Kim Scott

He knew his work wasn't nearly good enough.

And I would say something to him along the lines of, oh, Alex, you're so smart, you're so awesome, everybody loves working with you, this is a great start.

Maybe you can make it just a little bit better.

Which, of course, he never did.

Okay, so let's pause for a moment.

What was going on there?

Part of it was truly ruinous empathy.

I really did like Alex, and I really did not want to hurt his feelings.

But if I'm honest with myself, there was something more insidious going on as well, because Alex was popular, and Alex was sensitive, and there was part of me that was afraid that if I told Alex, in no uncertain terms, that his work wasn't nearly good enough, he would get upset.

He might even start to cry.

And then everyone would think I was a big you know what.

And so the part of me that was worried about my reputation as a leader, that was the manipulative insincerity part.

The part of me that was worried about Alex's feelings, that was the ruin of sympathy part.

So this kind of toxic mixture goes on for about 10 months, and eventually the inevitable happens.

And I realized that if I don't fire Alex, I'm gonna lose all my best performers.

Because not only have I been unfair to Alex not to tell him so that he could fix things, I've been unfair to the whole team.

Their deliverables were late because his deliverables were late.

They couldn't spend as much time on their work as they needed to because they were constantly having to redo his work.

And the people who were the best performers on my team, they were just gonna quit.

They wanted to be able to work at a place where they could do their best work.