Five Steps to Firing a Manager With a Disengaged Workgroup

How to decide whether to let go of supervisors who are poor motivators

In my experience, if you ask senior leaders if they would fire a sales manager whose team missed quota three years in a row, they usually say yes. If you ask them if they would fire a plant manager whose facility had a poor safety record for three consecutive years, they would say yes. But ask if they would fire a manager whose workgroup had low engagement scores three years in a row, and they’re not so sure.

Firing a manager for low employee engagement scores is a gray area for most leaders because they may see a number of mitigating factors. For example, a manager’s engagement scores may be lagging, but his team’s productivity and profitability numbers seem to be holding steady. Or a manager may have carried out layoffs that the company’s executive committee demanded, which could explain her team’s lower engagement levels. In some companies, the human resources department may be uncomfortable using engagement scores in a termination decision.

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Talented Managers? A gammon.

Is there anybody to - honestly - raise his, or her, hand to the above question in any Board meeting? I think that Mr. Pareto can be right here, too: some 10% managers are talented, that's all. Most managers - as the greek rock band Aphrodite's Child sung - "teach us the hows instead of the whys". Most managers only look at bottom-line figures: it's just like what we could - and should - learn from History. The mercenaries' commanders were paid based on short-term battles' outcome, not on long-term war's overall performance. There's a basic difference between managers and leaders, that we keep confusing: leaders lead people, managers manage accounts. Thank you.