The Human Resources departments have reported in to me in my last five jobs over the last 30 years. I have ended up managing the group because it was administrative and policy oriented and, in some cases, quite frankly simply because no one else wanted to deal with it. And while it was never a discipline that I studied in school, you can't help but learn a few things over the years.
One of the very basic things you learn and one of the toughest things you will ever have to do is terminate an employee. Whether the termination is a layoff (loss of position), for poor performance, for disagreements in style or for Cause (typically defined as something illegal, immoral or in clear contradiction with company policy), it doesn't matter. You learn very quickly to go the extra mile to insure that your company handles that termination with as much care and respect as possible.
There are two reasons you do this. First, in almost all the cases, the employee deserves it. The company and the employee may not have been a good match, but that doesn't mean that the company can't take the high ground and treat the employee with an over abundance of dignity. When you get down to it, it's just the right thing to do. Second, you don't want to inflame the emotions of the terminating employee any more than they already will be in dealing with this deeply personal and difficult event in their life. You don't want to provide the employee with additional motivation to retaliate against the company in any way. Stated another way, if in the few very rare instances, there is some momentary satisfaction with the termination of an employee, it is just that, momentary. It adds no value to the company going forward. None. For these reasons, any and all terminations should be thought through, planned appropriately and executed as flawlessly as possible.
This brings me to this past week's termination of former FBI director James Comey by President Trump. No matter what Trump's motivation was for terminating Comey (more on this topic in a future post), you have to ask yourself what heinous act Comey must have committed to receive word of his termination from the television news while he was addressing a group of agents on the West Coast. This is so far beyond treating the person with care, respect and dignity that its off the charts. Why couldn't Trump just man up, and call him into his office, when he was actually in Washington DC, and deliver the message personally that he was not Trump's guy, that Trump wanted his own guy in the role, and ask for his resignation? By all accounts Comey would have complied willingly. And even if he didn't, Trump could have then fired him in good conscious. But Trump doesn't work that way. Instead, he had to embarrass the guy.
I haven't heard a rational explanation from anyone even those most ardent Trump supporters as to what necessitated this approach. The only conclusion appears to be that it was just, personal. Maybe Trump needed this small moment of satisfaction because he misses the sense of real power he once commanded on all those episodes of The Apprentice. Maybe it provided some very brief moment of gratification to Trump, that he is the winner, and that Comey is the loser. Trump often views issues in the world as a zero sum game, so this simple explanation may be the one that is closest to the truth,
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