One Major Principle for Hiring and Firing

If you have a leadership position that carries the responsibility to hire and fire people, you know the weight that carries.

Both hiring and firing can keep you awake at night. It has for me many times.

It does get better with more experience, and the more you learn. But it also requires intentional effort to improve. You won’t get better just because you put in more years hiring more people.

There is so much to cover on the subject of hiring, but for this post, I have just one major thought for you. Here it is:

We tend to look for the good when hiring, and we look for the bad when firing.

We all tend to see what we are looking for, not necessarily what is true.

This is influenced by the law of perspective.

Let me give you a picture of this law. My wife thinks I’m handsome. OK, for obvious reasons that perspective is held pretty much by Patti only. Love blindness is awesome! She has formed that perspective because she loves me and she has chosen to see me as her knight in shining armor. Picture King Arthur in Camelot. You can immediately see how your perspective would be different than Patti’s, and that same idea is true with hiring and firing.

We intuitively think laws are black and white, but like in any courtroom jury trial, the law is up for interpretation. The interpretation can win the case or land you in a ton of trouble. It’s the same with hiring and firing.

The human psyche is a powerful engine that works to talk itself into what it wants. The simple psychological idea we all know is labeled as rationalization. It’s amazing what we can convince ourselves of and make ourselves believe.

The greater the pressure we are under, and the longer the amount of time, the more likely our perspective will be off as we make decisions to hire or let someone go.

Hiring:

When you need to hire someone, sometimes you’ve been searching for months, and you are tired of looking. It’s an exhausting process and can become discouraging. And, when you’re carrying parts of that job plus yours, it’s so easy to see only the good in your next candidate and make a well-intentioned but unwise hire.  

This common scenario (and others like it) will often cause you to lower your standards and hire them basically because you like them. Enjoying good chemistry with someone is a positive indicator to keep moving forward in the conversations but not nearly enough reason to hire them to get a specific job done.

Never lower your standards when hiring, wait until you find the right person for the position who will also thrive in your culture.

The better route is to take your time, discover the full and unbiased picture about the candidate, and make a smart decision involving a thorough knowledge, (written down), of both their strengths and their weaknesses.

When hiring take whatever time is needed to learn who they are as a human being. Listen to their story – the long version.

Where were they born and raised, what was their early family life like? What are their dreams and aspirations? Have them share their calling to ministry, etc.

Then move to more competence and capacity related questions such as how do they handle pressure? Or, what is their leadership Achilles Heel? There are dozens of potential questions.

Ask them to describe their most recent ministry mistake and what they learned, and their most recent meaningful accomplishments. Discern their best attributes, such as humility, drive, adaptability, resilience, and of course their walk with Jesus.  

You get the idea, and all this takes time.

The point is this, be discerning about the person and their gifting. Whenever you are hiring, don’t embellish attributes and abilities to make them an instant hero because you are under pressure to fill that position.

Of course, no one is perfect, so the obvious goal is that their strengths far outweigh their weaknesses.

Firing:

When you need to release someone from your staff it’s never fun and the process can be filled with awkward tension and pressure. It doesn’t have to be that way but often is.

This is usually a result of two things.

First, failure to have the tough conversations early on, and second, failure to develop the staff member in order to help them improve.

It’s wise to pause before firing a staff member and remember that this is the person you chose who stood above all the others. First ask, what was our part in this breakdown?

No matter how you arrive at the point of letting someone go, once again the powerful force of the human psyche often kicks in. It does its thing to help make you feel better about letting this person go.

In this case it’s surprisingly easy to elevate or exaggerate the problems to substantiate the position to fire someone.

When letting someone go don’t take them from hero to zero to rationalize the decision or help you feel better. Make the decision based on quantifiable facts and the reality of the situation.

The way this happens is that you focus on things like weaknesses that are not relevant to the job, personal quirks that are nothing more than common idiosyncrasies, along with some flaws and shortcomings that are inconsequential to the real issues.

The point here isn’t to avoid making a tough decision, it’s to help you make the right decision.

Make sure you have done all you can to help a staff member succeed in their job rather than waiting to the point of frustration where the relationship deteriorates and you feel the only solution is to let them go.

This principle may not change the need to let someone go, but it will help you do it in the right way.

It will help you make sure you invest in leadership development, have the tough conversations over time, and demonstrate that you genuinely care about the person. It will also go a long way to secure a lasting Kingdom relationship far into the future.

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Remember in hiring, no one is as good as you think they are and in firing, no one is as bad as you think the are.

The truth is in between somewhere, and it’s your job to discern it.

When you see reality more accurately, you lead, coach and connect better with your team. You make better decisions. This helps your culture thrive and morale will increase.