Cowardice at Work

This is a tale of two high­er lev­el man­agers — the first all but ter­mi­nat­ed, shuf­fled into a sec­ondary job with­out an expla­na­tion except the unstat­ed, very real mes­sage, “your time is up — find some­thing else.” By com­par­i­son the sec­ond is offered a dig­ni­fied oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave the orga­ni­za­tion with sig­nif­i­cant feed­back and as a mat­ter of per­son­al choice. 

You may ask, well, what’s the dif­fer­ence? In either case some­one is told they no longer fit, and must exit!

Yes, that’s true and I believe there is — or can be — a vast dif­fer­ence. If I am guilty here of over-sim­pli­ca­tion, then see this mere­ly as poles of a con­tin­u­um, or a basic tem­plate with infi­nite vari­a­tions where life is not very clean. Sure­ly there are cas­es and exceptions.

In the first sit­u­a­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion skirts an eth­i­cal edge, mak­ing it clear by its absence that mean­ing­ful feed­back is unnec­es­sary and that “we can do as we wish with peo­ple.” Those respon­si­ble for the ter­mi­na­tion cov­er their tracks, move toward a rapid exit for the per­son: “we are announc­ing this today” and may pre­var­i­cate, “he chose to leave the role,” although this is not con­firmed by the per­son at all. Those respon­si­ble may believe this is the smart or even macho way to man­age. They may ratio­nal­ize that “at this lev­el” you are just sup­posed to know how well you are doing. 

Most­ly, how­ev­er, it’s just not thought out and is with­out any grace. The per­son ter­mi­nat­ed becomes an object in a process to hur­ry them away. With­out sen­si­tive lead­er­ship, the depar­tee does leave, if not today then tomor­row — with a buck­et of dis­grace and two buck­ets of anger.

In the sec­ond sit­u­a­tion, the indi­vid­ual is treat­ed with respect. “The fit is no longer there” but also, “here’s why” with dis­tinc­tive exam­ples, and also “here are some options.” The per­son is giv­en time to think it over. If the per­son choos­es an exit over oth­er alter­na­tives, say inten­sive coach­ing or a move to a dif­fer­ent posi­tion, there’s coop­er­a­tive plan­ning. “How would you like to frame this?” “How do we time this?” Then a con­gru­ent set of mes­sages goes out to peo­ple. Noth­ing is hid­den. If the per­son says he or she is with­draw­ing from a job based on feed­back, then that’s the truth. There’s an effort to be gra­cious about a hard cir­cum­stance that must be nav­i­gat­ed by every­one. The per­son has a chance to main­tain his or her integri­ty, per­son­al courage and class. Peo­ple respect that.

One could say the first man­ag­er lives in a tougher world, but in my expe­ri­ence, it’s actu­al­ly just a more fear­ful one, with the author­i­ties oper­at­ing from not-so-sub­tle cow­ardice, which leads to decep­tion, side­ways mes­sages, con­spir­ing, and brit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Often there’s uncon­scious­ness and denial that all this is hap­pen­ing in the fish­bowl of the broad­er orga­ni­za­tion. Every­one is watch­ing, of course — to see what could hap­pen to them. One has to ask, what would be the point of all the mon­ey spent on recog­ni­tion and engage­ment pro­grams in an envi­ron­ment that takes no care with peo­ple when the going gets real­ly tough?

The sec­ond man­ager’s exit can cause ten­sion, too, but that ten­sion is at least dis­cuss­able. And that’s a key dif­fer­ence — those respon­si­ble for the deci­sion chose to tell the truth to a per­son they care about. They did­n’t hide in polit­i­cal woods. They did­n’t game their own sys­tem, the one for which they are chief stew­ards. They did­n’t game the per­son. This isn’t to say it’s easy, or that the response will uni­ver­sal­ly be gra­cious in return, but it helps a whole lot to know gen­uine care was tak­en and expressed, for the per­son and also for the observers — all the rest of us.

What more is there to say of such things? There’s noth­ing macho about the sur­prise hit and run ter­mi­na­tion. It’s an act of weak­ness, con­ve­nience and fear — and it shows. 

It’s a mark of man­agers or exec­u­tives who should be ask­ing them­selves deep­er ques­tions about their own lead­er­ship — and whether, they, too, actu­al­ly fit the role.

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