The Best Waiter I Ever Let Go...
He was the best salesperson on the floor, and I let him go anyway. The decision was the easy part, but how I did it is the reason I believe we parted with respect.
“What Did You Just Do?”
The owner came to find me shortly after it happened. He only had one question: “What did you just do?”
I had just let go of the waiter many considered the best on the team. He sold higher priced items, he was genuinely good at his job in terms of selling, his numbers were the ones other people were measured against.
I had run a training seminar for that same team just days before, where he called me “professor” and genuinely was attentive.
To the owner, it looked like I had thrown away revenue. To many others, it was a scandal. I understood both reactions, because on paper they were right. You do not remove your top seller unless something is wrong with you, or with him.
Something was wrong, but it was not on the paper. His ego had become the weather everyone else had to work in, and his attitude towards his colleagues had stopped being a personality and started being a cost. What the owner had not seen was the conversation that came before the decision, and that conversation is the part most leaders are never taught.
The Bus
Jim Collins made the idea famous in the book Good to Great... “get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus.” Most leaders can quote it. Fewer notice that he also insists the great companies were rigorous, not ruthless, about it.
That distinction is the whole job. A book can tell you to be rigorous, not ruthless. It cannot sit in the room with you when you have to say it to someone’s face. The decision lives in a sentence and the dignity lives in the conversation.
Why The Best Was Not The Right One
We were a five-star property, and I wanted our team to sell the way a good host recommends. Sometimes up, sometimes across, sometimes down, and always in the guest’s best interests. He was brilliant at one of those three. His instinct was always to sell up, and he was very good at it, however a team that watches its star treat colleagues badly learns something much louder than any selling technique, and I was not willing to let him teach it.
That is the difficult truth about top performers, because a great player can be on the wrong bus. In a purely sales-driven company, they might be exactly what you think you need. (although I would argue all day long, there should not be such a place) In a place built on how the whole team treats the guests or any customer for that matter, they quietly cost you more than they sell. I have written before that if the experience changes when your best person leaves, you do not have a standard, you have a hero.
This was the other side of that coin; often the hero is the problem that creates other problems.
The Conversation
I sat him down and told him the truth, without theater. I explained exactly why it was not working, what I had seen, and what I believed he could do better wherever he went next. Then I gave him a choice. He could resign instead of being dismissed, and leave with his reputation intact.
I also gave him an image I still use. We can do this like two adults who agree it is not working, or we can do it like a couple going through a bitter divorce, fighting over the children in court. Only one of those leaves anybody better off.
He was upset at first, which was fair. He went on to work for a competitor for a while. Many of his colleagues stayed friends with him, and yet they respected the decision, because they understood it had been made for them. He even followed me on social media afterwards. We are not close today, but we parted with respect, and that was the point.
How I Used To Do It
I would love to say I always handled it this way, but often I did not. When I was much younger, I let people go the way insecure managers often do. I did it quickly, without much dignity and without much thought for what came next. It worked, in the narrowest sense and the person left fast with little afterthought on my part. So did a piece of everyone’s trust in me, and I did not notice it at the time.
Over the years, I have also written letters of recommendation for people I had to let go, pointing them towards roles that suited them better than the one they had with me. I cannot tell you every one of them flourished. I can tell you that being in the wrong seat is not the same as being the wrong person, and that how you open the door says more about your leadership than the decision to open it.
The Exit Test
Before you let someone off your bus, ask yourself these three questions.
- Can I explain the reason in one sentence, without insulting them?
- Would the rest of the team understand that reason if they heard it?
- Is there a seat, here or somewhere else, where this person could be excellent?
If you can answer all three, you are being rigorous. If you cannot, you may simply be ruthless.
The Question
Is it ever right to let go of your best performer? Tell me where you would draw the line, or tell me about the time someone let you go well, or badly. I suspect most of us remember exactly how it was done long after we have forgotten why.
The decision lives in a sentence. The dignity lives in the conversation.
Trust is the only currency that compounds without inflation.
Relationship. Not Transaction.
Georgios B.