After a few months of renewed efforts to give Adam clear boundaries and cut off arguments, I really thought we were making progress. He had a few incidents where his approach had been so off-base that it made it easier to be extremely clear with feedback, written and spoken, and it seemed like he was understanding it. I was hearing fewer complaints and he had stopped pushing back so hard with me.
It took me a little more time to realize that Adam hadn’t improved, he had simply learned to go around me and our entire department. After some digging, I found out he had been setting up meetings to pitch for his “ideas” with other department heads and even the C-suite — ideas that had already been rejected by our team’s VP.
He eventually crossed a major line that could have publicly embarrassed the company, which caused all of this to come to light. Along with the pages and pages of documentation I had been keeping, this last incident allowed me to make a very solid case to fire Adam.
Once he was let go, the relief for me, and the shift in the atmosphere around the team, was immediate. His workload turned out to be easy to manage, so the transition has been pretty smooth. I’m thrilled with where we are as a team now, there’s a lot more collaboration and a new ease in how we work.
Reflecting on the last year or so, a couple lessons I’ll carry with me —
First, I will start off in all of my conversations and management by being more direct and extremely clear. I’ve learned ways (thank you Alison and commenters!) to help me set boundaries and cut off unproductive debate and focus the feedback.
Second, one of the reasons Adam was able to last as long as he did was that he exploited our organizational structure by counting on the fact that cross-department communication is pretty weak and I wouldn’t always learn what he was doing. I’ve now prioritized my own efforts to meet people and communicate outside of my team and get a better sense for what is happening across the company.
And finally, the forgiving and tolerant culture we have here is well-intended, but significantly delayed solving this problem. People at all levels justified Adam’s behavior and gave him a sounding board because he was friendly and smart and everyone here is supposed to have a voice. Even when they mentioned to me where Adam crossed lines, they asked me not to say anything to him because they said it might upset him.
I learned I had to push back on that approach and explain boundaries to them as well. And I had to be forceful in making the case to my boss to fire Adam, since my boss also saw some value in him and was worried that firing him would upset other departments where Adam had friends.
In the end, this outcome was all but inevitable, and I thank you all for helping me see that clearly. I’ll be using these lessons far into the future!
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