6 Simple Rules when firing someone

As with so many things in life, when it comes to letting someone go there are right ways and wrong ways to handle the situation. As someone who has done it both ways, I have learned some things about how, and how not, to act when an employee is terminated.

I have been a “boss” for 20 years, first as the practice manager for a group of doctors, and for the last 11 years in my own practice. There are many blessings that come with being a boss- The relationships forged with employees, the ability to say, “Thank you” in tangible ways, and the ability to support these workers when they go through difficult times.

There are many blessings, but firing someone is definitely not one of them. It is one of the most agonizingly difficult aspects of being a Christian employer.

Even when the decision seems obvious, I still struggle and wrestle with questions-

How do I still show love as a Christian? Should I give a third, fourth or fifth chance?

When does grace toward one employee lead toward resentment in another?

When do additional chances become enabling bad behavior?

Do I follow the advice of HR experts and just say, “It's not working out?” or do I give more information to allow the employee to process what happened?

In order not to repeat mistakes I have made over the years, I try to apply a few basic principles to guide me when the time comes to let someone go-

1- Ask first- “Have I given this employee every opportunity to succeed?” Give them every chance you would want to be given.

2- Sleep on it- Don't impulsively make a decision that impacts someone's livelihood.

3- Avoid Anger- It has no place. It demeans them and diminishes you.

4- Be kind- There is no need to tear someone down. They just lost their job.

5- Avoid Gossip- With rare exception, when performance is poor, other people already know. If you have done your job well employees will know you did not make a rash decision.

6- Pray for the employee- Before and after you let them go. God's love for them has not changed, neither should yours.

20 years of being a boss and I still struggle. Which might be a good thing. Donald Trump makes it look way to easy-If it becomes easy, I might need to be concerned about myself! 

Overwhelming Proof that Doctors are Stupid too

People think doctors are smart. People are wrong. I am a doctor, and my capacity for stupidity is ginormous. I can say with certainty that medical school did not make me stupid (although it may have helped) as my idiotic behavior goes way back. What follows may be the dumbest thing I ever did.

I was 20 years old and working in a supermarket stocking shelves, working on the household cleanser section, stocking bottles of Fantastic! Household cleaner. I turned and saw a young boy, probably 5 or 6 years old standing next to me. After saying hello, a prankster thought came into my mind. I thought, “he doesn't know it, but all of these bottles of cleaning spray come locked. They won't spray until you turn the nozzle to the open position! So if I grab a bottle and act like I am spraying him in the face, he will jump and nothing will happen! Then we will laugh and share a funny moment!”

Apparently, not ALL bottles come locked, for seconds later I stood mouth agape in front of a crying child who had just been sprayed in the eyes with household cleanser! I made a rush decision, and did the only thing my 20 year old mind could think of. I ran and hid in the back storeroom. No one had seen me do it...

I can only assume that his mom thought he was making up the story about an employee spraying him in the eyes (who would be dumb enough to do that!) and thought he must have done it himself. For all I know He could have gotten a beating when he got home!

I am now possessed with the fear that somewhere in America there is a blind man with a nervous twitch whose life was forever changed by one act of stupidity.

If you are out there- please forgive me.

Finally- if you are waiting for some deep moral or spiritual application to close out this post. There isn't any! Except for the age old instruction- “Don't be Stupid!”

Why Wanting Something Does not Amount to Anything

Sometimes people do really selfish things. From what I have observed some people do selfish things a lot. Do you ever wonder why? I do. As a matter of fact I found myself wondering this today.

As I write this I am on a family vacation in Hawaii (actually on Hawaii, the Big Island.) Today we made the over two hour drive to Volcanoes National Park to tour the Kilauea crater. Awesome. On the way back to our condo we stopped off at Punaluu, a beautiful black sand beach that is known for the sea turtles that sun bathe on the sand. Sea turtles are a protected species and the law says that they must be “observed from a distance.” As the turtles are common at Punaluu, signs are posted making this law perfectly clear. Well, perfectly clear to me. This apparently was not perfectly clear to the tourists who arrived before us, as they were all taking turns posing for pictures with two turtles situated on the beach. They were kneeling right next to the turtles, just inches away. I found myself asking, “Why?”

The best answer I can come up with is, “Because they wanted to.” That's it. They knew the law, knew the turtles were protected, but in that moment what mattered more was that they wanted to be near turtles and wanted that photograph. When push came to shove what they desired, what they wanted, was all that mattered.

It is easy to wag our fingers and criticize these people for the buffoons they were at that moment, but I think this character flaw is more widespread then we care to admit. How often do we ignore what is right or best because we don't feel like it, or because we just want to do things our own way?

We want time to ourselves, so we blow off our children. We have had a hard week and we want rest, so we skip church. We want to pay less in taxes, so we fudge a little on business expenses. We want to see a movie because it's popular, so we ignore the fact that the content is immoral and objectionable. We want...

Seems like wanting something is not a very good way to decide how to act. Just ask a turtle.

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The One Thing Every Girl Needs

Now that Christmas has passed, we can all be grateful that we will not have to hear "Santa Baby" for another 11 months. Not only is the song incredibly annoying, it is incredibly false. None of the items in the song are what girls need. A recent afternoon in my office made this perfectly clear-

Two 14 year old girls came in with their moms. Both had severe emotional issues and were in need of psychiatric help, and both were from Christian homes. They also shared something else- a father who wasn't involved.

One was a product of a divorced home. The other's parents were still married, dad just didn't talk. I asked the girl if she talked to her dad, and she replied, “He doesn't talk much, I have just learned to accept it.”

How sad. Even among avowed family men, too many dads think their responsibility to the family is to provide materially. That's it. As long as they don't cheat, holler or beat anybody, they are doing their job. If they drive the family car to church on Sunday, then they have exceeded expectations and earned extra daddy points.

Yet they haven't. Girls need a dad who is always available and engaged, even when they grow up. They need to know that they have a man who loves them unconditionally, who will be there for them no matter what, no matter when. The only way to foster that belief is by being there as they grow up, no matter what and no matter when. It is not always easy and it seldom convenient, but there is nothing more important.

Why There is No Such Thing as a Private Life

How would we act if we knew that someone was watching and recording everything we said and did? News Flash- they might be!

I recently read an article by Nisha Chittal at medium.com in which she asked people to not live tweet overheard conversations. The author cites recently well-known instances of people live tweeting the bad behavior of others and concludes by writing “what I’m saying is this: let’s put an end to the trend of humiliating people by live tweeting their conversations. Let’s leave people in peace to go about their business without threat of being shamed on Twitter “

She makes a valid point. It got me thinking about the number of times I have misbehaved “anonymously” in public and how I would have felt if my misbehavior had been documented and shared. Answer- terrible. (Want an example? Yeah, I know you do! Once I completely lost my cool at the return counter of an electronics store. I went to the store a week after Christmas to return an item and the return line was over 50 yards long. I couldn't wait that long so I came back a few weeks later to discover that I was now outside the return window for that item. Let's just day I did not hide my anger well at all, to the point where I was "encouraged" to leave.)

She makes another point in her article that hit home even more for me. One of the examples she mentions about someone's private conversation being tweeted was a conversation by Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA. Of Hayden she writes- “Hayden is a public figure, and thus his conversations — especially those with reporters — become newsworthy because of who he is. But for everyone else, to have your private conversations unknowingly live-tweeted...is the end of privacy as we know it” She implies that government officials and public figures should have lower expectations of privacy than the rest of us.

Before we nod our heads and agree with her on this point, we who are of faith should remember what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth- “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” 2 Cor 5:20 (niv).

Dang it! We're not off the hook after all! In a sense we are high ranking government officials, it is just that the king we serve and represent is God! We can argue, as the author does, that people should not be watching and documenting our every move and word, but the truth is they are. When we proclaim our faith, when we declare our allegiance to the kingdom of God, we invite scrutiny.

My blow up at the return counter was a significant moment in my life. I walked out realizing that my reputation and standing as a Christian had been potentially damaged over a $50 item. Although my behavior occurred before the era of YouTube and Twitter, the world was watching then, and it still is.

And yet, my ultimate goal is not to live and act better because people are watching, or listening or recording on their smart phone. My goal is to live and act better because that is who I am, to be the type of person who does not need to worry about who is watching me, because I am living like the ambassador I am every day.

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