How To Let Go Of Leaders Who Don't Fit | Ep 259
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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today we are talking about letting go of leaders who just don't fit. So as I go to record this podcast, it's 8.23 on a Friday morning, and I am anticipating a conversation I'm going to have to have in the next 60 minutes with a team because I am letting go of their leader. And so I had a lot of this top of mind because I

you know, there's the process of making sure their work is covered, making sure you're gonna be able to divvy up everything, finding a backfill, there's all that stuff. But what's most important to me is how do I message this to my team? And how do I reframe the situation so that they understand it's good? Because I truly believe it's good. And I know it's the right thing to do. But most people don't see it that way.

And I actually thought about, okay, I'm writing this all out. I have this message to my team. And I was like, wow, this is like a great opportunity to show other people how I approach these situations because I think a lot of people view them as bad, view them as wrong. And I just want to shed a different light on that for you. You know, I think...

overall, this is definitely one of the hardest decisions you have to make. But they're also one of the most necessary decisions that you have to do as somebody who's a founder, a CEO, a leader in a company is letting go of people who aren't a culture fit. And I specifically want to speak to culture fit because I think that, honestly, if somebody is unable to perform, that's a very clear cut. I would say it's much easier to let somebody go when they're not performing because it's like,

Here's the metrics. You're not hitting the metrics. Here's what I've done to help you. You're not accepting the help. You're not putting in the work. Like you can be objective about the fact that they're not hitting their performance goals.

This, however, is definitely one of those decisions that keeps a lot of people up at night. You know, you hire somebody, you're investing in them, you put your trust in them, you put a whole team under them, and then whether it be all at once or slowly, you start to realize like, okay, this person's actually not fit. In fact, you might have somebody who's leading a team and they might be a five out of 10 culture fit, and the people beneath them are eight out of 10, seven out of 10, nine out of 10 culture fits.

Because the way I see it is that culture exists on a spectrum. So nobody's ever a complete fit or a complete misfit. It's pun intended. But they exist somewhere on the spectrum. And so a lot of the times what happens is that you bring someone in, you have high hopes. And then what you realize over time is you might have actually put a leader over a team where the team has a better culture and are better culture fits than the leader. And

the reason that then you have to say, okay, I have to let this person go is not because they're bad at their job, but because the way they lead just doesn't align with the culture you're building. And if you keep them, it's really just a trade-off, which is like, do you think it's worth keeping them? Or do you think it's worth keeping the team?

And that's what I tell people because what happens, and I'll spell this out in this podcast, is that that is the fate that you steal for yourself if you keep somebody who's a bad culture fit in a leadership position, right? Because essentially what you do is one bad leader, if you keep them on the team, they can erode the whole company. So here's what I want to break down. One, why letting go of the wrong leader is necessary for your growth.

Two, what's the downstream impact if you keep that person who isn't a culture fit? I want to paint this picture for you because guys, in the first part of my career, I did it the wrong way. And it's why my company probably didn't reach the heights that I think it could have. And then the last one is what stops people from making these decisions, which I'm sure you can already guess is going to be fear, avoidance, anxiety, frustration. So why is this necessary for growth? Okay. I think a lot of people hear about laying people off.

hear about firing people and they only think bad things, bad people, bad leadership, bad picking, et cetera. I want to level set with you, which is there are a lot of companies that do a very bad job at letting people go and a very bad job at hiring people. So the first and foremost thing I want to say is that when I talk about letting people go at my company,

I can stand behind my decisions because I know that I'm giving a 10 out of 10 effort on hiring the right people, onboarding them the right way, setting them up for success. Is it ever perfect? No, never. But is it the damn best effort that I can give given the circumstances? Yes. And same with my team. Now to the second degree, right? Is that we want to understand that not all firing is bad because if you are planning to keep somebody who you know has no future in your company,

then what does their future look like for themselves? And the longer that you keep that person, the longer you keep them from actually achieving their goals and dreams elsewhere. And so it's like you feel like you're being the nice guy keeping somebody like that in, but the reality is you're actually being pretty mean because you're keeping them in a dead-end job where you're never going to give them a promotion. And if that's what they want, then this is going to be really tough for them.

So if that didn't convince you, I hope the rest of my explanation does, right? Which is you have to understand that leadership is what sets the tone for the organization. Okay. It's not just about what they do, if they do the job, but it's how they do the job, how they talk about the job, how they communicate the job, how they speak to their teammates. It's not just about what gets done. It's about how it gets done. And so, for example, like you can have a leader who's able to hit all their numbers. They can run a tight ship. And on paper, you're like, this looks good. But

If they're leading in a way that doesn't align with your values, it slowly drops to the department. Slowly, over time, you start to see people lead. You start to see performance drop. So in the beginning, you see it's good.

And then over time, you start to see the evidence supporting that this person is not a fit for your culture. Oftentimes, nobody, here's the biggest sign that I will tell you. Oftentimes, nobody has good news. Nobody has anything good to say about them. It's not even necessarily that there's bad news because I'll say a lot of people are just scared of that. It's the fact that nobody has any good news to share about that person.

That's the number one sign from where I sit that somebody is not going to be a good culture fit is I just realized we bring them in and I'm like, oh no, I haven't heard anything about them. And when you bring somebody into a leadership position, you don't hear anything about them. What does that say? You know what I mean? Like they're in a highly visible position. They have a lot of impact. They have a lot of things that they can or can't do. They have a lot of, I would say like influence over the organization. So if you hear nothing, it's because people don't want to tell you what they're thinking.

So that being said, if you're serious about scaling your business and you want to have a great culture, no matter what kind of culture it is, then you can't afford to keep people in leadership positions who don't actually embody that culture. Because no matter how you slice it, no matter how you want to justify it, without a doubt, they will dilute your culture. Now, here's the piece I want you to understand. A bad leader doesn't just affect their direct reports.

they affect every single person that interacts with them. They affect morale, retention, and more importantly, trust with you. When an employee of any sort sees a leader who's misaligned with the culture, but still in power, not on their way out the door, they start to question you. These are the things they ask themselves. Are our values even real? Is this bullshit? Does this leader, CEO, or founder even mean what they say when they tell us what this company needs to be?

Why should I, right, embody the company's values if my boss doesn't have to? Sucks, right? But imagine it, right? You report to somebody who doesn't embody the values. You slowly over time don't think you need to.

and the boss is who sets the tone for the entire team. Now, to the second degree, right, people who interact with them, other leaders who are busting their ass to uphold the values, look at this and they say, I guess I don't really know if I can trust our founder or CEO. I don't really know if they're real about this. I think I might be trying harder than they are. They're not even making the hard calls. That is when doubt spreads, okay? It leads to other people being disengaged. It leads to turnover. It leads to underperformance. And all those things are going to kill a business faster than any market downturn.

Okay. And trust me, I've seen this myself. Like when we had a great culture, COVID couldn't even kill our business. But when we had a bad culture, when things were going great, it was hard to succeed. Why was that? I waited too long to let go of leaders who weren't a fit. The biggest mistake I ever made in my career, when I hired and brought on all these leaders in the first 18 months that my business was growing quickly. And then over time, I started to realize about half of them weren't a fit.

And why was it so many? Because I was inexperienced, I was new and I didn't know. And our culture evolved over time and I really understood who was a culture fit, who wasn't. And then I recognized that a lot of these people I brought in were not culture fits for the company. And so what did I do? I listened to all these books, I listened to all these podcasts. They all said that these people probably aren't culture fits. And you know what I chose to do? I chose to ignore what I knew was true, which was that none of these people were the right fit.

But because so many of them weren't, it was so hard for me to accept and believe that that was the case. And I felt shitty about myself. I was like, dude, I can't believe I fired this many people who aren't culture fits. And then what ended up happening is that after enough time, I hated running the company. I hated the leadership meetings. I thought they were bullshit corporate jargon. I hated going to the full company because I knew people that they weren't all about the values. They weren't all about the culture. I didn't have people who were cheering me on. I felt like I was dragging them across the finish line.

And I would see the incompetence and the lackluster around the values. And I was just like, I can't take it anymore. And so then what I had to do is I had to turn over half of my department leadership in a year. And it was terrible. Honestly, it was awful. It was such a bad experience. And I was like, I kind of just like wish I had done this sooner. And so if you're listening to this and you're in a position where you have leaders in your company and you're recognizing that some of them aren't the right culture fit,

This is my past self telling you it's not worth waiting. In fact, I would say that a culture issue is more time sensitive than a performance issue. If somebody is bad for the culture, it is worse and should be treated more urgently than if somebody is underperforming. A culture fit who underperforms has hope to turn around, right? They're worth investing in because it is harder to teach somebody character traits than it is skills.

Okay, this is what I want you to understand. If I have somebody that's a bad culture fit, right? And they are just mean, right? I just realized they're just kind of mean. How much harder do you, what do you think is harder? To teach somebody how to be nice or to teach somebody, you know, how to run a sales team? Really think about it. They've been mean their whole life. How long do you think it's going to teach them to run a sales team?

It's just, it's ridiculous. But we hire for like prioritizing skill when it's like, okay, it's gonna be way harder to make this person a nice human. Gonna change them from their core. You're gonna be a therapist, right? Like this is beyond the scope of your role. And that's what I tell people often. Like it's beyond the scope of your role to try and change their damn personality. You need to find people who have the character traits, the skills. And when I say skills, I actually mean character traits that embody your culture.

So when people ask, how do I maintain my company culture as we grow? The answer is not about who you add so much as who you subtract. So sometimes that means you have to cut out leaders who just don't fit to drive the vision forward. And I would argue that when your company is growing quickly, who you fire is more important than who you hire.

It's just that firing has been given a bad rap, given a bad name. It's a terribly uncomfortable event. It's very difficult to lead a team through. And a lot of people honestly just don't have the balls to do it. If I'm being real, like I'm sitting here, I'm about to go through with this in an hour, right? I'm not at all questioning my decisions.

Of course, am I apprehensive about these events? Yes, I care and I want to make sure it goes well. And I don't hate anybody I let go of. In fact, I don't hate them at all. I think that they'll do great, some better else. Bad fit doesn't mean bad person, right? But it does mean bad for the company, bad for the culture, bad for what I want, what I want this company to be, right? But here's what I know. What is the downstream impact if I keep the bad or the wrong leader, okay? When you don't make the hard call,

good people will leave. That's the first thing that happens. A bad leader cannot help but drive away A players, okay? Because top performers, they want to work for people who inspire. They want to work for people who are aligned with the culture. They want to challenge. And if they don't trust or respect leadership, they'll just leave. And the kicker for this is that they usually leave quietly, okay? You don't get like a loud exit. They just disengage and then they say they got a new opportunity, right?

I would ask you to track the timeline as to when the disengagement starts. You can almost always tie it to when a new leader came in. And this is something that I've had to learn time and time again is like somebody will make up a reason. They'll tell me a reason as to why they leave. I don't believe what you say, I believe what you do, which is if I see that a new leader comes in, you leave shortly thereafter, and I don't know if the leader's the right fit, I believe it's because of that. You can say whatever you want. Actions speak louder than words. You look at the events that occurred before you left, it's like, all right, well, this speaks for itself.

And so good people will lead. That's the worst part of this, right? And I wouldn't just say it's even the people who report under them. It's also the people who work around them because what happens is when you keep a bad leader, other leaders start to question you. And that's why, honestly, like this is why I'm like, I need to get them out now. And honestly, sometimes if I need to facilitate transition, if it's taking longer,

I will pull people to the side. I will let them know that I'm handling the situation because I'm like, listen, fuck it. I don't want anybody to think that I'm keeping this person on my team who's clearly a bad fit and them to start thinking, oh, I should disengage. Oh, maybe I should go somewhere else. Or maybe Layla's not who she says she is. I'm like, fuck it. If I got to tell them what's going on and that this person's on their way out the door, I'm going to tell them.

And I don't think that that's something that everybody does, but I will absolutely do it because I want to invest in my top performers. I want to invest in my top leaders and I want them to know that they can trust me and that when I say I'm handling it, that they know I'm handling it. Now, the second thing that happens if you keep the wrong person,

is that the team gets confused. What do I mean by that? When the leader, the person that you've put over their team, doesn't embody the company culture, employees just get these mixed signals. They're being told this one thing on the new hire orientation and on the weekly meetings, but then when they see their leader, they're like, "Ugh." And so they start not to trust you either. And when they start not to trust you because there's a discrepancy, that's when their performance dips.

So you've dipped the performance of the leaders who have to interact with this leader. Now the performance of their direct team starts to dip because they don't trust the leader and they don't trust the company. Because you have to remember this, even though people like you and me who run a company know that you cannot know every detail and look and create at any point in time, especially as you have a bigger and bigger company, and it's impossible. They assume you know everything. Okay. This is what I've noticed. People assume you know everything. They're like, well,

you had to have known about this or they told me you knew about this or and it's like so often it's like wait what the fuck i don't know any of this is going on and i will say this i am one of the most involved ceos that i know in fact i've been told that by multiple c-level people on my team they're like you're really involved so like i'm a very hands-on ceo and yet i find that so often the teams under these incompetent leaders or leaders that are on a culture fit they seem to think that i have known that certain things were happening for as long as they were and they assumed that i was

accepting of the behavior. And so the team gets confused, they disengage, and then the trust erodes, right? They don't trust you anymore. Worse is that when this happens, mediocrity spreads. Because now what do you have? You have a whole team that's underperforming. Okay, what does that say to the other teams? That says to the other teams, what the fuck's going on? We work our asses off. What's happening over here? I'll tell you recently,

we had a team that we had to flip a leader and that person was in one of the marketing departments. And I had people from our sales team and our sales team is dialed. They have an amazing culture. It is rock solid. And right before I was flipping that leader, I had two people from that team make some comments about the marketing team. And what those comments told me is that they didn't understand why how they acted was acceptable and why that was okay with the culture we have.

And I got it and I understood. And one of the catalysts to making the change sooner was I realized I was like, oh, I can't wait. I don't have time. It's going to spread. And I think of it like poison. It's like once it hits the vein, it's like you're fucked. And so you want to isolate it as quickly as possible, which means you want to get this person out as quickly as possible. It's just that, unfortunately, what goes around our heads is a lot of reasons not to. Right.

Now, the last thing that happens if you don't, if you keep this person, right, is that you slow down decision making, right? If you hesitate to remove a bad leader, the likelihood you hesitate in other areas is very high. You start to second guess your decisions, you delay a lot of critical moves, and before you know it, you feel like the business is stuck.

Now, I will say, I think there's another piece to this, which is headspace. If you're not clear of mind, if you don't feel good about the team you have, if you're constantly distracted by the fact that you're out of integrity with the values you preach, it is very hard to show up for your team. It is very hard to make good decisions. And it's very hard to keep your head on straight and focus on the future when you're constantly being pulled into these problems. And I know that some of you listening to this can relate to this. And you're like, fuck.

I know she's right. I know I gotta let these people go. I know these people aren't a fit. Now, why is it that you know that you should let this person go and you don't do anything about it? Okay. The first one is just sunk cost, right? You're like, Layla, it took us six months to find this person. We spent $50,000 with a recruiting company. I flew them out. I trained them. I put so much into them. Like, I don't know. Like, I think it might be me. I think about all these excuses, right? It's all sunk cost.

And I get it. And people bring this to me all the time. Like, you don't understand. I'm like, no, I do understand. I understand. I've paid for people to do all sorts of things only to realize the next week that they're a terrible culture fit and that I have wasted lots of time and money.

It is what it is. You still got to make the decision, right? And so like, that's not an excuse. That's part of the process. Part of the process of having to let somebody go is knowing that you wasted a lot of time and money. And that's just the cost of having a great business is that you will waste money at times on people who are not the right fit because you didn't know soon enough. And you just have to accept that that's part of the game. You can't fixate on that. Like best leaders, they don't fixate on losses. They fixate on what they're going to gain by this person not being there, which is a whole of a hell lot more than any amount of money or time you could have spent on them.

Now, the second thing that comes up is then people are like, oh, wait, Leila, you don't understand. You don't know what's going to happen if I let them go. They manage a big team. They've got these relationships. They've got this institutional knowledge. And they just have all this fear of risk, right? They're like, no, there's so much we don't know that they're doing. There's so much we don't know. And I'm like, right. So there's all this stuff that we're worried that we don't know what they're doing. And you assume it's all good. But see, I have learned most of it's bad.

I get really excited here. Here's the thing. Most people assume that when you have a leader who's not a culture fit, there's all this stuff that they've been doing that's really good. And I have found that even when that person is a competent performer, when I pull out the rug, I find shit. I find all this stuff that I could have prevented, all these problems that they created, all this stuff they did the wrong way. Why is that? Because culture informs behavior. And if somebody's not aligned with your culture, they're not gonna behave in a way that's conducive to your fucking business.

This is a fallacy. This is your brain wanting security and wanting safety. And it's completely, completely normal. And you also have to learn how to manage your brain. It is lying to you to keep you safe. It is lying to you because it's here to spot threats. It is not accurate most of the time.

And especially in these situations, when you have somebody who's not a good fit for your business, I promise you, you're going to be so glad when you do this and you're going to wish you had done it sooner. I have not met one person who's gotten rid of somebody who's a bad culture fit that has said to me, you know what, Layla, I wish I had waited longer. I've never heard that. The only thing I've ever heard is I wish I'd done it sooner. So to tell you that I eat my own dog food,

The conversations that are being had today with leaders are conversations that I identified about a week ago. And so when I notice it, I spot it, I do it as quickly as possible. It doesn't help anybody. And lingering in fear of thinking what will happen if they're gone is not an empowering place to be. It robs me of my power, robs me of my integrity, and it will do the same to you.

Now, if that wasn't enough to explain why you avoid making this call, let's be real. You might just be avoiding the five minute conversation you have to have. Okay, you're not actually avoiding, you know that they're incompetent, you know that you're gonna lose money, but you get it anyways. You know all these things, but you're terrified of the five minute conversation that you're gonna have to have to let this person go. What if they scream at you?

What if they cry? What if they threaten you? What if it doesn't stop after? What if they post on social media? What if they take people on your team? What if they take your clients? What if they start a competing business? Right? Here's what I'll tell you. That will happen. It will happen. If not many of them, at least some of them. And that, my friend, is the cost of doing business. And that is why you get compensated more than anybody else because you take the most risk, you have to take the most hits, and you have to take the most of the downside of the upside.

And so what you cannot do is avoid conflict due to the fear of what this person will do to retaliate. And I get it because firing somebody sucks. And if it's not the fear that stops you, it's the fact that you feel bad, right? You're just like, I feel badly. I don't like firing people. And I think it's funny because a lot of people assume like, oh, I wonder, you know, you've been doing this for over a decade. I'm sure you, no, I cry like pretty much every time after. Like it doesn't matter how horrible the person is. My brain is like, oh my God.

you know, I know they weren't a fit or I know they did this thing or maybe they stole from the company. I make some reason up as to why they're still a great person, right? And most of the time, that's true. They are still a great person. They're just not the right person for this team. But there are cases, even when I've had people steal from my company, when I can, in my brain, be like, man, I kind of feel bad. You know, they just don't know. And I'm like, man, they just don't know. They just don't know that that's unethical. I still feel bad. It's crazy. It still happens to me. And so,

Feeling bad and being empathetic is not a reason not to do this because the empathy that you have for them, I want you to take the empathy and give it to your team. Give it to their team, the team that's been suffering. And I want you to remember that it's your job to protect that team. You have to, in many situations, sacrifice one for many. That is what leaders have to do time and time and time again.

And it's painful, but you need to focus on the people that you're doing this for. And you need to focus on the people that you're fighting for and the people who are going to benefit from you making this change. That being said, how do we overcome our brains, the wild fears that pop up and actually take action? One, commit. What does that mean? Make a commitment. The first thing I do when I know I have to get out a leader who's not a culture fit is I tell somebody.

Yes, this is my first thing. This is my trick. I tell somebody and it's the person who would judge me the most if I back out. This is something I have done for almost, I would say probably since the second year of my career. And this works like magic because now I don't just have the unknown, right? Their team doesn't know I'm letting them go. But I can tell somebody else who will lose a lot of respect for me if I don't follow through with what I said I'm going to do. This has been, I know it sounds weird,

I know it sounds odd, but it has been one of the biggest hacks for me. Even if it's just your executive assistant you're telling, even if it's just, you know, your personal assistant that you tell, whoever it might be. I typically select somebody who is closer to me, somebody who is one of my direct reports, and I tell them what's going on. And the reason I do that is because it commits me to the action. It tells me that I've got to do this ASAP because they can't be knowing for more than a few days. And then it reminds me over and over again that I need to do this to be the best leader for my company because I think of them.

And so if you're having a hard time, the best thing you can do is commit to somebody. Get accountability, right? And then what that makes you do is the second piece, which is do it sooner than later. Everyone always wants you to do it later. The longer you wait, the worse it gets. Okay, most leaders need to be let go when they're not a fit as soon as possible. And the best thing that you can do for them and for the company and for the team is to do it ASAP. I promise you there's nothing too big or too

or too imperative for the company to survive that it will not survive this person who's not a culture fit leaving. And you will find out things that you never knew about how terrible of a fit they really were. And again, remember, I'm saying terrible of a fit, not terrible of a person, okay? So you let somebody know,

You decide when you're gonna have the conversation, make it sooner than later in the next couple days, and then you make a plan for the transition. You think through, how am I gonna redistribute responsibilities? How am I gonna communicate the change? And how am I gonna make sure that there's no security risks to the company? And you lay all that out in a spreadsheet, and then you decide who's gonna do what pieces. You write out your communication ahead of time. You write out when every piece of this is gonna happen, at what times of what day, and then you inform the people that need to know to help you make it happen.

That's it. Doing it is not the difficult part. It's getting over all these limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck and keeping this person who's eroding your business in it. And here's the thing. Building a great business is not just about making the right hires. It is about making the right fires. Whatever's harder is usually what's more important for your business.

It is not as hard to hire the best people as it is to fire people who are simply not a fit. It's not that they're incompetent. It's not that they're a bad person. They're simply not a culture fit. And it would take too long to mold them into a fit that in the meantime, you would likely lose half your team. Okay, keeping a bad leader isn't just an inconvenience. It will kill your business. It's draining everybody of momentum. It weakens your culture. It drives away all your best people.

And so if you're sitting on a decision, waiting for the perfect time, waiting until just after this, waiting until this is your sign, you already know what needs to be done. You just need to go and do it. So with that, please, please commit to a plan. Please commit to doing something about it. And please protect your reputation with the rest of your company.

With that, I hope you have a great Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, walk, workout, sauna, shower, and I will see you on the next one.