Firing an employee fires the relationship too?

By Drew Eisenbeis

In the readings this week there was an article, “Competing through organizational agility,” that discussed portfolio agility. While the section in the article discussed a lot of interesting and key points involving managers needing to base decisions on logic and data, rather than politics and friendships / loyalty, I thought about how often managers merge work and friendships in life, where making difficult decisions to cut off a particular business unit could harm the friendship, but be great for the portfolio. I was glad the article discussed this briefly in the example with GE’s CEO Jack Welch.

            I would have liked the article to have gone in to detail on how Welch handled the situation so as not to appear cold. While, the decision might be cold, the execution doesn’t have to be cold. I think most people can do their best efforts to keep work and social separate, but sometimes things happen and strong friendships are formed at work, and it can be a good thing if it makes the team strong. But when the leader has to put on the leader hat and make those difficult decisions, is there a way to have everyone walk away without any “hard feelings” as a result?

            After researching a couple of articles, I found one that discussed my concern above called, “How To Fire Your Best Friend”. It is about a manager who has to fire one of his best friends. I found this article interesting, and wanted to share it with you because I’m sure as successful managers and leaders we are all going to have to make a tough choice where we put work and the job ahead of a friendship, politics, or loyalty to someone who helped advanced our career.

            Another article that came across my radar after reading about manager effectiveness in this week’s readings dealt with the five biggest mistakes made by managers and supervisors. I am posting this one because it compliments the other article in knowing that managers have to put the job over relationships.

Link to article 1:

http://www.cio.com.au/article/19479/how_fire_your_best_friend/

Link to article 2:

http://cwanamaker.hubpages.com/hub/Five-Biggest-Mistakes-Made-by-Supervisors-and-Managers