Page 153 - Executive Warfare

The Team You Assemble

One day soon after, I was talking to another salesman, who said, “I’m
really sorry to hear about your problem.”
“What problem?”
“Well,” he said, “I heard that you’re being sued for firing somebody
without cause and might get fired yourself any day.” I was not being sued,
and I’d never fired anybody unfairly.
I soon learned that this rumor was nonetheless running wild through
the sales force. I spent a week trying to track its source. This was not unlike
trying to find Typhoid Mary. Finally, I
pinned it to two guys who were friends
with Rick. SOMETIMES YOU
My boss—let’s call him Frank— CAN ACCOMPLISH
called for a meeting with them in his MORE BY NOT
office, and they admitted everything. FIRING SOMEBODY
“Now,” Frank said to them, “what WHO’S OFFENDED
you’re going to do is pick up the phone YOU.
and call everybody you talked to and tell
them you told them a lie. But first, you’re going to walk David over to his
office and you’re going to apologize to him. I’m only pressing the apology
because I want him to tell you whatever he wants to tell you in person.”
This was very deft of Frank. He was recognizing my right to be angry
and to vent or to do anything else I needed to do, short of throwing them
out into the street.
We walked over to my office, and the guilty pair, as you can imagine,
were both chagrined and sheepish. They started to stutter their apologies
out, and I stopped them.
“Frank says you’re going to stay in the company. That wouldn’t be my
call,” I told them, “but from this moment on, I will never, ever speak to
you again. Don’t ever talk to me, don’t ever call me, don’t ever write to me.
If you see me at a company meeting, you are to walk the other way.”
I was with John Hancock for 13 more years and never spoke to either
one of them again, even though I saw them a few times a year.

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