Letting Someone Go With Dignity is the Right Thing to Do

I ran into a friend of mine last week, whom I hadn’t seen in a while – let’s call her ‘Michelle’.  After a few short pleasantries, she told me how she had just been dumped by her boyfriend of 2 years and how she was heartbroken. It sounded like an ugly break up all around and the fact that he told her she was “batshit crazy” just added insult to injury for her.

Now, there is a right way and a wrong way of letting someone go in your life.  But adding insults, in my opinion, is the wrong way of letting someone go.

It Reminded Me of a Business Book I Read Several Years Ago

It was a book called ‘Winning’ by former G.E. CEO Jack Welch.  In the book, there is a full chapter dedicated to letting someone go: ‘Parting Ways – Letting Go is Hard to Do’.  We will get into it in more detail in a minute, but the one takeaway for me that I have always tried to follow in both my professional and personal life when letting someone go is this – when letting someone go it is crucial that you do it in a way that ensures they are left with their dignity.

I have seen firsthand many examples of where a business did not do the right thing letting someone go and it ended up being bad for the employee and bad for the organization as well.

Letting Someone Go in Your Personal Life

And that is the topic of today’s blog post – letting someone go in your personal life.  It has happened to all of us at one time or another – either we were the ones letting someone go or someone else has let us go. This post will focus more on being the one who is letting someone go rather than being the one let go.

The first thing you think of when I say ‘letting someone go’ is probably romantic relationships like the example of my friend ‘Michelle’ in the introduction.  Romantic relationships are a prime example of a type of relationship where you may need to part ways with someone, but they aren’t the only ones.  There are times when you need to let friends go, family members go and yes, sometimes even handymen!

Back to Jack Welch

In his book, Welch makes many great points regarding the proper way of letting someone go, and all of them translate extremely well to letting someone go in your personal life:

It is Not a Pleasant Experience

Letting someone go is not fun, whether in business or in your personal life – that is unless you are a heartless asshole. Not only is it not fun, it isn’t easy to do, you may feel anxiety and guilt, amongst other emotions – before, during and after.

Reasons for Letting People Go

In his book, Welch talks about 3 reasons for parting ways in business: (1) firings for integrity violations – stealing, lying, cheating etc., (2) layoffs due to economic downturns, and (3) firings for nonperformance.  He states that firings for integrity violations are no-brainers and must be handled immediately without hesitation.  The other two are a bit more complicated.

For the Purposes of Letting Someone Go in Your Personal Life…

Let’s just boil it down to two reasons:  letting someone go because they screwed you over vs. letting someone go who did not screw you over.

Now There are Many Ways of Defining Being ‘Screwed Over’

Some examples are someone:

  Cheating on you
  Lying to you
  Stealing from you
Talking shit about you
  Trying to ruin your reputation
  Or any other heinous act that you define as ‘being screwed over’

If one or more of these things has happened to you, then by all means, never mind the bullshit I wrote earlier about letting someone go with dignity.

In this case, you need to seek revenge, swiftly and harshly.

There are many ways you can go about this, such as:

Slashing their tires.
Spreading rumors that they have gonorrhea.
Replacing their chocolate with Ex-Lax
Pooping in their laundry basket
Putting purple hair dye in their shampoo bottle
Etc. etc. etc.

I AM TEASING!  

Do not stoop to their level by using any of these psycho revenge tactics above, by doing anything mean, illegal or immoral. Those examples were just to make you smile. Incidentally, ‘Michelle’ may or may not have employed a few of those…

In the case of someone screwing you over, you are probably better off just letting them go quickly.  Consider being involved with them as a learning experience, and simply move on with your life and do not look back.

Now for Those Cases of Letting Someone Go Who Did Not Screw You Over…

It is important that you do it in a way that they leave with their dignity intact.  In his book, Welch says that “Every employee who leaves goes on to represent your company.  For the next five, ten or twenty years, they can bad-mouth or praise.  In the most extreme cases, people fired take their anger public, and a few become whistleblowers. I say ‘so-called’ because I’ve seen too many companies ‘exposed’ – wrongly – by people seeking nothing more than revenge for a firing conducted by a manager who should have and could have done it better.” ¹

Welch’s advice to managers translates very well to letting someone go in your personal life.  If you think about it, many of your mutual friends and acquaintances, still associate the person you let go with you.  Therefore, they will still be representing you in a way – why would you not want to treat that person with respect?

Additionally, many of us have skeletons in our closet – so it is probably good to do everything you can to minimize the chances of that person letting said skeletons out.  There have been way too many sex tapes leaked by jilted lovers to take that chance (that is if you are into that sort of thing – no judging here).

Lastly, there is nothing to stop someone from making up rumors about you to get you back for not letting them go with dignity.  Why give them a reason?

When It Comes to Letting Someone Go…

Welch has two rules:

Rule #1:  No Surprises

There should be clear communication in whatever relationship you have. Of course, there are extreme cases when you need to let someone go immediately.  But most times when you let someone go, there have been ongoing issues.  The key point here is to always try to have clear feedback and communication in your relationships so that when you do let someone go there it should not come as a surprise.

Rule #2:  No humiliation

This is where letting someone go with dignity comes in. The best way to explain it is via the Golden Rule. In other words, letting someone go as you would like to be let go. It’s just the right thing to do. Personally, I never bad mouth someone I have dated or been friends with, as at one point in time, there was something or many things that I really loved about that person.

The only exception is if they screwed me over, then the gloves are off and they had better buy a new toothbrush!!!  Just kidding.

In Summary…

There is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. Karma has a funny way of rearing its ugly head when you do the wrong things.

Come to think of it, speaking of karma.  I ran into ‘Michelle’s’ now ex-boyfriend, ‘Mitch’ the other day. Our conversation went like this:

Mitch: “You probably have heard by now that I broke up with ‘Michelle’”.

Me: “Yeah I heard, that’s unfortunate”.

Mitch: “She came by when I wasn’t home last night to pick up the rest of her things and drop off my key.  It’s weird though, my toothbrush tasted a little weird when I brushed my teeth this morning…”.

At that point, I thought to myself, “You showed her no respect when you dumped her, and you called her batshit crazy.  Looks like she proved you right.  It’s shitty to be you”.

Until next time, when it comes to letting someone go make sure to follow the golden rule, and as always…PYMFP!

-Rick

Use it or Lose It – Letting someone go

There are a couple great pieces of advice from Welch in letting people go that you can use in your personal life as we discussed above:

Rule #1 – No Surprises – Communicate and give feedback along the way to minimize the likelihood of surprises.

Rule #2 – No Humiliation – Don’t ever humiliate someone and always ask: “How would l like to be treated in the same situation?” As the old adage goes: “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

Some other things you may want to consider:

Choose your method thoughtfully – it is better to communicate your message in person rather than via text, email, Facebook or phone.

Do it in private rather than a public venue.

Don’t beat yourself up – do what you have to do and move on.

When to Use it

When you are letting someone go in your personal life – be it a romantic relationship, a friendship, or whatever else.

What Do You Think

Do you have anything to add regarding letting someone go in your personal life? Do you also believe in letting someone go with dignity? (as long as they haven’t screwed you over).

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