How to Lead, 5th Edition

Chapter 21

Firing people

‘Firing’ is a dirty word. The corporate jargon is full of euphemisms which avoid the awkward reality that when you fire someone you seriously mess with their lives. Instead, we hear sanitised words such as rightsizing, downsizing, offshoring, best shoring, outsourcing, laying off, redeploying and letting go. It sounds clean and reasonable unless you are on the wrong end of the action. In reality, most leaders know that they are damaging people’s lives and they would prefer to avoid the messy reality of making these tough decisions.

Ultimately, your responsibility is to your organisation: the survival of the organisation takes precedence over the survival of the individual. Having the wrong person in the wrong place ...