I have a tremendous amount of respect for my former boss. I enjoyed learning from him, appreciate his role in helping develop my career, and thought of him as a mentor. When I reflect on all he taught me, it’s easy to identify the obvious things we had very specific conversations about – things like margins and profitability, how to deal with difficult clients, and how to manage a team. But there are also the indirect lessons I learned, which are just as valuable.
One indirect lesson that stuck with me is just how important it is for leaders to be able to make difficult decisions.
We had an employee who wasn’t working out. I’ll call her Stephanie. There had been so many conversations over a twelve-month period with Stephanie about her performance and development. We had created performance improvement plans. We had weekly and monthly check-ins. Since this person reported directly to me, about six months in my boss asked me point-blank if I thought Stephanie could change. I told him that no, I didn’t think Steph was yet mature enough to make changes. This wasn’t a conclusion I arrived at lightly, but we had given her ample opportunities and specific actions to improve her performance. Unfortunately, the changes never stuck for more than a week. I was frustrated – as was the rest of the team and our, more important, our clients.
Soon after that conversation, my boss told me that after considering all the information, the decision had been made to let Stephanie go. I felt awful because Steph wasn’t a bad person, she was just the wrong fit for the company.
So my boss tells me of his decision…and then nothing.
For a month.
Finally, my boss checked back in with me to tell me he changed his mind because we were going to be busy and it was easier to keep someone on who knew our systems than to try to replace her or have other people on the team take on more work.
I should have pushed back. I should have said, “We’ll figure it out.” But I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t being a team player. And I didn’t want it to seem like it was personal, so I just said, “Okay.”
It was one of the few times in my tenure when I was sincerely disappointed with my boss. I felt like he was making the decision based on what was most comfortable for him, not what was best for the team or the business. I suspect he didn’t want to go through the act of firing a good person, even though she was regularly underperforming causing both clients and coworkers to be unhappy, which brought down morale.
Eventually, Stephanie was let go, but it wasn’t until the decision could be justified by the bottom line instead of continual underperformance. Once it was about the numbers, it was black and white. It wasn’t a subjective decision, but a logical, factual one.
I wanted to share this story because I think a lot of people romanticize what it means to be viewed as a leader. It’s easy to get caught up in a lot of the messaging – much of which is good messaging – about empowering your people and being a servant or selfless leader. But I think one of the most undervalued and underestimated characteristics of a leader is the ability to make the tough decisions. Most people don’t like being the bad guy. Most people don’t want to make the difficult call or deliver bad news. Great leaders step up to the plate and make the tough decisions.
Now, great leaders don’t make those decisions indiscriminately or selfishly. Great leaders weigh all the information available to them and consider all of the consequences their actions. Then, they make the decision they believe will deliver the best results. Sometimes, the decisions that need to be made are uncomfortable and/or unpopular, but they’re the right decision for the business, for a team, or for morale.
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash