistently under-performing, and he or she has been given ample opportunity to improve, it is usually wise to part company. It can actually turn out to be a “win-win” rather than a “lose-lose”
