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“I don’t care who it is, but you need to fire one of the people reporting to you.”
This was the advice I received from a CEO I knew when I became General Manager of a division of a company. I asked my CEO friend why.
He said, “That’s how you will instill fear in your team. Everyone will know you mean business when you fire someone.”
I got the idea that people will take you seriously if you fire someone, but it seemed so arbitrary and mean spirited to me. If that was how you become a great leader, then I guess I would never become a great leader.
I passed on my CEO friend’s advice. You should too.
There’s plenty of other bad leadership advice I’ve received over the years including these nuggets:
A. Don’t trust anyone.
The advice here was given to me from another well-meaning CEO. He was trying to emphasize that you can’t trust anyone.
And during the paranoid early stage of my career, I ate up his advice. I didn’t trust anyone, and, as a result, I didn’t communicate anything to anyone.
All that horrible piece of advice did was hurt me. But it did lead to this beautiful exchange with one of my peers named Peter:
