You only have two options for employees who aren’t delivering. You either retrain or reposition them in your organization or you help relocate/retire them…maybe to your competitor’s business or a distant island where they can collect seashells instead of dropping bombshells on your company culture.

Firing is all about relocation for everyone’s benefit. It will certainly improve your company culture. It may also help those you fire by moving them to another environment better suited for their personalities and gifts. Now obviously some folks will nurse negative attitudes wherever they go. Whatever the case, tolerating negative attitudes in your environment is toxic for everyone and sends the wrong message about what you ultimately value.

Before firing, however, grant those with substandard attitudes the benefit of the doubt by sharing with them your expectations and giving them time to improve. Find out if they would do better working in another role or with people they have better chemistry (for greater detail, check out Bill Hybels' proposal on three keys for team selection: character, competence, and chemistry). If nothing changes, respectfully dismiss them in accordance with their rights and legal requirements.

Seth Godin says we should fire for attitude and fix for skills. As mentioned earlier, sometimes people simply need retraining or repositioning within the company. Poor training or lack of resources needed to accomplish a task make for inefficient, unfulfilled, and unhappy employees. Personality clashes are sometimes mistaken for something worse leading to ongoing problems and energy drain when all that is needed is moving folks around within a department or to another one. Leaders and managers are responsible for fixing broken systems, employee training and empowerment, and building teams that can work together.

Now let’s talk yet about hiring. In a business podcast, Dan Sullivan shared how he has divided everyone into one of two categories:

1. Those that have their own energy source (those with batteries), and
2. Those that are dependent on others for their energy (those without batteries).

There’s no doubt that we should always be willing to help people who seem to come without batteries. But should we hire them? Don’t you want everyone in your organization to have their own battery pack? The reality is, if they don’t, they will be depleting the energy of everyone around them.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about hiring only self-starters or innovators. But you do need to hire those who have positive attitudes and the energy to respond rather than react to problems. Hire people of character and competence and then place them in teams where they will thrive. Doing the hard work on the front end will spare you much grief and ensure you have sufficient energy for those in your organization you value most.