When To Fire Someone – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Jaakko and Lafe how do you know if you terminated too early I wanted to remove the toxicity before damage the team when do you know it’s time to fire someone so we’ll get into a little little change in pace here going from the darkness of the Islamic state into something a lot more positive which is people running businesses and it’s good you clarify that cuz terminated as a difficult yes and my babies tell me it’s check so this is a good question and it’s something we hear a lot and we got a ton of questions when I put this out so when you know it’s time to fire somebody we get this question all the time as you just said and it’s this was always the most difficult thing it is incredibly difficult even for you know people who feel like they’re super super tough leaders or strong leaders in the SEAL Teams who have been through all our training and and and improving themselves on the battlefield it’s hard to fire people it’s always difficult to fire people it’s hard to have those tough conversations with folks and so we’ve taught we talked about this that the right time to fire somebody is when you don’t feel bad about it and what I mean by that I don’t mean just because you’re cold-blooded but that you actually but that you actually have taken every step to mentor and train and provide resources and and help that person achieve the performance that you need them to achieve in order to accomplish the mission and you’ve given them every chance to succeed and once you you you should feel absolutely confident that you have exhausted all options and then you should you’re not gonna feel bad about it because you’ve taken so much time and effort and they shouldn’t even they they’re not even gonna be upset about it not that they necessarily love you or thank you for firing them but so often you see people that are literally relieved when we work with companies and we see this happen we see people that are relieved because they’re in a position where they’re just they’re overwhelmed there’s massive pressure on them and they knew they were it was beyond their capability and they just didn’t want to say I can’t do this and so when they got either fired or just transitioned to a different role it was they were relief and they said thank you and it really was that was really eating at me but I didn’t feel capable and I didn’t feel I knew I was letting the team down and that’s almost always the case everyone smile you get the tortured genius who’s just can’t take direction or won’t listen who’s never gonna see never gonna see that I doubt but that that’s okay yeah that’s okay yeah the only other thing I’d say is laying out the real crystal clear expectations of where you need to be hey if this is where you this is where you need to be and if you don’t get there this is what’s gonna happen and that’s why you said it shouldn’t be a surprise it should be hey I knew exactly what the expectations were I knew exactly what was required to me and I knew exactly what was gonna happen if I didn’t meet those expectations requirements so that’s how you know and the only other thing is we sometimes in it’s totally normal we build a relationship with our people and so sometimes that relationship gets strong to the point where you might value that relationship more than you value the performance of the team then that is not a good situation because you have to look out for the whole team and if I say oh this guy’s not doing his job but he’s my bro so I’m gonna keep him on I’m letting down the whole team so that’s just another little element that you have to pay attention to if you truly care about the person mentor him coach them put him into a position where they can succeed sometimes people aren’t good at something and you got to move into a spot where they can you can take advantage of their strengths instead of putting them a spot where their weaknesses are gonna be totally exposed that’s how you take care of someone so that’s what you got to do before you fire somebody one thing to that I learned from you and in in the Navy during our time was when you have those tough conversations you got to write it down you have to write it down and that’s something that I thought was very powerful because so often even in SEAL Teams you’d see leaders who would say well this leader screwed up you know this platoon commander or this Chiefs got an issue and we need to he’s causing the you know he’s dangerous or he’s making bad decisions or he’s unprofessional or he’s you know he’s he’s not getting his unit where they need to be and and we need to call him in and tighten and you’d have that conversation behind closed doors when the person isn’t present and like right on let’s call them in let’s tighten them up you come in they sit down and here you are face to face with that person and you just had that close to a conversation about how terrible they were and how they really needed you know we’re gonna we’re gonna squirm away and now face the face the conversation goes like this well you’re doing you’re doing a pretty good job you’re doing a pretty good job overall there’s a couple things we need to work on here there but no maybe not here and I think that’s that’s that doesn’t help anyway that’s the false cheerleading is a disaster and it’s something that we talk about all the time in our business I’m sure you’ve mentioned that on the podcast you know many times before but when you write it down you have it in front of you so you have to have a tough conversation and you give them a copy so they have it with them as well and then they can take that and understand where they need to be and when they need to be there and and that forces you to have those tough conversations it’s it’s it’s absolutely a game changer and makes you makes you address that and then again the false cheerleading is a disaster people then when you have to fire someone and they’re like wait you just said I was doing a good job so obviously you failed as a leader another another good thing you can do to soften the blow of this stuff when you’re when you’re delivering the heavy news is you’re saying listen I wrote this down I got putting this in front of you why am i doing that cuz I think you can do it I want you to do it I’m investing in you this is not my way to to make you feel bad this is my way to make you get better I want you to do better so here’s what here’s what you got to do for me here it is in plain English do you understand this bullet point do you understand this bullet point do you understand this bullet point that’s the best possible thing you can do and and you got to make that them understand that cuz otherwise they’ll walk out of the room saying oh he’s picking on me he doesn’t like me no no the opposite is true if I didn’t like you I would just fire you I want you to perform I’m mentoring you I’m coaching you because I want you to do better I’m giving you this list so you know exactly what you have to do to win so don’t take it the wrong way my brother just get in the game and get this stuff done hey do you think because I remember you saying this good evening echo good evening I remember you saying this too – J – remember you were like you were like when you don’t feel but I don’t know if you put in those exact words that’s basically the message exactly the lay said when you don’t feel bad about it you guys both know yeah you know no D do you think that there’s a difference between like the SEAL Teams for example because you can’t just well I’m assuming you can’t just replace the guy so it’s like it’s worth it to invest as much as you possibly can civilian world and the SEAL Teams I thought this would be different they’re not different they’re the same so in this villain world every company go work with doesn’t matter what the company is there there’s no immediate replacement for somebody that knows a skillset for a software engineer is there a great guy waiting to come in the door no is there a great welder waiting to come in the door no is there just no matter what these things are there’s not a perfect replacement coming form it’s the same thing in the SEAL Teams you don’t have a ready replacement ready to come in so of course you’ve got a person you’ve gone through the agony of finding them you’ve gone through the agony of recruiting them you’ve gone through the agony of bringing them on board issuing them their gear getting them their computer letting them understand the the culture of the company I’ve done I mean that you’ve already invested so much you don’t want to just fire the person you want them to work out and so that’s why it’s important on either military and civilian you got to you’ve made those investments the best outcome is to have them succeed that’s always the best outcome and so that’s why you’ve got to be a great mentor a great coach a great leader and I’ve talked about this before I’m not gonna go into right now but some people are allergic to the words mentor and some people are allergic to the word coach you get someone with an ego problem and I go hey life welcome to the Pitou I’m gonna go ahead and mentor you you don’t I mean they think you know that offends them because that implies I’ve said this before that implies that I know more than you do and you know less than me and I’m the big guy that’s gonna help you little guy yeah so sometimes that direct kind of coaching is not the right answer but you know clearly when you’re getting to a point where something’s get fired you need to do some direct coaching so that’s why we’re right now we’re getting it done correctly and one more point on that which is a great a great question echo but it’s that’s the easiest I think fall back and we see that with a lot of leaders I’ve seen we saw in the military and we see it through you know companies an organization that we work with now oftentimes it’s people that well this person isn’t good enough I need to fire them get someone else and it almost most of the time that’s not the case most of the time that’s they just need to be led they need to be let they need to have the mission better explained to them they need to have you know the training they need to have better resources they need to have mentorship just as Jacque was talking about and so it that’s that’s an easy fallback but it’s not it’s an excuse and it’s the opposite of extreme ownership and really only the case of that tortured genius right that we wrote about the the person that just cannot take any direction no matter how how valid are positive and needed they can’t take any criticism they won’t accept any responsibility that they have it all figured out the world just can’t see the genius and what they do you know that’s kind of how they look at things that’s the only time that you really have to fire those folks generally yeah and the thing you didn’t say you hit like four points you wanna know one of the best places to start if someone’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing is explain to them why they’re doing it what this is why it wants you to do this because then they can absorb it they understand what the deep mission is they understand kind of commander’s intent so whenever someone’s not doing this and I you know what I’m just go ahead and break out a story right now good do it so I got a seven-year-old daughter she can’t ride her bike yet mm-hmm right that’s not good you should be riding a bike at four right and my family is four so she can’t ride a bike yet well not too so it geez and it’s become a thing it’s become an issue right so the other day and we’re going on a big camping trip and it’s gonna be necessity to be able to ride the bike so the other day I started telling okay we got to go work on your bike riding someone come get your shoes on get ready bro and she immediately goes defensive I don’t know I don’t want to ride a bike I can’t ride a bike I’m not good at right and I started getting right you know no listen get your shoes on I went that route like an idiot and I luckily I didn’t go too far down the road and I just stopped myself after two direct orders with no explanation of why and I said hey sweetie we’re gonna go work on your bike right let me tell you why because when we go camping almost everywhere we’re gonna be going is gonna be on the bike especially we win it’s time to bike ride to go get ice cream we’re gonna have to ride bikes to get ice cream and and so all I want to make sure is that you’re able to come with us when we go to get ice cream no I mean I don’t want to have to bring it back for you want you to come with us and you can see you know I just completely changed attack and shoes said you know okay let me get my shoes on and literally that’s an example with a seven-year-old right and first of all the first note there is that I mr big leadership expert completely went down the wrong road and was like listen to me because I’m the father and I know you do what I tell you it’s the wrong approach 100% of the time you’ve won the seven-year-old and as soon as I went back and said hey here’s why I want you any no I told a bunch of other things you know it’s really good this is how we’re gonna do get around this is how you can get around the beat all these things and change your attitude it literally changed your attitude in a minute I wish I would’ve videotaped the whole thing mm-hmm cuz we could have posted it you know yeah that would have been a good little case study yeah flanker with the ice cream money the would you say back to the the height of the hiring and people you know you don’t have just someone waiting in the wings to get hired to fill that position remember that kind of is the case huh most of the time where if you fire someone it’s like oh we’ll just replace them Yeah right all that work and stuff you got to rehire somebody been that you’re wasting time and resources to do that you could just be investing learning like I always want your your team to succeed and sometimes people take that too far we get someone that just wants the TV sees why they’re not gonna fire somebody so there’s always a balance there’s already not to be there but yes that is true so do you make the exception if let’s say you know let’s say hey I’m hired this I don’t know you weigh it you weigh a pro so if you do have a guy kind of waiting in the wings I don’t know my neighbor of course so you’re gonna invest less in this guy cuz we got this guy ready to go well no you you won’t invest less you’re not gonna vest anything if you’ve got someone that’s gonna come in and do the job and this person can’t make it happen is failed right currently get rid of them yeah Jack no