How to Prevent Those Tough Conversations

Every leadership team has a conversation it would rather not have. The one where you admit the hire is not working. The one where you explain, again, why the work is late. The one where someone good is leaving because they are tired of carrying someone who interviews well.

Those conversations feel like a people problem. They are usually a process problem that showed up late.

Most managers interview the way they were interviewed. Forty-five minutes. Strengths and weaknesses. A vibe check. A templated no — or a templated yes. Chemistry stands in for evidence. Then the team inherits the cost: coaching that cannot land, performance plans that surprise no one, and a quiet drain on the people who can actually do the job.

You do not prevent that talk with a better script for delivering bad news. You prevent it by changing what you collect before you say yes.

An experience-based interview is built around the job, not the candidate’s highlight reel. Same questions for every person in the process. Evidence you can compare. A score you can defend six months later when someone asks why you hired them. Consistent. Measurable. Unromantic on purpose.

This is the work I do with hiring managers. Not a personality overhaul. A method. If the interview is designed around what the role actually requires, the tough conversation happens less often — and when it does, it is about the work, not about a feeling you cannot name.

Chemistry is not irrelevant. It is a terrible primary filter. Like the person. Hire the work.

Andrew L. Lee · Charlotte