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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

“Practice makes perfect,” we learned as kids.

“Do things right the first time,” we learned in Total Quality Management.

Doing things right the first time is for manufacturing. It means quality happens during assembly, not during inspection, when you’d have to do it over. Outside of the factory, you have to make mistakes first.

Practice is as useful for leadership techniques as for methodologies like Use Case Analysis, or really difficult skills like welding.

Perhaps that’s why so many people turn into jerks when they’re promoted to leadership positions.

Let me explain. An important part of leadership is the ability to deliver bad news — small, but important nonetheless. Unfortunately, it’s as unnatural as the embouchure for the oboe (trust me) so we usually flub it the first time out.

What happens next? Some leaders avoid repetition. They either leave management or just skate by difficult situations. Others overreact the other way, giving lots of people bad news, whether or not there’s bad news to give. It’s that practice thing we were talking about earlier.

Most bad news doesn’t have to be given. Two open-ended questions do a better job: “How do you think you performed?” and “How could you do better next time?” Usually, you’ll find that the employee already recognizes the problem and, with encouragement, can figure out what would have worked better. Just empathize, so the employee knows this isn’t a catastrophe, applaud the employee’s professionalism in recognizing a substandard result, and reiterate the employee’s value to you and the company.

This doesn’t always work, though, and when it doesn’t, be prepared. Here are some tips and techniques on how to give bad news (but don’t expect to be excellent at this until you’ve been through it a few times):

Tip No. 1: Make sure this isn’t just a personality conflict. Employees don’t have to like you but do have to respect you. You owe them the same attitude.

Tip No. 2: Scale your delivery. If it’s trivial, don’t bother. If it’s not that big a deal, say so and explain why you’re taking the trouble to discuss it at all. If it’s a significant issue, make that clear, too.

Tip No. 3: Be sure of your facts. It’s demotivating for the employee, and embarrassing for you, if you find out the events you’re reacting to never really happened, or happened very differently from what you’ve surmised.

Tip #4: Plan the conversation. Don’t trust your natural eloquence. Make sure you know what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it.

Tip #5: Be resolute. Yes, resolute, corny as it may sound. And keep the conversation focused. For example, you may have an employee who, through passive resistance, is subverting a goal you’ve set. If the employee questions your goal, say, “We can schedule a meeting for that conversation if you’d like. Right now, that is the goal and we’re discussing your decision to not achieve it.”

Tip #6: Listen, but don’t let the conversation drag out. Your goal is to make sure the employee understands you – liking you or the message probably isn’t feasible. Paraphrase the employee’s position and confirm you got it right. Then ask the employee to paraphrase your message. When you’re sure the employee understands you, end the meeting.

Tip #7: Retain your composure. Anger is unprofessional. Exhibit the behavior you expect. If the employee becomes angry, don’t respond in kind. If it continues, say, “We’ll continue this conversation when you’ve regained your composure.”

Tip #8: Bad news is private. Be careful, though. While it’s never appropriate to chew someone out in public, many experts suggest, and some HR departments insist on, a witness to any difficult performance-related discussion. Since sexual harassment itself, unwarranted accusations of harassment, and wrongful termination lawsuits of all kinds are real, private conversations can be risky, and not just when you and your employee are of different genders. Consult your HR department for advice and to determine your company policy.

One last thought: While it’s important to be able to give bad news effectively, it isn’t important to like it. If you find that you enjoy the experience … you’ve stepped across a dangerous line.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

A good friend told me, “I was terminated with 20 minutes left in the day, on a Thursday. They had said I would be severed sometime during the month but they had led me to believe it would be closer to the end of the month. Nice treatment after 24 1/2 years …”

Another company bought his employer a few years before. He had known the day was coming, and he never once expressed resentment over his coming layoff. Elimination of redundant staff is one of the realities of a merger or acquisition. Yes, it’s painful, but there’s no foul — business is out to make good business decisions.

Why was it was managed so badly?

Consider the Portuguese man-of-war. As we learned in high school, although it looks like one animal, it’s actually a colony of independent coelenterates, each of which feeds and reproduces separately.

We’re colonies, too. As Richard Dawkins points out in The Selfish Gene, a body is just a gene’s way of making more genes. Even that is a simplification. An unknown proportion of our internal constituents began as independent critters. Mitochondria, for example, the organelles that make oxygen the key to metabolism instead of a toxic gas, started out as free-living bacteria.

Even though each of us is a colony, we manage to act as a purposeful organism – so much so that we harm individual colony members with callous disregard. (Example: Every time someone goes on a diet they starve or kill billions of fat cells – and just think of how many are destroyed during liposuction!)

Liposuction creates personal change. How about business change?

IS projects have always been about business change, and an increasing number of companies recognize that all IS projects are really business change projects that inject significant new technology into the equation.

Most business changes both create and eliminate jobs within the enterprise. Whatever your role in IS, at some point in your career you’ll help eliminate the jobs of innocent employees who did their jobs competently but whose roles are no longer needed because of the business change you helped the company achieve.

Companies are getting better at managing business change. They’ve learned to redesign processes, integrating technology into the new process design. They’ve learned to train employees in the new processes and technology rather than assuming everything will be self-evident. Most have learned to communicate the reason for a change, not just “here’s your new job – now go do it.” Some have even learned that redesigning the organizational chart comes after redesigning processes and technology, not before.

Sadly, though, many companies still see employees as nothing more than adipose cells … hence the phrase, “Getting rid of the fat.” And if you raise your hand to protest a layoff you risk being branded as soft – the business equivalent of “bleeding heart liberal.”

So here’s some advice: If you have an opportunity to influence how your business will manage a change that requires layoffs, don’t get all righteous about what is ethical, compassionate, or the right thing to do. In business, ethics is a personal matter, and ethical businesses get that way through leaders who act ethically, not through preaching.

Instead, be practical.

Point out that the long-term goal of business change is growth, and the cost of laying off one group of employees and then recruiting a different group is far higher than the cost of retraining the employees you have.

Suggest that when “trimming the fat” the company should use a sharp knife, not a sledgehammer. If valuable employees who support change find opportunities while non-performers and change resistors find themselves on the outside, most employees will quietly applaud when they no longer have to cover for their non-producing peers.

Most important of all, point out that every time the company treats departing employees like the cast-off byproducts of cosmetic surgery, the morale of every remaining employee plummets, and employees who might otherwise support change will become sullen and passive resistors of it, something every bit as poisonous as some colonists in a Portuguese man-of-war.

That’s bad for profits, and even worse when the next big change comes around.

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