If you lead people long enough, you will have to fire someone. Almost nobody is taught how to fire someone, so most leaders avoid it for months and then rush it in ten minutes. One CEO did it to 900 people at once, on a Zoom call. Almost five years later, it is still the first thing anyone says about him.

The Zoom call that never went away

In December 2021, a CEO named Vishal Garg got 900 of his employees on one Zoom call and fired them all at once. “Your employment here is terminated. Effective immediately.” The video went everywhere. He apologized a few days later and said he had failed to show those people the respect they were owed.

This August, his own board fired him. This week, he won enough shareholder votes to take his company, Better.com, back.

Here is what caught my eye. The stories about his comeback still call him the same thing: the CEO who fired 900 people on Zoom.

I am not here to judge him. He apologized, and layoffs are sometimes the right call. Look at what survived, though. Nobody remembers why those 900 jobs were cut. Everybody remembers the call.

Why leaders get this wrong

Most leaders plan a team lunch more carefully than they plan a firing. They dread the conversation, so they put it off. When they finally act, they want it over, so they hide behind a script, a group meeting, a calendar invite, or someone from HR. Every one of those choices protects the leader and costs the other person.

In the SEAL Teams, hard news came from the man who made the call. Face to face. Never from a messenger, never to a crowd. We called that command: one name owns the decision, and that name delivers it. Leadership by committee is no leadership at all.

How to fire someone: plan it like an operation

Last month I wrote about how to let someone go with respect. Respect is the standard. A plan is how you meet that standard on a day when your own nerves are working against you. Here is the plan I coach leaders through. (It covers the leadership part. Talk to HR or counsel about the legal requirements where you operate.)

1. One name owns it. The person who made the decision delivers it. Not a deputy, not a form email, not a mass call.
2. No surprises. If the person had no idea this was coming, the failure started with you, months ago. The firing should be the last conversation in a series, never the first.
3. One person at a time, live. In the room if you can, on a one-to-one video call if you cannot. Never in a group.
4. Write the first two sentences. Decision first, reason second. “We are ending your employment today. The standard was X, and the last three months were Y.” Say them out loud before you walk in.
5. Keep it short and do not debate. Ten to fifteen minutes. The decision is made. Answer questions about what happens next, not whether it should happen.
6. Have the next hour ready. Final pay, benefits, equipment, references, how they say goodbye. In writing, in your hand.
7. Tell the team the same day. Briefly, yourself, without trashing the person. Your people are watching to learn how they would be treated.

Apply it this week

1. If an exit is on your desk, write the two sentences. Decision, then reason, in behaviors and not character. If you cannot get the reason into one sentence, you are not ready for the conversation.
2. If nothing is on your desk, find your gap. Who on your team would deliver that news today? Has anyone ever shown them how?
3. Debrief your last one. Think of the last person who left. Write down what you got right and what you would redo.

Then take three questions to your team Monday morning. If one of us were let go tomorrow, how would we want to hear it, and from whom? When someone leaves this team, what does everyone else hear, and how fast? Think of the last exit here: what did we get right, and what would we redo?

Knowing how to fire someone will never make it easy, and it should not. It should make it clean. You get one chance at that conversation, and the person across from you will retell it for the rest of their career. Plan it so the story they tell is one you can live with.

And before it ever gets to this conversation, there is a list of things to cut first. I wrote about that in employee retention: what to cut before you cut people.

Keep your eyes on the target. — Errol