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Fired for being unhappy?

Do you know anybody who is clearly not happy in their job? Someone who’s always whining and complaining about this or that, always spreading their negativity around to the rest of the team? Me too. I’m sure every organization has them. For me, whenever I meet someone like that I always think, since they’re so obviously unhappy, why do they stay? I mean, I know it’s not that simple, but still, I can’t help but wonder.

And then I found the answer. A friend sent me this article the other day, and it really clarified for me what I think is the ultimate reason unhappy people stick around: it’s because the organization lets them. For whatever reason, the organization hasn’t included “happiness in the position” as an essential requirement for the job, so the individual is allowed to stick around even though they’re bringing down the whole team.

As if to reinforce the point, a couple of days later I heard about a study on the impact of “bad apples” on a team’s performance. The researchers assigned different teams identical tasks, and the team with the bad apple came in last every time.

Now, before you launch into all the reasons why “firing the unhappy” is over-simplistic, unreasonable, inhuman, or whatever, please read the piece. It’s actually very thoughtful and sensitive to the people involved. Also, understand that I always err on the side of the individual and what they can do for themselves first. But at some point, someone has to enforce standards, and that ultimately comes down to managers and leaders taking action. Besides, you’re not really firing someone because they’re unhappy anyway, you’re just helping them find somewhere where they are happy. How is that not a good thing?

However you approach it, the bottom line is that if someone who reports to you is truly unhappy, you can’t just ignore it. You need to do something about it and help them find a position that’s a better fit. The change doesn’t have to happen today, necessarily. Don’t make it a bigger problem than it needs to be. But at least talk about it, get it out into the open, and start putting some energy into finding a better fit. Because having someone stick around in a position that’s a bad fit serves no one. It’s no good for the individual. And it’s deadly for the organization.

Tags: Communication, leadership, leadership development, leadership training

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 9:48 am and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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