Leaders: “Get Shot Sooner” & Confront Tough Employees

I recently had a conversation with a Human Resources Vice President who was dealing with a difficult IT manager. We conducted an employee engagement survey every year, and this manager received anonymous complaints that he was verbally abusive to his employees. Several employees told the Human Resources VP that they were fearful that, if it became known that they were the ones who filed the complaint against the abusive manager, he would negatively impact their job or worse, do physical harm to them. One time, this nasty, long-term manager said to one of his employees, “You had better keep your mouth shut because I know where you live.” This type of caustic manager has a devastating impact on an organization’s culture. The fallout can include:

• Poor performance
• Negative team morale
• Appearance that senior leaders in the organization don’t care how others are treated
• Physical harm to a team member, caused by the manager
• Lawsuits: if managers don’t abide by the company’s values and the policies of the employee handbook, then lawyers will try to make the case that the values and policies don’t exist because they aren’t practiced and enforced by senior leaders
• Eroded employee confidence
• Opportunity costs: instead of having a star employee, you have an abusive one
• Poor customer service
• Negative impact to the bottom line

With all these negative outcomes, what to do about this abusive manager seems so simple … coach him, counsel him and, when that doesn’t work, quickly fire him. When I asked the VP of HR why they don’t fire this manager, he stated, “Because we are all afraid of him and we just hope he is going to retire.” When I responded, “The reality is that he isn’t retiring, so you need to get the necessary support (legal, EAP, law enforcement) and let this manager go. The VP of HR’s next response was classic. He replied, “So you want me to get shot sooner?” We both laughed about his response but the more I thought about his response, the more I realized there are a lot of managers who do not confront employees and deal with the truth for fear of making the situation worse or for the hope that the problem is going to resolve itself on its own.

It has been my experience that tech companies and start ups have found it easier to deal with problem employees than traditional organizations like utilities, school districts and government. The more competitive your industry, the less you have to deal with people who don’t live the values of your organization. I once worked with a manager at Intel who stated that the company had a weed and feed employee development policy. You weed out the low performers and people who don’t live by the company values and you feed/fertilize the top performers. That’s a great strategy for both developing employees and sharing poor performers with competitors, but may be difficult in larger organizations.

So, what can you do? The following five tips will help you in dealing with an extremely difficult or challenging employee.

1. Articulate a clear set of values of how people will be treated in your organization: Honesty is one example of a value. If I were to ask how much people can steal from your organization before they’re fired, there’s a good chance you would say that your company has a zero tolerance policy on stealing. The same type of decision making should be applicable when people treat others in the organization poorly.
2. Lean into conflict sooner: Very seldom do abusive employees or managers improve over time on their own. Meet with them quickly and often if needed and clarify the organization’s values and your expectations of how they treat people. Make it crystal clear that not changing how they treat people will impact their ability to be fully qualified to work for the organization.
3. Get help: If you really do feel that the manager or employee has the propensity for violence or retaliation, get professional help to support you in dealing with the problem employee. There are lawyers, EAP professionals and law enforcement that all have more experience than you do in how to handle these situations.
4. Document well: Abusive people are abusive for a reason: most people won’t stand up to them and let them know that, under no circumstance, will they ever be allowed to treat anyone poorly again. Stand up to them. Better yet, put it in writing. When it’s in writing, it increases the chances of changing their behavior and will also provide the support you need when you have to make the tough decision to let the person go. Our experience has been that this is the one point that managers are hesitant to do in these difficult situations which makes it even more difficult to do the right thing and fire the abusive employee.
5. Be willing to pay: Many times letting the employee know that their employment is no longer an option, offering a severance agreement is a good way to resolve a difficult situation. When push comes to shove, even very difficult employees will take the money and run rather than risk ending up with nothing. Gaining the reputation as a leader who has the guts to do the right thing, along with the improvement in team morale, will be more than worth the price you paid to get the employee out of the organization.

What separates the good from great leaders is that great leaders are willing to confront conflict and effectively deal with the tough issues that no one else wants to deal with. Even Apple and Microsoft have effectively parted ways with senior level managers who didn’t take feedback and were chronically abrasive and divisive to others in the organization. When you look at the role that those leaders played in the success of their respective companies, it has to be one of the toughest decisions that Steve Ballmer at Microsoft or Tim Cook at Apple have ever had to make as a CEO. Great leaders make the tough and right decisions. So yes, I am saying … you need to get shot sooner.