Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Continued

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Continued

My colleague Ed Taussig had a great comment on this posting that I thought I'd share since no one ever reads comments on blogs.

Firing someone should always be considered an opportunity for "Lessons Learned" - i.e. was there anything that as a manager I could have done differently to avoid getting to the point of having to fire someone in the first place?

Was it a failure to interview/hire properly in the first place? Was there a failure to mentor them or to give them constructive feedback before the problem became irreparable? Did I make an effort to find out what might be affecting their performance?

There will be times when the answer is none of the above and that there was nothing you could have done differently.

Even when there was something you might have done differently, it's not a matter of assigning blame, but of learning something from a bad experience.

All excellent points, Ed. Thanks for the contribution!