YOU’RE A VERY NICE PERSON

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A tentative business owner from North Carolina called me the other day to talk about a difficult employee, who had seemingly passed the threshold of ongoing coaching, counseling, and corrective action, and now was on the precipice of being asked to leave the Company. The business owner recited all the necessary steps, conversations, and documentation that had been attempted to improve his employee’s performance, to no avail. Despite such feedback, the employee’s job performance remained substandard.

It’s time for her to go.

Like many business owners, the thought of terminating an employee, especially one from a protected class, replete with myriad potential allegations and legal implications, had created inordinate worry in the business owner’s ability to conduct the final termination meeting properly. Despite having terminated other employees in the past, he still sought reassurance, guidance, and ultimately role-playing from me, to garner much-needed confidence to get through this event without incident.

Regarding reassurance, he and I reviewed the standard pre-termination fundamentals: his company had suitable EPLI coverage, he had a copy of the employee’s signed Employment Handbook Acknowledgment Statement on file, and he possessed multiple forms of documentation summarizing poor job performance, repetitive coaching sessions, and lack of improvement. His blood pressure dropped considerably once I reminded him that he had appropriate documentation on his side.

I then provided him with procedural guidance about the overall termination meeting structure. In specific, I reminded him to have a witness present, maintain control of the meeting, ensure the meeting lasts less than 15 minutes, and then I walked him through the three phases of the meeting agenda (e.g., Decision, Reaction, Administrative), culminating with the employee being escorted off the company premises. His voice cadence slowed dramatically, his speech pitch dropped from falsetto to almost normal, and he sounded increasingly confident now knowing how the actual meeting was supposed to proceed.

As always, I suggested a simple role-playing exercise to the owner so he could organize his thoughts, hear his voice deliver the message out loud, and respond to often-asked comments or questions. He absolutely loved that idea. He wanted to play his role, while I assumed the character of the employee.

He began the practice session by saying, “You’re a very nice person.” Before he uttered his second sentence, I said “Stop.” I pursued that statement with “Are you the employee’s pastor, social worker, or friend?” He said “No.” I then stated, “What is the central nature of the relationship that you and the employee have at work?” Correctly, he responded, “Well Steve, I’m her boss.” Accordingly, I reminded him that this is a legally-binding professional event between a supervisor and a subordinate, not a casual, personal conversation among friends, neighbors, or support group members.

By introducing a personal context to the meeting (i.e., “you’re a very nice person”), the business owner would have sent a blurred message to the formal nature of the session. This meeting is not about her personally; it is only about her inability to achieve stated performance objectives in a work setting. There is absolutely no reason to invoke any personal element to this purely professional milieu. Zero. That type of conversation had its place earlier in the performance management process. Not now.

Of course, I realize the business owner was trying to soften the serious impact of the imminent termination on the employee. Duh. However, by softening the tone of the meeting, the owner was introducing subjectivity, in the form of potential hesitation or doubt, to the employee that may enable her to pursue follow-up discussion centering on her personal qualities, feelings, and attributions, that could lead to the business owner being manipulated into making an overly empathic statement to the employee, capable of leading to a wrongful termination claim by the employee. The singular focus for the entire meeting is her inadequate job performance; which, last time I checked, is the sole reason she is being terminated.

Try this role-playing scenario with your managers, with you playing the role of the employee offering myriad personal and emotional pleas to see if they come to believe that you should not be fired because “you’re a very nice person.” Then, see what the managers’ boss thinks of that decision.

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