Here’s how it happened to me.
When I was a project manager (“producer”, in the parlance) at a video game company, I was a jerk. I took good care of my team and our games shipped on time with very little overwork, but I was brash and sarcastic to lots of folks. One of those folks was the head of the company, which probably has a lot to do with what comes next in the story.
Someone was hired as a senior producer. Essentially, my new boss. He came from outside the games industry so I was prepared for some cultural clash. I tried to keep it in my head that he probably knew some stuff I didn’t, so if he made unusual requests I should just go along. What I only pieced together after the fact was that he was in collusion with the studio head to “manage me out”.
The senior producer promptly set about being very demanding. He wanted me to create risk assessment matrices (never been done in the 20-year history of our company) and write lengthy and meaningless reports all while maintaining every one of my previous responsibilities. During this time he was emotionally detached. Very terse in all of our conversations. He clearly wanted me doing all of this work devoid of support or mentoring of any kind.
Most people who are more observant or who respect themselves more than I did would’ve balked. Stood up for themselves. Said no. Maybe quit outright. And I’m positive that’s what the desired response was. They don’t have to pay me severance if I quit. The studio head never looks like the bad guy. Everybody wins…so long as Keith quits.
That’s some grade A crap.
At no point in time did anyone in a leadership position pull me aside and explain that – regardless of my Output – my Behavior was getting me in trouble. No one offered any clear conversation, much less a semblance of coaching. I wasn’t given clear expectations for my role. What I thought were measures of success (e.g. “keep your team as happy as possible”, “hit all deadlines without massive overwork”, “ship games that people enjoy and sell well”) were clearly not enough.
Rather than confronting me, leadership decided it was easier to get rid of me. And that’s the basis for why this tactic is reprehensible.
Because there are pretty much only two reasons “managing someone out” gets enacted by a manager. The first is that the manager in question is an abject coward. If you’re simply afraid of doing the actual work of leading well, then you take the coward’s way out and exert your influence toward the solution most convenient…for you.
The second and much more likely scenario is that you’re dealing with a poorly equipped manager. They haven’t been trained well and don’t have the education required to know which practices are progressive, or effective, or at the bare minimum humane. And if you have a manager like that, and their boss tells them to do a thing…well, they do the thing. After all, why should that manager lose their job?
So what do you do instead? What’s a better response when a team member isn’t performing to your standards? This will sound radical to my former boss of 20 years in the past, but here we go.
Talk.
To.
Them.
This will likely point out some things you, the boss, have been deficient in. Because if you’re going to tell Keith “Your behavior is unacceptable” you better be able to explain what you mean and give him resources to turn it around. You better have clear measures of success before you threaten his livelihood for not meeting them. You better have clear expectations for his role before you tell Keith he’s violating them. My boss had done none of that and probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to anyone pointing it out. It was much easier to get rid of a problem if the alternative was to look in a mirror. It’s much easier to cut off someone’s livelihood than do something moderately inconvenient. It’s callous and inhumane and possibly psychopathic, but it’s easier.
I share all this so you, the manager, will take a stand if you’re ever asked to manage someone out. You know what it looks like now, why it’s bad, and what to do instead.
And what happened to Keith in this story? He continued doing all the extra work, suffering under the yoke of insufferable leadership and failed to take the hint right up to the point they included him in the next round of layoffs. Finally got rid of the problem without having to do the work of fixing it. And all it cost was one person’s career.
(who then went on to launch a second career doing leadership consulting with hundreds of developers all over the world, largely drawing on a plethora of bad experiences as a basis for what not to do)
image courtesy of Jason Abdilla via unsplash