Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

by Kim Malone Scott

2. Retaining people who are doing bad work penalizes the people doing excellent work. Failing to deal with a performance issue is not fair to the rest of the team. Work undone generally winds up getting picked up by the top performers, overburdening them. In practice, morale has always improved once I’ve removed a poor performer, whereas I’ve sometimes lost the people I most wanted to keep by hanging on to a low performer for too long. Retaining a bad boss is especially damaging, because bad bosses have such a negative impact on the people who report to them. This is the opposite of managerial leverage. As I’m writing these words, a senior leader I know is putting off firing a bad manager who substitutes yelling for a knowledge of the facts. One person working under that manager is developing hives; another has not slept well in months. And still the process drags on. The manager in question suspects that it is only a matter of time until they get fired, so the whole situation is like a strange game of cat and mouse. Nothing about the situation is “nice” to anyone involved!