The inherent kindness in our hearts gets in the way of sound business decisions. Because we believe in the human spirit, sometimes we invest in the wrong people on a personal and professional level. Our energy and money, invested in the wrong people, can be a waste of scarce resources and emotional capital.
And there are those that use the legal system as a crutch for incompetence. There is a lesson in here for all of us. Cut your losses, learn from your mistakes, and move on. At the end of the day, we still need to believe in the human spirit, and that there are more good people than sycophants in this world.
About Rohini Rustogi
I absolutely agree, but caution that it isn’t always easy to know when your employee is the “wrong” person. If a person was right, what is it that now makes him or her “wrong”? In a professional setting, it is very costly to move on. Hiring and training a replacement are expensive. Those who leave take corporate knowledge and skills with them that take time to recover. In my experience it can take years for a new hire to be fully productive. Good leaders take time to understand what circumstances caused a productive, culturally compatible employee to become “wrong” and determine if they are reversible. Repairing is cheaper than replacing. Many companies offer employee assistance programs and pay for counseling so that employees can work through issues privately. Moving on is sometimes the right course of action, but it is often taken because leaders fail to look at problems from the employee’s perspective. It isn’t necessarily a matter of kindness, it’s often the quality of leadership. A leader who invests resources to restore a productive employee gains an advocate who is a positive influence on others. I have seen these results several times because I was fortunate to learn from leaders who cared both about people and profit and understood how to maximize both.