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Letting Go of Someone You Never Wanted to Lose

Firing someone who isn't performing is hard. But it comes with a kind of permission. The evidence does the talking. Nobody in the room disagrees.

Letting go of someone who is good at their job, good for the team, and good to work with is a different kind of hard. There's no evidence to hide behind. Just a decision you have to own, out loud, to someone who didn't do anything wrong.

This is the conversation leaders avoid the longest. Restructures get delayed. Roles get quietly propped up long after they should have changed. Leaders tell themselves they're being loyal, when really they're avoiding discomfort.

If you lead people long enough, this will happen to you. The question isn't whether you'll face it. It's whether you'll handle it in a way you can live with afterwards.

Most leaders delay this decision by telling themselves a version of the same lie.

"They're too valuable to lose."

"There must be another way."

"I'll figure something out for them."

Sometimes that's true. Often it's a cover. A way of avoiding the discomfort of a conversation you know is coming.

The role has changed. The budget has moved. The strategy has shifted. The team no longer needs what this person does best. None of that is a reflection of their worth. But leaders confuse the two, and the confusion buys time nobody actually has.

The longer you delay, the worse it gets. Not for you. For them. They stay in a role that's already gone, doing work that no longer matters, while you quietly plan around them.

That's not kindness. That's avoidance wearing kindness as a disguise.

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See it yourself

Nadia ran a twelve-person operations team. Sam had been with her for three years. Reliable, well-liked, technically excellent. The kind of person other people went to when they were stuck.

When the company restructured, Sam's specialism was the one being phased out. Not because of performance. Because the business was moving in a different direction.

Nadia knew for six weeks before she said anything.

She told herself she was waiting for the right moment. Really, she was hoping something would change so she wouldn't have to have the conversation at all.

It didn't change. And by the time she finally spoke to Sam, he'd already sensed something was wrong. Meetings he wasn't invited to. Projects reassigned without explanation. He'd started quietly job hunting, unsure what was happening but certain it wasn't good.

When Nadia finally told him, his first response wasn't anger. It was relief.

"I thought it was something I did."

That sentence stayed with her. Six weeks of silence had cost him six weeks of unnecessary anxiety, and it had cost her his trust in the process, if not in her.

She got the decision right. She got the timing wrong. And the timing is usually what people remember.

A five-step approach for doing this well

Make the decision on its merits first. Is this role still needed? Does the business still need this specific skill set? Keep that decision free of guilt, loyalty or fear of the conversation. Muddy decisions lead to muddy conversations.