Sometimes You Have to be the ‘Bad Guy’

Last week a colleague of mine complained to me that he was having problems facing repercussions after making unpopular decisions although he knew that those decisions were appropriate and was for the betterment of his department. I told him that I shared his sentiment. I also told him that it takes a brave leader to make difficult decisions or to give dissenting opinions.

It was somewhat reassuring when I came across, the next very day, an article in the Harvard Business Review titled ‘Sometime you have to be the bad guy’. Many of us leaders and managers know that to be successful, we need to build a high-performance team or simply the A-team. But many of us when taking on new leadership positions, we often hesitate to replace poorly performing existing staff members. To make things worse, in many institutions, getting rid of non-performing staff is almost next to impossible. Most managers or leaders would prefer the easier path to put staff on a transfer list instead, meaning that the ‘problem’ is relocated rather than solved.

 Many leaders and managers also do not want to seem harsh. We like the notion of being popular, acceptable and seemingly ‘kind’. Let us not deny this. It is in our culture. I believe we have this ‘kesian’ trait in our genes (kesian means sympathy). To compound the problem, there will be always be one or two of our colleagues in the management who will want to give the non-performers another chance to improve. The question is how many. There is also the tedious process of verbal warnings, written warnings, counselling sessions before the disciplinary committee sits and decide.

The Harvard Business Review article also suggests that in situations where you have a team member who is not performing, do remember why you were given the reins or the position. Your responsibility is to lead your unit, department, faculty and institute to a higher level of performance and deliver the key results. There is a need to assemble the strongest team as quickly as possible. Some of you reading this may say that, ‘it is easier said than done’. Yes you are absolutely right but then let’s start doing the difficult job and initiate the process. Continuing with the same approach would not give us the different results. Retaining members who are not performing would mean the same output from them every year. One of the common defining strategies of the 10 top universities in the QS ranking or The Time Higher Education Survey list is to ‘attract and retain the best’ which indirectly means as well to let go of the non-performers but retain the best.

 There are situations where you are not certain of the performance of your employees. The best way is to give them an assignment, or do a rapid performance assessment by talking with their subordinates, peers, and partners. If there is general consensus and that if you are still not convinced that you have the best team, it may be time to make some tough and unpopular decisions.

 Finally, I also believe that the ‘bad guys’ out there are not alone. You are actually doing a good job helping to build a great team. Whatever you choose to be, I believe that if we are in a leadership position we must exercise the principle-centred leadership. I am glad to say that these ‘bad guys’ are doing the university and the nation a lot of good by helping to create top-notch teams. ‘Bad guys’ are here to stay, at least until they retire.

 Professor Datuk Dr. A Rahman A Jamal 7/8/2014