How to fire someone well: a leader's guide to tough conversations

Executive overview

Most leaders wait too long to act on poor performance — often by months. By then, the team has noticed, trust has eroded, and the problem has compounded.

The fix isn't just knowing when to fire someone; it's building a pattern of clear, early feedback that makes the final conversation unsurprising. A firing should never be a surprise: it is the last step in a documented, explicit progression.

The cost of delay

• By the time you fire someone, you are typically months too late
• The team has already noticed — they're working around the person and questioning your judgment
• Avoiding the conversation doesn't buy time; it destroys credibility
• Managers often treat performance problems as private, missing that a dozen others are watching the issue go unaddressed

Message sent vs. message received

• Leaders routinely believe they've given clear feedback; employees have no idea a serious concern exists
• The gap closes with two follow-up questions after any feedback conversation: "What did they say?" and "What specific commitments did you both make?"
• Without a concrete commitment — what will change, by when — the conversation didn't land
• Vague praise padded around one half-sentence of concern registers as positive feedback, not a warning

The CPR framework for escalating feedback

Use content → pattern → relationship to move from a single incident to a serious conversation:

• Content: address the specific issue each time it occurs
• Pattern: after three or four instances, name it — "Every week the report is late; I've asked you to fix it each time"
• Relationship: escalate further — "This pattern is making it hard for me to trust your commitments and assign you new work"
• When someone responds with "I know, I'm sorry," redirect: don't ask for remorse, ask how they'll organise themselves differently

Will vs. skill: calibrating your response

Drawn from situational leadership, this lens determines how closely to manage:

• High will, low skill: be directive, increase check-ins, explain context — they want to succeed but need guidance
• High will, high skill: give them the work and stay out of the way
• Low will: a different and harder problem — no amount of coaching substitutes for wanting to do the job
• Don't manage everyone the same way; tailor approach to each person's actual capability and motivation
• Assigning complex work without context or explanation sets up failure — the manager's framing matters as much as the employee's skill

Having the conversation: scripts and structure

• Prescriptive language matters more than coaching instincts here — this is not the moment for open-ended questions
• Before firing, hold at least one explicit warning conversation: name the gaps, name what must change, and state clearly that failure to change will result in termination
• That warning removes all ambiguity: "If I don't see these changes, we will have to part ways"
• The termination conversation then references the prior warning directly: "As I said in our last conversation, I haven't seen the changes — we're going to go in a different direction"
• There is no painless version; accept that it will feel awkward and dispiriting before you walk in

Early signals and the 90-day window

• "I knew on day three" is common — the mistake is waiting nine months to act on it
• Call out observable behaviour early: not leaning into relationships, not proactively clarifying scope, not completing tasks
• Positive feedback in the early period is just as important — it signals what good looks like and builds the psychological safety to course-correct
• Every 18–24 months, do a deliberate check: are the right people in the right roles for where the company is now?

Psychological safety as the long-term lever

• Alisa Cohn's biggest mindset shift: from goals and accountability as the primary lever to psychological safety
• Employees in safe environments are looser, more creative, more willing to surface problems and try new things
• Fear and anxiety produce tight, self-protective behaviour — exactly the opposite of what high performance requires
• Accountability still matters; the change is recognising that safety is the precondition for it to work