Considerations Before Termination

This is the full funnel freedom podcast, supporting sales leaders, and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results. Lead a great team and hit more targets with full funnel freedom. Welcome to the full funnel freedom podcast.
Hamish Knox. In this episode, I will give you ideas and insights around three considerations that all start with C before terminating an employee, letting a team member go. And often it's because the reasons for letting them go are typically ambiguous and there are obvious sections around violence in subordination, harassment, et cetera.

But a lot of times it was, well, we just don't feel you're a really good fit anymore. And that doesn't really tell anybody anything except, well, I guess they just don't like me, so. Wow. Letting someone go is never going to be a pleasant experience for us. If we look through the lens of these three CS, we can at least be confident that we are making the right decision.

The first C is clear as in was I clear in my performance expectations. Oftentimes, when I'm speaking to sales leaders, and I asked them about performance expectations for their salespeople, their expectation essentially came down to we'll go sell or we'll go sell X amount of dollars, which provides about as much direction to a sales person as go climb a.

Not very helpful. So when we have clear performance expectations and is talked about on previous episodes, this begins even in the recruitment process. Well, before our team members, even onboarded letting our potential hire know exactly what is expected of them from a behavior perspective. So that they can choose to disqualify themselves very early on if they so desire.

But are we clear with those specific measurable, observable activities that we expect them to do? How much of them do we expect them to do? And of course what happened? If they fail to meet those performance expectations in my book on accountability, there's a whole chapter on consequences. And one of the key components of that is the idea of a consequence ladder, where if one of our team members steps off side on their performance expectations for a week, it doesn't mean, Hey, you're out of here.

It means there is a. Small consequence, which of course build over time and key thing. There has to be a way for our team members to be able to get off the ladder. Cause otherwise it's kind of like three strikes and you're out. And if they're sitting one step below the top of the ladder, which of course the ultimate consequences termination, and they have no way to get back off while they're probably going to leave anyways.

And they're going to be de-motivated and unproductive while they're still a member of our. So we want to look back and ensure that we were clear with our performance expectations. Even before this team member became a part of our team. The second C is coaching. As in was my team member offered coaching and other development opportunities to increase their performance.

Now, having asked this question of many sales leaders, the gut response you probably had when you heard that question is yes. But reflect back and ask yourself, were we giving. Tactical coaching or strategic coaching. Tactical coaching really just creates learned helplessness. I've mentioned this on previous episodes.

We're, we're really giving our team member some advice based on our experience, which may not actually be relevant to this current situation. Whereas strategic coach. Dives into what is actually the root cause of the problem and really creates a development opportunity for our team member. And best practice is that we have an individual one-on-one 25 minute coaching session with each of our direct reports every single week, in addition to our check-ins and our checkouts, that may seem like a lot, but.

In 25 minutes, we can probably understand root causes of issues and create a development path for solving them may not actually solve the issue in a 25 minute coaching call. That's probably unrealistic, but we can at least identify the root causes and create a go forward path with our team member in a development capacity.

The last C is change. And that is shifting the focus from us, which was, were we clear? And did we offer coaching and other development opportunities? Now we're shifting the focus to our team members and we want to ask ourselves, have they demonstrated that they are willing to change? And they're really the keyword here is demonstrate the phrase.

Yeah, sure. I'll get better. Or next time I'll do this is great to say, but as you've learned over the course of the episodes, you've listened to I'm about behavior. I really am uninterested in what people are saying. I'm more interested in what they are doing and especially in a context where we are looking at possibly.

Ending a team members time with our organization. I really want to observe that their actions are demonstrating, that they are worth keeping on my team, giving an example of what this looks like and where some anxieties might come in. As a leader, we had a client once who had an underperforming employee, so we supported them in creating a performance improvement plan or a PIP.

But my client was concerned about the implementation because they were going on holiday the following week. So what I said to them was, well, when you get back, you're going to have three weeks of data. So if your employee has not demonstrated in the time that you're away, which is the time that they really should be proving themselves, because you're not around to be looking over their shoulder.

If they haven't done anything in those three weeks, that proves they want to be on the team. You're going to get more information out of that than you would if you were in the office, watching them every single day. So we want our team member to demonstrate that they want to be a member of our team and not just a member, but a productive member of our team.

So as you're thinking about moving this team member on and helping them go me more successful elsewhere, which is one of my favorite HR cliches. If we sit back and reflect and say, were we completely clear with our team member around performance expectations? What happens if they don't do those expectations, they were offered strategic coaching and other development opportunities, and they did not demonstrate a willingness to change through their behavior.

We can be completely confident that we are making the right choice to. Exit them from our organization have worked with many sales leaders who are very hard on themselves when it comes to choices like this. And it totally makes sense. We are affecting someone's life, potentially other lives. If they have spouse or partner or children.

And. Some of the coaching sessions I've had with sales leaders have revolved around, well, maybe I wasn't clear, or maybe I didn't offer them coaching. Falwell, the leader has shown me that they have a very clearly documented onboarding plan. They have a very clearly documented proactive prospecting and client expansion plan.

They have given this employee consistent strategic coaching opportunities. Over and above what the best practices of one twenty five minute coaching call session a week with the individual team member over and above the check-in check-out and they still doubt themselves. And it's because they are reflecting on the fact that they were affecting someone's life.

So in these cases, it's incredibly important to be documenting everything from the very first conversation with the team member, as a candidate, for a role all the way through. So we can make choices based on data. Our brain is wired to keep us safe, which means sometimes holding us back from. Choices that are beneficial to us or to our organization because our brain looks out and says danger, danger.

We haven't done all the right things. We need to give them one more chance. The fact is the moment that we have thought of letting someone go, we've let them go. The only thing that happens between when we've had that thought and when we actually. Do finally remove them from our team is it costs us a bunch of money in compensation.

It costs us a bunch of mental, emotional energy and burning the calories to keep acting as if, while that team member is still on our team, but also all of the mental and emotional energy we are spending focused on. Getting their exit together, as opposed to focusing on larger, more strategic opportunities that will keep our funnel consistently reliably full.

This has been the full funnel freedom podcast. I've been your host Hamish Knox sharing with you. The three considerations, clear coaching and change that we want to look at when we are thinking of exiting a member of our team. Follow us on Instagram at Sandler in why? Why see if you would like to get involved with the full funnel freedom podcast as an advertiser or a sponsor email podcast at full funnel, freedom.com until we connect with you on the next.

GoCreate full funnel. Freedom. Thank you for listening to full funnel freedom with Amish knocks. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to full funnel, freedom.com.