The Pain of Letting Staff Go

By Sharon Gorman, D.C.

When something just isn’t right in your office, be it a CA, an associate or even a billing company, how bad do you let it get before you are willing to make a change. How much pain do you have to be in order to take an action to make a change.

I remember how hard it was the first time I let a CA go. She wasn’t happy with the job and I wasn’t with her because her performance wasn’t working out and more importantly her attitude was negative. I was surprised that she didn’t quit on her own and I was sort of holding my breath waiting for her to leave on her own but it just wasn’t happening. I tried to figure out her motives for staying with a job she currently didn’t like.

Sometimes I try to figure everything out and I’ve found out that is a pretty useless exercise. What’s the difference why she was acting the way she was acting. For me, I kept her there because I didn’t want to have to fire her and I didn’t want to have to go through the process of hiring and training and I also kind of got emotionally attached to her and I knew what I could expect from her so I guess I had the fear of the unknown. Sort a little like a romantic relationship going sour.

Well, I’ve come to find out that the better I get at relationships the better I get at relationships at all levels. Anyway I need to try to figure out where I went wrong in the relationship. Sometimes it just comes down to the people that I select to work for me. Sometimes I grow faster than they are willing to grow and I leave them in the dust. I “outgrow” them so to speak. All of this becomes trivial to the fact that it is not working “now” and “now” is all I have. Yet it all comes down to the pain. The pay off for keeping that person has to become less attractive than the pain level. The thing that helped me in the process was when I realized that I wasn’t doing her any favor keeping her in my practice. Just like in a romantic relationship everyone isn’t for everyone and yet there is someone for just about everyone. In other words, keeping her in a job where she wasn’t being appreciated for any reason, even justified, was not serving her. I gave her enough rope to hang herself. That isn’t a very successful way to manage a business. She and most employees that don’t work out aren’t willing to take responsibility for moving on when it is time for them to move on and they end up making a list in their minds to the reasons that it is acceptable to continue collecting a paycheck even though they are not doing as good a job as they are capable of doing.

People are so reluctant to take responsibility for their own lives. Sometimes it is just time to move on. The times when the relationships worked out the worst is when I failed to communicate all along. If something bothered me and I just kept it in I would start making my own list of sorts. I would use these infractions for justification to close myself down to that person. That was always the beginning of the end. It would be more confrontive to handle the resentments as they occurred yet I resist confrontation. As I have gotten older I can see that it is easier to deal with it and communicate even when the other person doesn’t want to hear it rather than function in the illusion that everything is OK because no one is saying anything.

For me when I shut down to the person things can only get worse. It is very hard to make the final decision to end the relationship or any relationship for that matter. The true test occurs in my gut. How does it feel? After it is over and they are gone how does that feel? Usually very good. That is how I know that it is right. I heard it said this way once – “Hire slowly – fire quickly.” Make sure your team is a reflection of you. Put a lot into the right people and you will get a lot out of them. Share your vision with them so they can help spread your vision to your practice. Treat them with all the kindness that you would hope they would treat your patients with. Speak to them with the ultimate respect. If you don’t respect them then don’t keep them in your space. Never correct anyone in front of patients. Never embarrass anyone if front of other people. I have several staff members tell me that one of the most important things they look for from a job is to be appreciated and to be told so. Sometimes I have been a lot more eager to criticize than to acknowledge them for what they are doing right. I sort of treat myself the same way and I could see by their reactions that it is not good for them and probably not a very good way to treat myself either. What it is that you are actually looking for from your staff? Make sure you have a clear vision for yourself. Be clear with them. Life is all about relationships. Learn from your relationships with them.

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Dr. Sharon Gorman is a graduate of Life Chiropractic College. Upon graduation, she associated with her mentor Dr. James Sigafoose. She opened her own practice in June of 1985 and in 3 months was seeing over 100 patients a day. Within 4 years, she had established four chiropractic practices seeing combined over 5000 patients a month. Now, married with 4 children, she still practices part time and manages 3 successful practices. She is a speaker at Dynamic Essentials, New Beginnings, Parker Seminars and is the founder and hostess of the Focus Philosophy Weekends. Visit her website at: www.focuschiropractic.com