Hal - Deliberately Basic

In business, the only thing worse than having to fire someone is firing a friend, especially a long time friend. As the head of a large non-profit organization, I recently had to terminate a buddy due to his incompetence and failure to cooperate repairing critical problems in his office. Our friendship is not only gone forever, but I can feel the hate vibes from him and his wife across the cosmos.

The hatred is not reciprocal. Even though he may be the reason for a few sleepless nights, and he put me in an awkward position, I know that his animosity will eat him up. I no longer want anything to do with him, socially or otherwise. And I have no feelings except to view him as a pathetic, bundle of blunder who blames the world for all his ills. I will think of the good times we had together, and bury the hatchet of hatred in a hole in the backyard.

I do not believe friendship and business mix well. However, we are sometimes by chance, thrown together as manager and employee in this mix, and are forced to make the best of the situation. Regardless, friends are friends and business is business. Nothing can replace the personal lose of a friendship no matter the reason. But we can learn, and we never grow too old to learn some of life’s hardest lessons. Here are my guidelines for the strange bedfellows of business and friendship.

• Avoid hiring a friend. If you can do this, there is no better way to prevent friendship conflicts in the workplace, and the trauma to you and your friend, not only with termination, but admonition as well.

• If you must be the boss, then be the boss. You were hired to manage, not cultivate friendship or be popular.

• Give your friend the same consideration as any other employee. Do not be biased either way at the workplace.

• Document, document and then document more. At some point you will need to confront this employee / friend. You will need hard evidence to define the problem, and explain all possible solutions.

• Give him an opportunity to correct mistakes. Don’t draw a conclusion based on few facts, impression or perception. Be prepared to go to him and talk to him with the two Fs - Frankly and Friendly.

• Examine yourself as a leader. Have you done anything that may have been misunderstood? Do you communicate effectively? Be brutally honest when accessing yourself.

• Separate friendship from work. This is imperative. Do not procrastinate, do this at the onset of your work relationship, and be certain your friend knows where you stand.

• If termination becomes inevitable, do not blame yourself - he chose to create this situation, not you.

• Always think in terms of doing the right thing for the organization. As a leader, you are required to make tough decisions.

• Check the legality of employee termination. This is essential for any termination, friend or not. Are you certain you are within your legal rights to fire this person? A quick search will give examples of employee rights.

I keep this passage from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius taped to a shelf above my desk. I read this every day. You can ill afford to be a pollyanna or a martinet if you expect to lead and command respect.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my Brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my Brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet, or eyelids. or like the upper and lower rows of teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law - and what is irritation and aversion but a form of obstruction?

I’m not making this up. A 70-ft palm that commits suicide when it blooms has been discovered. The plant, a new species, sprouts a 20-ft flower spire and dies after insects drain its nutrients. The palm was hidden in a tiny remote swamp in Madagascar. This tree is considered to be one of the botanical wonders of the world. These are exciting times.

We live in an age with a false sense of security about mental health. Every time someone goes nuts and kills themselves, or commits genocide, the same question is asked; why did he do it? Well, dog gone it, he went out of his freakin’ gourd, ya know, and by-golly, just went and screwed the pooch this time. He was always so quiet and well liked.

The newsless media always has a list of questions, all with that same “why” theme. The inference is, we could always avoid tragic situations if we only knew why. Here then is an outline of pertinent questions that should have been asked before this disaster occurred, along with a few observations.

1) Why didn’t someone notice the behavior of the tree prior to its demise? Maybe this tragedy could have been avoided if only someone had given it the attention it deserved. Was it ostracized by the other trees because it was different?

2) No mention of a suicide note or letter was reported. I believe an investigation is in order, perhaps an autopsy to find the real cause of death. A pathologist – tree of course – report is in order. I would like to know if there were any signs of BFT (blunt force trauma). I watch CSI, Law & Order, and other highly informative television. Local news has the same information, but far too boring and repetitive.

3) Where was CNN when the palm was committing the act? To their credit they picked up the story. There was not nearly enough continued coverage. We should have seen this every fifteen minutes, for four days minimum.

4) Was the tree grieving? Did it have a poor self-image? Never once did I see a news station call in a consulting psychologist, not even Doctor Phil. In fact it was not even on local television news. Maybe if it had fallen through a bathroom window, and pinned a 55 year old woman to the toilet, we could have commiserated with her, and the tree.

5) Has anyone checked to see if the tree was using drugs? Again, where were the experts, the counselors, the trendy psych chumps promoting their latest book? Note to self: Good title for book, “All I Need to Know I Learned From a Madagascar Swamp Palm.”

6) On what grounds could neighboring trees file a lawsuit? Madagascar would be the apparent place, but would the tree get a fair trial in this neck of the woods? Attorneys will be coming out of the woodwork for this one.

7) Will we see a revival in Druidism Druidry? I can see the headlines “Radical Druids Storm Madagascar Angered By Tree Murder.” Don’t be surprised if swamp maples in Madagascar start dying mysteriously.

8) The tree huggers will be out en mass, hocking Amazon Kindles, and extolling the virtues of a paperless office. The ramifications are endless. I don’t suppose there is much chance of burial in a wooden coffin anymore.