This weekend, while at a beer garden with my wife during our community’s summer festival, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in years.
When I first saw him, we chatted for a few minutes, and I learned that he’d just moved his family to our town and that he has a new baby. I welcomed him to our community, and we went our separate ways.
A little bit later, he found me again.
When Getting Fired Works for the Best
He opened up the second conversation by saying, “I just wanted to let you know that getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
By the way, I was the one who fired him.
He proceeded to tell me how after getting fired, he’d gotten a lot of things figured out in his life. He’d found a job at a startup that he loved. He’d gotten out of a bad relationship, which had freed him up to meet his wife. Life was good.
He was saying thank you.
He said he remembered that I’d told him the day he was fired he should find something he loves to do.
It was a strange but cool moment. I was happy for him. He is a smart, funny, likable guy who we hired into the wrong role. And there wasn’t anything that either of us could have done at the time to fix it.
Other than parting ways. It was the best decision for all parties involved.
Have You Ever Been Grateful to Be Fired?
This interaction got me thinking about my own experiences. I’ve been fired (or at least invited to leave) a couple of times in my career. And ironically, I count those among the best things that have happened to me in my career.
Perhaps using myself as an example here is a bad idea because I am admittedly not cut out to be an employee. I’ve struggled with it throughout my entire career—which is part of the reason I do what I do today.
But it highlights something about the work of creating an engaging work experience for your team.
This isn’t easy work.
Each individual has unique characteristics and motivations that affect what they need to perform at their best. To unlock their fullest potential at work requires they crack that code for each person and make room for them to bring their fullest, best contribution to work.
This requires really getting to know your people and helping them to get to know themselves. It’s about using that knowledge to create a work experience that enables them to be at their best. I dedicate an entire section of my book to this work which I call “Performance Cultivation.”
Employee Engagement Starts With Hiring the Right Person for the Job
Another thing my interaction at the beer garden reminded me of is that engagement starts with hiring.
This person who I had to fire probably should not have been hired in the first place. Looking back on it, I remember the internal discussion about this hiring decision. I even distinctly remember having a concern that he didn’t really want to do the kind of work we were hiring him to do.
As a team, we rationalized our way into making the hiring decision. We convinced ourselves that it would all work out even though there were clear warning signs upfront that it probably wasn’t going to work. And it played out exactly as we could have predicted.
Take great care in who you invite onto your team.
Finally, this chance encounter reminded me that the work of employee engagement isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Often, it’s about having tough conversations to clarify expectations or share unpleasant feedback. Sometimes it’s about making tough decisions to fire a person you like because keeping a person in the wrong job isn’t good for them or anyone else around them.
This chance encounter was a good reminder of a lot of things. Mostly that engagement isn’t easy, but it’s always worth it.
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