“How do I know if I need to make a staff change?”
The nonprofit executive was staring down into his coffee cup as he said it. We had just spent a good ten minutes talking about his latest staffing challenge. One member of his team seemed to keep getting cross-ways with everyone else. We’ll call him Darth.
“I think his work is okay. Not great, but certainly on par with what we need.”
He continued, “It’s just, everything is a huge production for him. If I ask him to do something that isn’t crystal clear, he complains about it to anyone who will listen. But what he really should be doing is coming to me for clarification.”
“It feels like he’s using a flamethrower to light a candle. I guess it gets the job done in the end. But it causes way more damage than good.”
There was a lull in the conversation.
“What does your gut tell you to do?” I asked.
“I just don’t know,” was his reply.
Successful organizations focus on people
One of the most well-worn of leadership platitudes is this: you’ve got to have the right team in place to be effective.
Jim Collins wrote about this in his best-seller Good to Great.
One of the most oft-repeated concepts from the book is the notion of “getting the right people on the bus, getting them in the right seats, and getting the wrong people off the bus.”
If the people on your team are allowed to work in their own personal sphere of brilliance, your organization will accomplish amazing things. If they are not, you will stay stagnant.
But how do you know if a member of your team is in the right seat? Or, if they should be on the bus at all?
Don’t think in terms of “good” and “bad” people
Like most things in this world, your people don’t break down into the categories of “good” and “bad”.
There are no bad people. No one wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and says, “I can’t wait to make my coworkers miserable today!”
But people who are cast in the wrong role will do things that make their coworkers miserable.
For instance, if you are in a job that you aren’t good at you are likely experiencing MASSIVE anxiety. To start with, you know you’re not good at your job. The tasks you are expected to do are difficult for you.
It’s hard to even get started.
And once you do, you often make mistakes.
If this was your reality, one way you could get relief is by creating false barriers. “I couldn’t do xxxx because I didn’t have yyyyy.” In this way, it isn’t my fault. I’m a victim.
Let’s get real: in certain situations the frustration of an impossible problem or intractable conflict with a coworker–one which takes you away from your true task–generates fewer negative emotions than being left alone to work on a job you hate.
Even though you may not understand it, people ALWAYS have reasons for doing what they do.
How to know when someone needs to get off the bus
Back to our coffee shop conversation.
My friend did actually know what his gut was telling him to do with Darth. He just had too much emotion clouding his vision.
So I shared the following story. (I’m obsessed with proper attribution, so I must say I first heard this story from my friend Lindy Hoyer. I think she heard it from someone else.)
“Imagine you go on vacation. Before you leave, you clear the top of your desk.”
“Are you visualizing your clean desk?”
“Now, on your first day back, as you first enter your office, you see a single plain white envelope in the center of your desktop. It has your name on it.”
“You open it. You begin to read the letter inside and quickly realize it is a resignation letter from Darth.”
I paused and locked eyes with my friend.
“You’re feeling that emotion right now, aren’t you? Is it panic? Are you thinking ‘what would we do without Darth’?”
“Or would the letter bring you a sigh of relief? The sudden realization that you just got rid of a huge problem. That you averted a difficult conversation without having to do anything?”
At this point, I didn’t even need to finish the thought.
“I know what I need to do,” he softly replied.
Did you see a familiar name?
Do you have a Darth on your team?
What I mean is this: as you were reading the story, could you imagine one of your current staff member’s signature on that letter?
Did you feel that sense of relief?
Then you too know what you need to do.
What about the board? What do I tell them?
I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve had to make difficult staffing changes.
One thing which held me up was this: what will the board think?
The role of the executive can be summed up in three major priorities (courtesy of Jerry Colonna of Reboot):
- The executive holds and promulgates the vision of the organization.
- The executive builds and maintains the team necessary to work toward the vision.
- The executive works to provide all members of the team with the tools and resources necessary to do the work.
So, building and maintaining the staff is clearly within the your realm. Conventional wisdom is true, individual staffing decisions are not the provenance of the board.
What is also true, though, is staff change causes a great deal of anxiety for everyone involved.
For me, these were my moments of greatest self-doubt. Was I a bad manager? Should I have done more coaching? More mentoring?
Or maybe I didn’t provide clear objectives?
Or maybe I’m bad at hiring people?
And refilling the position brings anxiety. What if I let Darth go and the whole thing happens again with his replacement?
How much turnover can I have before the board starts judging me? And yes, it is within their right to ask questions and make judgements. It is their obligation to assess your ability to carry out the second responsibility above.
Communicate
I hate to keep sounding like a broken record, but this is where consistent communication with your board chair is critical. If you’ve maintained weekly conversations, you will inevitably have a strong relationship.
You also will presumably leave a verbal “paper trail” of instances where the staffer underperformed and you tried to encourage growth. These things will come up in a series of conversations.
In fact, with consistent communication, your board chair will likely come to the same conclusion you do in terms of a staff change. In this case, you will have her full support…especially if other members of the board need a second opinion.
What do you think?
Staff changes are never easy. However, if done well everyone can benefit.
The organization gets a more productive employee.
The outgoing employee gets to find a new job and hopefully a better fit.
Have you had a positive staff transition? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or hop over to the Nonprofit Wizards Facebook page and leave a comment!
Darren Macfee is the founder of the Nonprofit Wizards. He studies the habits and practices of wizards and then shares those with the world. He also strives to be a little better every day–as a husband, as a dad, and as a business professional.