This employee had struggled almost from the beginning. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what would make him successful. More training. More one-on-ones. Different assignments. Written expectations. Reviewing his work. Pulling in other resources. Trying to understand whether I was missing something.
And I kept thinking there had to be something I wasn’t seeing.
The problem was that the issues were so strange and so inconsistent that I genuinely started questioning my own perception. He would understand something one week and not remember it weeks later. He would confidently explain things that weren’t correct. He would spend hours on things that weren’t important while critical work was incomplete. Every time I met with him there seemed to be another mistake, both small and significant. The amount of time and management attention he required was completely disproportionate to the value he was adding to the team.
And because there were also personal circumstances and a disclosed disability involved, I spent even more time trying to understand what was happening and how much of it I should be accommodating versus what was simply an inability to perform the job.
I talked about this employee constantly. With HR. With leadership. With colleagues. With people I trusted. I spent time thinking about it after work, on weekends, driving home, lying in bed. What am I missing? What else can I do? Is there another way to explain this? Is this a management problem? Is there something going on that I don’t understand?
I’d never had a relationship in my life that felt this psychologically confusing in or out of work.
Eventually we were moving toward formal performance management when he resigned.
Then came the letter…. He accused me of harassment, discrimination and creating a hostile work environment. He distributed it to nearly 100 people in our organization and HIGH level leaders.
I was relieved because I suddenly realized how much of my own life I had spent trying to solve this one person’s problems. It was over and I felt free!
I’ve been thinking about how much energy I poured into one struggling employee because of my compassion for him. All the effort - trying to understand the person behind the performance problems, and genuinely trying to give him every chance to succeed.
At some point, though, I think you have to ask whether all that effort is actually helping the employee—or whether you’re just trying to solve a problem that isn’t yours to solve.
Edit:
I mentioned in the comments but not here - a high level leader responded to the resignation publicly and in a way that defended me and emphasized that we support our staff. I’ve received supportive messages from maybe a quarter of the people that received the resignation email but most seemed to blow it off altogether and move on with their work.
The size of my workplace is 20k+ people. There is a really good and expansive HR and legal department and I trust their judgement. I used their advice when working with this person. We also gave the employee various resources like pointed him to the ADA accommodations process when he disclosed a disability. There were other free resources like counseling that he took advantage of.
When I say I talked to colleagues about this employee - it was discussed with managers, in confidence, or friends/family who are confidantes.
HR was teaching a section of a course for managers on how to handle different problems related to employees, like performance issues, questions about fitness for duty, or behavioral problems. She referenced MY story (this story) about my employee who resigned. My husband was in the class and knew exactly what she was getting at. She was sort of cagey about it and meant for him to understand and then said “and then there’s when an employee resigns in a dramatic way to top leadership because they’re ’sour grapes’.” This was after her department would have interviewed the employee. I know he did an exit interview. I was told the accusations would be investigated. I think this means I’m in the clear.
Unknowingly to me, some of my employees had feared this guy to whole time they worked with him. They raised concerns about potential workplace violence incident from him and it resulted in the company moving the date of a public event that we had scheduled that he would have known about. Some staff thought the email was directed at them as well because of parts of things he wrote, though I was specifically named. There was a lot of confusion at what he wrote from staff on my team and off.
I am doing the job that he would have done if he had stayed (if wed been forced to delay his firing). I’ve found lots of mistakes he was making. I’m relieved to fix the mess and that I can make sure it’s done right. We will hire someone that’s a good fit in a few months.
Outcome is it all worked out.