Accountability and Owning Decisions

I have had many mentors, and one of them was Ken Chenault at American Express. And so he and I were talking once and we were talking about a situation where I needed to let an employee go. And he said, “Well, let’s role-play.” And so in the example of the role-play, I was the employee, and he was me, it was five minutes, whatever. And when he was done, I said, “Ken, do you know what the most common word was?” And he said, “No” And I said, “It was the word, I.”

That’s taking accountability for the decision. If you have to let somebody go, you don’t blame them. You can’t say to the employee, it’s your fault that you didn’t deliver what I needed to do. You can say, I’ve done the research, I’ve decided that this is what the company needs. I’ve made my assessment and I’ve decided that this isn’t going to be the right place for you. And I have decided that you need to leave. You can say “I” a lot. And it’s very clear that it’s your decision–you could be wrong–but it’s not because of them, you can’t turn it like that.