T.A. Wilson & Associates

There will come the time when you will have to fire someone in your organization. It can be one of the more discomforting aspects of management. Should you have to fire someone hopefully you won’t make the same type of mistakes that played out in last weeks firing of Shirley Sherrod.

If last weeks drama doesn’t become a case study for management students of how not to fire someone it should, what happen to Ms. Sherrod was clearly amateurish and all the senior level people involved should have known better. It’s amazing how people when under pressure will forget all reason and do what they think is expedient.

Managers at some point will have to fire people and it can be disheartening but if you follow some simple rules it can be a bit less painful and most of all a lot less embarrassing. The following rules – well let’s take line from Ghostbusters when Bill Murray quipped “more like guidelines – won’t make the process any easier but can give you a framework to work within.

1. Keep your composure, know the facts, and make no assumptions until you’ve had the opportunity to check and verify what do and don’t know. Based on all reports it’s clear that both the White House and NAACP did neither of these. Both the White House and the NAACP have sufficient experience between them to have known better, to have slowed the process down, and done some fact checking. For unexplained reasons both caved to pressure and shouldn’t have.

2. Never let people take you out of your game, never violate your own rules. The way Ms. Sherrod was fired was not normal. Asking someone to pull over to the side of the road and text in her resignation can’t be in anybody’s rule book when it comes to terminating any employee. This rush to fire her so she wouldn’t be a subject on the Glenn Beck show clearly showed they were being taken out of their game by FoxNews. Also, they were violating their own rules, before asking her to text in her resignation she was already put on administrative leave which is a normal part of their disciplinary process, but what appears to be self-imposed pressure the get her resign caused them to violate their own rules.

3. Oppose outside pressure that will cause you to rush to judgment, and object to any unsubstantiated claims of wrong doing without first checking everything out. Everyone involved in this decision allowed themselves to be swayed by the current events unfolding without checking the facts. As a manager you have a responsibility to slow the process down, you can see what happens when you don’t.

4. Wait there is no reason to rush judgment. Wait until you have all the facts. Had everyone waited and took time to look further, they would have discovered that the tape was edited and there was much more to the story than what was showed in the edited clip. Had people waited and asked if there was anything else, or what was the source of the tape, was anyone there, and what they knew about Ms. Sherrod, well, I wouldn’t be writing this post about how not to fire someone.

Firing someone is never fun, but at times necessary. So when you faced with this decision keeping you composure, not allowing the situation to take you off your game, and opposing the pressure to make a quick decision, and waiting to get as much information as you can before you make a decision is indeed showing that you KNOW what you’re doing so that when you do say to someone “you’re fired” you won’t have to back track and then say, “well maybe not.”

© Timothy A. Wilson 2010. All Rights Reserved

Like so many others I’ve been watching events unfold around the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s by far the worst ecological disaster we’ve faced. The Exxon Valdez that everyone is using as a bench mark palls in comparison. But as expected those who dislike this president couldn’t wait to make the Katarina comparison. One has to wonder, are they so angry at losing the election that any misstep Obama takes is the justification for all the vitriol hurled his way? To be balanced, some of his supporters have no claim to impartiality, a number of them have climbed on the bandwagon of criticism.

What has transpired over the last 44 days is indeed dreadful. I understand that the people of Louisiana are worried, and angry. It seems they have been the victims of one catastrophic event after another that would drain the life fiber from even the stoutest of people. So their anger is understandable, and it’s also reasonable they feel the president should be taking the lead in dealing with this problem. Wanting the president to show more emotion, to express anger would no doubt make them feel good. People feel that if their leader demonstrates some level of emotion it’s indicative of his caring, his understanding about their problem it would make him seem less “Spock” like.

But to read the papers or watch the talking heads opine about the president’s lack of emotion, or failing to understand the “optics” of the situation, you wonder if what people want is for him to enact his version of the Klingon death howl. Now that would be a sight and we would see it in an endless loop on all the cable news shows with the crawl moving across the screen saying the president loses his cool. People want him to drop his Spock like approach and embrace the Kirk personality and like Kirk call on Scotty to find some solution that will plug the leak.

There-in-lies the paradox show some emotion but the solution to the problem has to be logical and make everyone whole. One problem, logic and emotion don’t always work well together. One has to be suborned to the other. Emotion clouds judgment.

Leadership and management place you in the decision making arena. Many of the decisions you make will significantly impact people who report to you. Leaders who allow their emotions to surface can place themselves in difficult situations. They could say or do something that exacerbates the situation instead of providing a solution.

Then there is the possibility of being seen as weak because emotions are not associated with people of power or those who are in charge. It’s not to say that one shouldn’t show anger or rage, but it has to be justified anger or rage, it can’t just be done for show. And here lies the problem with the president. He doesn’t want to do things just for show, for the thirty-second sound bite. His approach is to collect the as much data as possible, look at the totality of the situation, and present the best possible solution that invokes the greatest good for all not just the one, clearly a Spock like approach to dealing with a problem.

In his new book The Promise, Jonathan Alter explains how the president seems to have clearly demonstrated his management skills, an area many thought he would have a problem with because of his lack of actual management experience and ace the communication area. But for some reason he’s having a problem communicating effectively with the country. He’s too Spock like for them. Too Spock like, why that is a problem is unclear to me, this situation clearly calls for level thinking, unemotional thinking, anger – while justified – will not get the well plugged. People want him to emote, but who are these people?

The people who want him show more emotion, are the pundits and his opponents. Those calling for him to be less Spock like – remember Bones and his insults – is either looking for a story or something else to attack him on. Could the president be more empathic, many believe he can and will. I for one am ok with they way he is, I have no problem understanding him, but that’s because I remember the episode when Spock became emotional, and it was a pretty site.

Maybe people should be careful what they ask for.

© Timothy A. Wilson All Rights Reserved

Recently I wrote about the doorman strike in New York. In a recently published Op-Ed piece in the New York Times James Collins pointed out: “they provide an extra layer of face-to-face social connection that is not strictly “necessary,” but is tremendously gratifying nonetheless.” These comments reminded me of statements I’ve heard about top managers and company leaders.

Similar to tenants who depend on their doormen for that “face-to-face social connection” a growing number of senior managers have defaulted to their staffs looking to them to provide that level of connection with employees, becoming overly dependant on carefully scrubbed management reports, or on surveys results that rarely are enacted.

While the size of the company can be a factor that prevents senior management from getting to know all their employees, it doesn’t prevent them from gaining an understanding about what their employees have to deal with while working at for their company perhaps taking a hint from the CBS program Undercover Boss would provide some guidance and assistance in that area.  

This show provides a great example of CEO’s of well known companies going out into the field – undercover – to find out what it’s like for the people who work for them. No filtering of information they are getting it straight the real deal as one would say.

If you’re a leader in your company getting to know what you’re people have to deal with on a daily basis just to meet the demands you put forth to help make the company profitable is extremely valuable. Having that information filter through doorman like managers is a luxury that you should skip because there is nothing like getting it directly trust me, you’ll be much better leader and manager.

© Timothy A. Wilson All Rights Reserved.

A friend and fellow consultant will be speaking next week in Omaha, his topic is Zen Leadership. An appropriate topic choice since he’s an expert in Jujutsu and Aikido which is a polite way of saying don’t try to sneak up on him. As we talked about his upcoming speech, I noticed that one area he will cover has to do with “don’t care if you live or die”

When I questioned him about this he referred me to the movie First Knight with Richard Gere in which he played Lancelot. In a scene where he had just beaten someone in a joust, the person asked him to teach him to fight the way he did. His response was, first you have to not care if you live or die. When the person heard that he left.  He wasn’t willing to go all the way.

As we continued our discussion, it came to me that people who desire to lead, need to understand this concept. No, I don’t mean that they have to behave in a constant reckless manner, but understand what it will take to really lead a team or an organization. Successful leadership encompasses a number of skills and traits. Yes, one can be taught to be a leader, and there are any number of books you can read about leadership skills and how to go about acquiring them. But the willingness to move forward and take the kind of risk that could end your career, is in a way not caring if you live or die, or another way of putting if you succeed or fail.  I understand that this may sound a bit radical, but it’s not. Here’s why.

In our collective experience (me and my friend) we understand that those individuals who have the Lancelot philosophy can act that way because of their training and experience. This is no fool-hardy rush to take on risk just for the thrill. Truly successful leaders have learned how to push out the boundaries of their area of moderate risk. For the uninitiated what appears to be a high risk situation has become one of moderate risk for those who have the training and experience of dealing with risky situations over a period of time. They have also learned that having a clear image of what it is they are trying to accomplish helps them immensely to achieve their goals and objectives.

These types of leaders understand power, how to use it, how to administer it, and most importantly that sharing it will not lead to their demise or downfall. They understand that when they give up power, they really become more powerful for a simple reason their team is able to accomplish a great deal because they’ve become empowered and understand fully what they are capable of accomplishing. Through their actions they complete projects on time and within budget, their leader is viewed as someone who can get things done through other people. In essence she becomes the First Knight. She doesn’t’ care if she lives or dies.

My guess is my colleague will give a very good speech because he doesn’t care if he lives or dies.

I recently read in the Wall Street Journal about a three way race about to take place at Intel for the position of CEO. It seems that Sean Maloney, David Perlmutter and Andy Bryant are in a three legged race for the top spot.

The safe bet is Mr. Maloney, as the article put it, “The job is “Sean Maloney’s to lose,”” said Doug Freedman, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech. There is no time table for when Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini will retire. Unlike Joe Tucci who plans to retire in 2012. There is strong speculation with the recent announcement of Pat Gelsinger leaving Intel and going to EMC he is seen as a potential successor to Tucci.

So there is a three way race for the top spot at Intel, and clearly some upheaval brewing at EMC. While the elephants dance in the corner offices, people throughout both of these organizations are going to be the recipients of the potential fall out from these organizational changes.

For some it may work out, for others it may not. Regardless there is an additional level of stress being place on the employees of both these companies because the senior management has a desire to rearrange the deck chairs on the ships Intel and EMC.

It’s like tossing a stone into the still waters of a pond, the ripples keep on going for a very long time each one just a little bit bigger than then last. Is it no wonder why people further down the organization think senior management is just plain nuts?

© Timothy A. Wilson All Rights Reserved.