The Question Every Leader Should Ask Before Firing Someone
A department head I know spent eleven months managing a declining situation with a regional director she had inherited. The director was good at relationships and bad at execution. He could charm a client in thirty seconds, but he could not deliver a quarterly forecast on time. The department head gave him feedback in January. He promised to improve. He did not improve. She gave him a formal performance improvement plan in March with specific deadlines and measurable outcomes. He missed every one. She reassigned two of his reports to other teams so the director could focus on fewer responsibilities. He still missed deadlines. In September, she scheduled a termination conversation. The director was surprised. He told her, “I did not know it was that bad.”
She had been clear. She had given him time. She had given him resources. She had been honest about the gap. He had somehow not heard any of it. That is the puzzle at the heart of the hardest leadership decision you will make. You can do everything right, and the person on the other side of the table still will not have heard you. The question is not whether you did the paperwork. The question is whether you gave them a real chance to hear the message before you delivered the consequence.
Yesterday we examined the hard reversal of leadership: that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is end someone’s tenure. Today we step into the practical machinery of that decision. Before you fire someone, ask yourself four questions. If the answer to any is no, the termination is premature. If all four are yes and nothing changed, the decision is already made. The questions are not complicated. They are brutally honest, and most leaders skip at least one of them.
The first question is, “Have I been clear?” Clarity is not the same as having the conversation. Most leaders have the conversation. They say, “You need to improve” or “Things need to change.” They say it in a way that sounds clear to them but leaves room for the employee to interpret it differently. The director in the example thought she had been clear. She had used performance improvement plans and quarterly reviews. She had used the vocabulary of deadlines and deliverables. The director heard words about improvement and assumed he was still doing fine. He rationalized every conversation as feedback, not as a warning. The difference between feedback and a warning is the difference between information and a choice. Feedback says, “Here is what I see.” A warning says, “Here is what I see, here is what needs to change, and here is what will happen if it does not change.” If you have not used the language of consequence, you have not been clear yet.
The second question is, “Have I given them time?” Time does not mean weeks. It means a full cycle of the work they are expected to do. If a person operates on quarterly sales cycles, three months is a single cycle. Two weeks of marginal improvement followed by a regression is not evidence that the person cannot do the work. It is evidence that they tried for two weeks. Paul’s instruction in Colossians 3:13 (NLT) is relevant here: “Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” The phrase “make allowance” implies room. Space around the fault. A structure that acknowledges human failure as something that takes time to correct. If you have not given the person enough time to demonstrate a sustained change, you have not given them a real chance. You have given them a performance improvement plan with a clock they could not see.
The third question is, “Have I given them resources?” This is the question most leaders skip because it forces them to look at their own contribution to the failure. A regional sales leader could not hit her targets for three consecutive quarters. Her general manager was ready to terminate her. Then the general manager looked at her support structure. She had no administrative assistant. She was handling her own scheduling, expense reporting, and travel booking while also managing a team of twelve account executives. The general manager had taken her assistant away six months earlier in a cost-cutting move and never replaced her. He had removed the resource she needed to do the job and then held her accountable for not doing the job. The sales leader was not failing. She was drowning, and the general manager had pulled the life preserver. Before you decide someone cannot do the work, ask yourself whether you have given them the tools, the support, the training, and the staffing to do it. If the answer is no, the problem is not the person. The problem is the system, and you own the system.
The fourth question is, “Have I been honest about the gap?” This is the hardest question because it requires a level of specificity most leaders avoid. Honest about the gap does not mean saying, “Your performance needs to improve.” It means saying, “Your reports have been late three out of the last four months. The December report was three weeks late and required rework from your director. The January report did not include the regional breakdown we agreed on. The February report has not been submitted yet.” It means naming the specific failure, the specific impact, and the specific standard. Honest about the gap also means naming it more than once. Proverbs 28:13 (NLT) says, “People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.” The principle applies in both directions. The employee who conceals the gap cannot receive help. The leader who conceals the gap by using vague language instead of specific language is preventing the very confession the person needs to make. If you have not named the gap in language that is impossible to deflect, you have not been honest yet.
Let me walk this framework through a specific scenario. A young product manager had been missing feature deadlines for six months. Each missed deadline was explained by a different reason: the engineering team was slow, the requirements changed, the stakeholder was unreasonable. The explanations were plausible enough that his director kept accepting them. Six months in, the director scheduled a termination conversation. She ran the four questions first.
Had she been clear? She had given feedback in monthly one-on-ones, but she had never used the language of consequence. The product manager thought missing deadlines was an ongoing discussion topic, not a terminal condition. She had not been clear.
Had she given time? The product manager operated on quarterly development cycles. He had been in the role for eighteen months, so time was not the issue. He had enough cycles to demonstrate sustained improvement. This question passed.
Had she given resources? The product manager had been responsible for three feature tracks simultaneously, which was more than any other product manager in the company carried. His director had not noticed the workload disparity because the other product managers complained less. She had not given him the resources he needed.
Had she been honest about the gap? She had named missed deadlines, but she had never connected the missed deadlines to the pattern of deflected accountability. She had accepted the explanations without ever saying, “Every explanation is a different reason, and that means you are not owning any of them.” She had not been honest.
The director did not terminate the product manager. She reduced his feature load to one track, set a clear consequence, named the deflection pattern explicitly, and gave him one quarter to demonstrate change. The product manager met every deadline for three months. He needed fewer features, a clearer understanding of the stakes, and a director who was willing to say the hard thing she had been avoiding. The termination conversation never happened because the director asked the right questions first.
I have made the opposite mistake. I have fired someone without asking these questions. I was confident that I had been clear. I was confident that I had given time and resources. I was confident that I had been honest about the gap. I was wrong about at least two of the four, and I did not know it until years later when the person told me what they had not understood. By then the relationship was burned, and “I should have done better” does not rebuild trust. The four questions are not a checklist you complete before a conversation. They are a mirror you hold up to your own leadership before you make a decision someone else will live with. If you answer yes to all four and nothing changed, the decision is made. You owe the person the dignity of acting on it. If any answer is no, you owe them the time it takes to make it yes.
Leadership Challenge: Think of one person on your team whose performance has prompted you to consider termination. Run the four questions against your own leadership. Have you been genuinely clear about the consequence? Have you given enough time for a full work cycle of sustained change? Have you examined whether your own decisions removed the resources they needed? Have you named the specific gap in language they cannot deflect? If the answer to any question is no, you have work to do before the decision is made. Start that work today.
I write about leadership at the intersection of timeless principles and modern workplaces. Follow for weekly insights on building teams that actually work. For more articles like this consider subscribing or sharing.