When to Fire The Prodigal Executive

You can’t save everybody. Nor should you. Many derailed executives are just daring you to fire them.

One day a CEO said to me, "I just can't get Byron to step it up."

Byron (real story, not his real name) was a director of engineering for a technology company. He was a long term employee. The company, which started off as an entrepreneurial family-based business that grew very fast, handled high amounts of high tech manufacturing.

Now the production lines were getting stuck, the company wasn’t getting product out the door fast enough, and they were having too many returns. Because Byron had been with the organization from day one, the CEO did not want to fire him.

“When you start off with a family-based business like ours,” said the CEO, “there's a strong sense of loyalty.”

A consultant was brought in to help with the engineering and I was brought in to see if I could help Byron improve his leadership skills. The first couple sessions went well and then all of a sudden Byron started changing his appointments. Following that he began to show total disinterest. So I told the CEO that I wasn't sure he was going to be engaged n the process. He might have a different agenda and it is getting in the way. Two weeks later the CEO called me to tell me that he was firing Byron.

What I told the CEO surprised him. “In a few months Byron will call you up and tell you that he's happier where he's at, and everyone will be able to move on. The CEO did hire a new director of engineering that was extremely sharp. Sure enough, Byron found a better job that was more in line with his skills. In truth, this worked out better for everyone.

The moral of the story is that sometimes it's better for everyone to move on.

The focus of my book, The Prodigal Executive, is on the 80% that are able to get back on track after being derailed. However there are 20% of derailed executives who, for a variety of reasons, fail to get enough traction to strike the balance between "too painful to keep" and "too valuable to get rid of.”

Invariably, one of two scenarios transpire.

The first scenario goes something like this. During the assessment process the derailed executive realizes that part of the derailment was an unconscious wish to disengage from the company in the first place. So there's a voluntary departure where the individual says "Because I couldn’t pull the trigger myself and was unhappy, I was alienating other and decided it was time to leave."

This scenario plays out in many situations. Most decide not to go through the coaching process. As coach, if I define it early on I say to the executive, "You don’t need me, you need a replacement consultant or you need a conversation with the CEO in order to work out a smooth transition that's in everybody's best interest. But to make yourself miserable and everybody else miserable really doesn’t make much sense."

The second scenario is rare. This occurs with individuals who, for whatever reason, are recalcitrant to changing their behavior. Many of them are in complete denial and feel the problems are all about everybody else. These executives really are uncoachable. For me it is important to find this out as early as possible, because, as the coach, I'm not there to do outplacement to help people leave, I'm there to help them stay. Often times the company decides this person is causing too much pain, and the risk and investment in the coaching is too high. In this case, everybody would be better off if this person disengaged from the company.

I've only had two of these rare recalcitrant situations. In both instances I think the executive was still in the wrong job. The executive was truly unhappy and didn't see any value for making any substantive changes so they could get back on track. In one case the person rejected the coaching outright. He didn't want to do what it took to increase his ability. So the CEO called and said, "Time for him to leave" and I agreed.