1 week Ago
By Karla L. Miller Reader: I have been a technology CEO for 15 years. The first 12 years was at a company I founded, and then I joined an established business.
I brought several staff members with me to the new company, where they all received promotions. One of these staff members, “Angela,” was with me for over 10 years, working her way up the ladder from entry level to a position of importance under my mentorship. Unfortunately, over the last year, her performance deteriorated.
There were many complaints about her from other team members, who believed she was resting on her laurels because of her long-term relationship with me. I tried repeatedly to provide feedback but eventually had to fire her. She was very angry, crying, and said she felt betrayed.
Her final words to me were, “You are dead to me, I will never speak to you again,” which made me sad. Now she’s networking for a new job with people I know. I’ve heard from contacts that she’s angry and hurt, trash-talking me and the company I run.
I would like to reach out and try to clear the air, but I doubt this will change anything. I don’t have a guilty conscience about the decision to fire her, but I do feel bad that she’s hurting. What should I do? Karla: Even if it was best for the business and your team, surely you understand why Angela would be angry at being let go by someone she supported and looked to for guidance for over a decade.
A year of declining performance probably felt much longer to you than it did to her; her narrative, internal and external, may be that she was unceremoniously dumped. That doesn’t make her narrative true, of course, and it doesn’t mean firing her was the wrong call. But I can’t help wondering how someone goes from a decade of rewarding growth to tanking her own career in the space of a year.
What changed? Was there some outside stressor — a health problem, personal challenges, a difficult transition to the new workplace — that knocked her off track? Did your feedback follow a standard protocol that clearly outlined problems, desired outcomes and consequences? Or was it more of an informal series of increasingly tense conversations? Did she have space to discuss why her performance was suddenly plummeting and what help she might need to pull out of her dive? Is it possible the team members complaining about her had their own agenda and unduly influenced your perception of her performance? Then again, even people we’ve known for years can change in disappointing ways. It’s possible Angela became complacent, relying on your indulgence instead of working to maintain your goodwill. Maybe she always had issues that only became apparent at the new company.
Maybe you handled performance discussions with the correct balance of compassion and candor, but she wasn’t absorbing the message that consequences were imminent, so she felt blindsided when they occurred. Your best hope of clearing the air was while she still worked for you and had a vested interest in hearing you out. Now, however, that ship is well beyond the horizon.
Not only will she not want to hear what you say (unless it’s: “I was wrong, I’ll pay double your old salary if you come back”); she might assume you’re making a self-serving attempt to stifle her smear campaign against you. The good news is that campaign is the least of your worries. Whatever your reputation, she’s undermining herself with every bitter word she speaks to prospective employers and contacts.
She should be venting her anger and hurt to friends, a partner, a therapist or others outside her professional circle. With recruiters and hiring managers, she needs to present a neutral, forward-looking narrative: Your goals diverged; she was eager for new challenges after working her way up the ladder; it was time to move on. If she were to come back to you after a cooling-down period and ask for a chance to discuss what happened, it would be a kindness to accept.
If you could support her from a distance in a way that can’t be traced back to you — say, by nudging a recruiter in her direction who could give her honest, supportive feedback on how she comes across in her networking — that too would be a kindness. It might also seem kind to put in a good word for her overall performance with people who ask you about her. But if you can’t honestly say you would hire her back in a heartbeat, that praise would come off hollow.
In general, I think you should give her a wide, comment-free berth and let her find her own way. In the meantime, all you can do is examine what, if anything, you could have done differently or better — and seek guidance on ways to make your corrective feedback more effective in future conflicts..
