One of the most stressful decisions a manager has to make is to fire someone because of poor performance. Because your #1 job as a leader is to develop your people, it is difficult to know when you cross the line from helping someone to succeed, to enabling them to continue failing. In this episode of By Your Life, we’ll discuss mercy in the marketplace and when enough is enough.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_03_24.mp3
Third Sunday of Lent – March 24, 2019
Welcome to the fifty-second episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me as we celebrate the completion of one year of podcasts. If you haven’t already, please subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, or on the right side of this page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And please forward to a friend, if you think they would benefit from By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Third Sunday of Lent for Year C. The theme this week is mercy, sin, repentance, and mercy, or consequences. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to the people present and corrects the commonly held belief that sickness, injury, and misfortune are a result of personal sins. However, Jesus emphasizes that everyone must repent for personal sins, for there are real consequences. The time to repent is now, before it is too late, for we do not know when our own lives will come to an end.
To make this point, Jesus tells the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree. (Lk 13:6-9) God, in his mercy, gives us ample opportunity to repent and bear fruit. However, if we persist refusing his love, we will indeed perish, not because God wants us to perish, but by our own choice.
In my coaching practice, I often hear stories from leaders about employees who just aren’t working out. My clients are exasperated because, for various reasons, these employees aren’t getting the job done. Just this week, I was meeting with a client and she expressed this familiar frustration.
A leader’s #1 job is to develop his people.Since my philosophy is that a leader’s #1 job is to develop his/her people, I always ask my clients what they have done to train, coach, and/or discipline the employee. After all, in most cases, my clients are the ones who hired them, although in some cases, they may have inherited the employee. Regardless, they have a responsibility to do what they can to help the employee be successful. Just like the gardener in the parable who said, let me “cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it,” so “it may bear fruit in the future,” (Lk 13:8-9) all leaders have a responsibility to establish a plan for their employees to get on track and this plan needs to include their role in helping their employee to get there.
In the case of the client I met with this week, she has been working with her employee for about a year, but the employee has not been responsive to the coaching she receives. Instead, she resists it. My client feels like she has done everything she can to help the employee improve. In the words of Jesus’ parable, she “cultivated the ground… and fertilized it,” but after a year, this employee hasn’t borne fruit.
While it is important to make sure you’ve done your job as the employer to create an environment for success, in the end, it is up to the employee. Some of my clients struggle with making the decision to help one of their employees find their next opportunity. They recognize that a person and their family’s livelihood is at stake. So, they continue to extend mercy hoping the person will change or at least make the decision to leave on their own.
What can we learn from the message for us in this week’s readings? God is a God of abundant mercy. The psalmist sang, the Lord is kind and merciful. “Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.” (Ps 103:8) He “pardons all your sins and heals all your ills.” (Ps 103:3) Yes, the Lord is merciful, and we are called to be merciful as well.
But is there a limit? How much mercy is too much? What is the impact of one employee’s poor performance on the rest of the organization? When do we cross the line from helping someone to improve to enabling them to continue failing? Sometimes a person’s talents and gifts are better used serving others in another role or in another company. Sometimes a person can learn an important lesson when they lose a job for poor performance and will grow as a result of the experience.
Too much mercy is when you cross the line from helping someone succeed to enabling them to continue to fail.At the moment, the employee my client told me about is out on temporary leave for personal reasons. My client said that things are so much better in the office with her gone. There is less stress and the rest of the team is managing well without her. They don’t miss her contribution to the work effort.
There is another side to this story. Can you imagine being the employee whose co-workers are happier and more productive when you’re not around? Imagine knowing that your absence makes work noticeably less stressful for others. And even worse, they can absorb your workload without skipping a beat. In other words, they don’t miss you. Would this be a wake-up call for you to repent?
I’m not sure. In most cases, I honestly think that most people believe that they are doing a good job. The problem is, the supervisor and the employee have different definitions of what a “good job” means.
The same is true when we think about eternal life. Fr. Mike Schmitz has a really good video on YouTube titled “Do all good people go to heaven? The answer, according to Fr. Mike is not necessarily. He points to the Gospels and identifies at least four things Christ says we need for salvation:
- Baptism: (John 3)
- The Eucharist: (John 6)
- Faith: (John 3:15; John 6:40)
- Doing the Father’s will: (Mt 7:21)
Fr. Mike points out that “none of [the four things] are ‘be a good person’; and it’s probably better that way because, especially today, everyone has a different idea of what is good.”
Fr. Mike says, “Christ has given us everything we need to achieve salvation. He wants us all to be at his wedding feast, including you; but unless you do what is necessary to get to the wedding, you won’t be there.”
We can draw a similar analogy to the workplace. Just as God wants everyone to have eternal life, most employers—most bosses—want their employees to be successful. Here’s where the analogy starts to fall apart. God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, might not perish. Christ himself is everything we need for salvation. Most employers, most bosses, are not that perfect. But the good ones will provide their employees with the support they need to succeed. But unless the employee does what is necessary, unless they do their part, they will not be fruitful.
Years ago, I had a gentleman working for me who suffered from tinnitus and his hearing was impaired. With this condition, hearing aids are not a solution and the problem is exacerbated when he’s in a group and a lot of people are talking. Unfortunately, the ability to hear was important for him to be able to lead a team meeting to manage the projects, which was the major responsibility of his position. I tried to work with him to identify how we could accommodate his disability. When I asked him for what he thought would help, he had nothing to offer. I suggested beginning each meeting with a reminder to the team to speak one at a time. We could ask the team members to hold up their hands to be recognized for their turn to speak and thereby allowing him to focus on just that one person. I suggested identifying another team member to be the scribe for the meeting notes. Every idea I proposed, he rejected. It appeared to me that he wanted to use his disability as an excuse for his poor performance.
This is a difficult situation for a manager from a legal and a moral perspective. As an employer, you must provide reasonable accommodations for a person with disabilities. As a person, you must be sympathetic to the individual who is suffering from a disability. How much mercy do you extend before they need to take personal responsibility for a workable solution? These are real challenges and I know dealing with these types of problems were very stressful for me as the leader of my department. It was difficult to balance the needs of his team and the entire organization with the needs of this individual employee.
I don’t have any one-size fits all solutions for you either except to suggest that you take it to prayer—prayer for the employee and prayer for guidance for yourself. St. Faustina wrote in her diary, “When I hesitate on how to act in some situations, I always ask Love. It advises best.” (1354)
I also suggest you look for answers in the Scriptures and seek wise counsel from others who share your values. And remember, whenever you decide to terminate employment, be sure you not only abide by the laws related to employee termination but that morally, you are treating the individual with dignity and respect. How well they do their job reflects on them, but how you treat them in the termination process is a reflection on you. If you have to let someone go, do it with mercy.
This week let’s focus on reflecting God’s merciful love to those we meet in the workplace. Let’s ask St. Faustina to intercede for us.
O St. Faustina, pray for us to be completely transformed by the mercy of God, and be a reflection of His Divine Mercy. May the unfathomable mercy of God, pass through our hearts and souls to our families, neighbors, and co-workers and may the Lord’s mercy, rest upon us.
May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.
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