A reader writes:
I work at a small company and my team is even smaller: it’s just me, two people who report to me, my boss (until yesterday), and the much more senior person who leads the team. My boss has always been incredibly competent, done great work (by my own account and by my grandboss’s account), and been a great manager/teacher/mentor to me and my direct reports.
Yesterday my grandboss suddenly announced that my boss had been fired, which was completely out of the blue for me and, based on the panic I was fielding from my direct reports, for them as well. My boss clearly also didn’t see it coming — the morning he was let go, he was communicating with me about logistical things (think “I’ll be tied up on a call for X project at 11 am, can you handle ABC and we’ll debrief afterward?”).
My grandboss and the head of my company gave us the news, and explicitly said this had nothing to do with performance or work quality (they reiterated that both of those were exceptional) but really just that it wasn’t a great fit and they just didn’t see him having a future here. They immediately followed that up with excitement about the replacement for my boss, to whom they’ve apparently already extended an offer (allegedly, the replacement verbally accepted the offer the night before they fired my boss).
My direct reports are understandably incredibly anxious about what this means for them and the organization, and the vague “his performance was amazing but we didn’t see a future for him here” only heightens the fear that they could just be fired at random with no idea why. The announcement about the replacement also felt callous and unnecessary and visibly rubbed my team the wrong way.
My grandboss approached me later to say that I shouldn’t worry about my job, and he asked if I thought he should talk to the two more junior people on the team. I thought it was obvious that was the right thing to do, but he handled the announcement so poorly that maybe it wouldn’t be!
I already have regular check-ins with my reports individually to discuss performance and am very clear with expectations (what’s required for their current role and in order to advance in the organization), areas for improvement, etc. They both are doing a great job. I also took each of them out individually after we got the news so they could vent and/or ask me any questions. But given 1) this was explicitly not performance-related and 2) I myself was visibly blindsided by the news (I blurted out “What? Why?” before I could stop myself, and have been very vocal prior to this about how highly I think of my boss), I can’t imagine either of them feels comforted by any reassurances coming from me.
Your employees are right to be alarmed, as are you!
If your company fires someone they themselves say was an “exceptional” performer, then it’s logical for everyone else to worry that they too might be fired out of the blue.
Now, maybe that’s not actually true. Maybe his boss had talked with him about other ways that the job wasn’t a fit. Who knows, maybe your boss was determined to pursue strategy X when his managers wanted strategy Y and this was just a difference in visions or tactics — although in that case you’d think they would have just said that, since it’s a lot easier to explain. Or maybe he questioned them too much, or maybe he did a great job on the day-to-day but struggled to set a broader vision, or he was good at X but they want the role to be more Y, or he had bad chemistry with the people above him. It’s also possible that your company uncovered something egregious (like, I don’t know, hiring sex workers on the company dime) and, in trying to protect his privacy, flubbed how they messaged it.
Or maybe it’s none of that and they make capricious decisions based on very little. Or they wanted to hire a senior manager’s brother-in-law and unceremoniously kicked out your boss so they could.
We don’t know, because their messaging on this was so bad.
You can’t credibly or ethically reassure your employees that their jobs are safe unless you have a better understanding of what happened.
Can you talk to your grandboss and explain that people are alarmed to be told someone was fired for reasons that explicitly had nothing to do with his performance, and that while you appreciate the need for discretion around personnel decisions, without some additional information people will assume they too could be fired without warning and without reason … and so if there is a reason, it would help to share more info with people?
If they expect you to do the work of reassuring people and stopping panicked job hunts, they need to give you the tools to do that with.
