Conversations with leaders
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11 min read
Key findings
The HR partner's conversation with the leader, held before any meeting is booked, decides whether the script survives the first hard question.
A leader is ready when they can state the reason in two sentences and explain the selection of one role in a minute.
The wording must match the stage the process has reached, and employment counsel confirms that stage before anything is drafted.
Any reason spoken in the meeting becomes the reason on record, so improvised softening creates a second reason to defend.
The team that stays judges the process by fairness, by workload and by whether senior people are visible that week.
Any reason spoken aloud in the meeting becomes the reason on record.
A redundancy conversation script has four parts. The decision comes in the first two sentences, then the reason in plain terms, the dates that follow, and a pause for the person to respond.
The HR partner prepares the leader beforehand, by testing the business reason, the selection logic and the answers to three questions the leader would otherwise improvise.
Published templates cover the meeting with the employee.
The conversation that decides how that meeting goes takes place earlier, between the HR partner and the leader who will hold it.
A leader who has not been through it tends to leave the script at the first hard question.
Whatever the leader says after that point can be quoted back later.
What The Conversation Has To Achieve
Three outcomes matter, and the meeting reaches them in this order.
The person understands, accurately, what has been decided about their role
The person knows what happens next, in dates
The person is treated in a way they could describe to their family without embarrassment
The third outcome is a business matter as well as a courtesy.
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle report research on dismissal meetings.
People losing their jobs pay attention to who delivers the news and to how good the explanation is.
Their account adds that handling departures properly also affects the people who stay.
Colleagues usually hear how the first person out of the meeting was treated within hours.
The Conversation With The Leader
The HR partner holds this conversation before any meeting with an employee is booked.
It has four parts, and the leader confirms each one aloud.
The reason. The business rationale in two sentences, said without notes
The selection. How each role was chosen, and where the record of it sits
The stage. Whether anything in the process is still open
The speakers. Who delivers the decision, who sits in, and who says nothing
Testing The Reason
A reason that needs a third sentence usually contains two reasons, and the employee will argue with the weaker one.
The first test is whether the reason describes the role or the person.
For example, "the regional operations team goes from eleven roles to seven because two of our four depots close in June" describes the role.
"We need people with a different profile" describes the person, and it is a performance claim that the selection record must then support.
The second test is whether the leader can say the reason to the HR partner without reading it.
A leader who cannot say it aloud in the preparation will not manage it across a table from someone who has just lost a job.
Selection And Stage
The HR partner asks the leader to explain in one minute how this person's role came to be chosen, covering the pool, the criteria, the scoring and who moderated it.
A leader who cannot explain it has two honest options.
One is to commit to a written selection summary by a stated date, and the other is to have HR attend and answer.
Guessing at the scoring gives the person a reason that is not in the record.
The wording also has to match the stage the process has reached.
Where consultation is still open, the meeting states a proposal and invites the person's response, and the script says so.
Where the decision has been made, the script says it has been made and gives the date.
Which stage applies, and what the organisation must do at each one, differs by country, by contract and by the number of roles affected.
Employment counsel confirms the position before any wording is drafted, and the script is written around that answer.
The HR partner takes four questions to counsel.
Is this a proposal meeting or a decision meeting under the process being followed
What may be said about selection criteria and scores
What the written notice must contain, and by when
Whether the person may bring someone to the meeting
Who Speaks And Who Stays Silent
The person who owns the decision delivers it, and that is usually the line manager who shaped the selection.
Where the manager had no part in the selection, a more senior leader who did should be present, because the first question will be about the selection.
The HR partner sits in to take notes and to answer procedural questions, and otherwise says nothing.
Two people speaking turns the meeting into a hearing, and the person tends to address the more senior one.
Redundancy Conversation Script In Five Parts
The lines below are written for an imagined depot consolidation, and they show the register, which is plain, short and spoken.
Surprising news distracts people until they make sense of it, which is why Hilary Scarlett recommends repeating the message, putting it in writing and checking that it has been understood.
1. The opening. "Thank you for coming in. I have difficult news about your role."
"The restructure has been decided, and your role is one of those that will end."
2. The reason. "The regional operations team goes from eleven roles to seven, because two of our four depots close in June."
"Your role is in the part of the structure that closes with them."
3. The pause. After the reason, the manager stops talking.
The silence feels long to the manager and short to the person, and filling it removes the only moment the person has to take the news in.
4. What it means. "Your last working day is 30 June."
"The letter in front of you sets out your pay, your notice and what happens to your pension, and I will go through each of them with you."
5. What happens next. "Priya from HR will call you tomorrow at ten to take your questions about the letter."
"I will see you on Thursday at two for thirty minutes, whatever you decide today."
A single apology fits after the fourth part: "I am sorry this is happening."
Ben Horowitz, quoted by Schmidt, Rosenberg and Eagle, warns against apologising too much, because the company still has to move on.
The line "this is not a judgement on your work" belongs in the script only if the selection was made on the role and not on individual performance.
Two habits ruin the opening.
The first is warming up, which extends the anticipation and reads as cowardice afterwards.
The second is explaining the business case before the person knows what has happened to them, which sounds like justification.
Handling The Three Reactions
Three responses are common, and each needs a different handling.
Numbness. The person says almost nothing, and the manager confirms the meeting on Thursday instead of asking for a response now
Anger. The target is usually the decision, and the manager takes it without defending the decision or arguing about tone
Negotiation. The person proposes alternatives, and the manager does not appear to consider what is already settled
Negotiation is where managers do the most damage, by softening into a maybe that the person hears as hope.
Where the stage is still a proposal, alternatives are recorded and passed on, and the manager says exactly that.
If the leader cannot say the last sentence truthfully, the meeting is premature or the process has a gap.
Answering The Three Questions
Three questions come up in almost every meeting, and each needs an answer written out beforehand.
Why was my role chosen?
"Your role is one of four affected by the closure. The pool and the criteria were shared on 3 March, and HR will send you a written summary of how they were applied to your role by Friday."
The manager does not guess at scores, compare the person with a named colleague or offer a reason that is missing from the selection record.
Any reason spoken aloud in the meeting becomes the reason on record.
A second reason that differs from the written one is the first thing a challenge will quote.
Who else is affected?
"Four of the eleven roles in this team are affected. Everyone affected hears from their own manager today, so I will not name anyone."
Was this decided already?
"The proposal was published on 3 March. Consultation ran until 28 March, and the final decision was made on 2 April after the feedback was reviewed. Two changes came from that feedback."
If the leader cannot say the last sentence truthfully, the meeting is premature or the process has a gap.
The HR partner takes that back to the sponsor before any meeting is held, using the approach in advising a leader you disagree with.
Phrases That Backfire
Five habits recur, and every one of them reduces the manager's discomfort at the person's expense.
Euphemism. "Released", "transitioned" and "de-layered" are understood at once and resented for the attempt
Over-identification. "I know exactly how you feel" is rarely accurate and invites the obvious reply
Premature optimism. "This could be the best thing for you" is a forecast about the person's life that the manager has no basis to make
Blame elsewhere. "The board decided" leaves nobody present to answer for the decision
Side promises. "I will give you a glowing reference" or "there may be something when things pick up" creates commitments HR has not agreed
Bill Campbell, the coach whose practice Schmidt, Rosenberg and Eagle describe, held that letting people go is a failure of management and never a failure of the people let go.
The manager therefore owns the decision in the meeting, whoever made it.
Rehearsal With The Leader
Before Shishir Mehrotra dismissed an engineering lead, Bill Campbell walked him through the meeting line by line, including who would sit where.
Campbell told him to be clear early and to give his reasoning in detail.
He also criticised Mehrotra because the news had come as a surprise to the engineer.
The HR partner runs the same rehearsal with each leader, aloud, playing the person receiving the news.
The rehearsal covers the opening two sentences, the pause, the three questions and the three reactions.
It also settles the seating, the length of the slot and the time of day.
The last item is what the leader says when they cannot answer.
The agreed phrase is that the exact answer will follow by a named date.
That phrase prevents the improvised answer about pension, tax or a reference, which creates a commitment the organisation may not honour.
The Written Summary
The person needs detail in the following week, and the meeting usually omits it.
Six items belong in writing, handed over at the end.
The last working day and the notice position
Pay, including any payment in lieu
What happens to benefits and any pension
The support available, named with contact details
Who to contact for each question
What will be said internally, and when
The sixth item is regularly forgotten, and it decides how colleagues read the person's departure.
Where the process allows it, the wording is agreed with the person.
The Conversation The Next Day
Most of the useful conversation happens after the first one, when the person has read the letter.
The manager schedules it during the first meeting, because a person in shock will not ask for it.
Three things belong in it.
The questions the person has written down since
The practical decisions, with dates attached
A specific offer, such as a reference, an introduction or time off for interviews
A specific offer is worth more than an open one, because an open offer requires the person to ask.
The manager names one piece of the person's work that was good, and says it only if it is true.
Nancy Kline records a project leader saying that the closure of a two-year project would have been easier to accept if someone had praised it before it was shut down.
The Team Briefing After
The people who stay judge the process by what they can see, and the HR partner plans for that as carefully as for the meetings.
The briefing takes place the same day, before the rumours start, and it covers what was decided, how many roles are affected and what changes in the work.
Three things decide whether the remaining team re-engages.
Fairness. Sensitivity to fairness is heightened during change, according to Scarlett, and colleagues can see how the leavers were treated
Workload. Absorbing departed colleagues' tasks without discussion reads as pretence, so the briefing names what stops and who takes what
Visibility. Scarlett observes that leaders often disappear from view after announcements, and that is when connection with them matters most
A senior leader in the building in the week afterwards costs nothing and is the item skipped most often, because the week is uncomfortable.
Scarlett also describes a manager who put a sheet of paper on the wall for questions and answered them weekly.
The wider sequence of announcements is covered in announcing a restructure.
Support For The Leader
Managers are usually given a script and a process document, which is the smallest part of the support they need.
The rest is a rehearsal, an agreed phrase for questions they cannot answer, and someone available immediately afterwards.
The manager also needs permission to sit down, to say they are sorry and to let the meeting run over.
The person opposite is also asking themselves whether they are competent, a question that Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen place in what they call the identity conversation.
A manager who has no answer ready for that question tends to fill the space with reassurance the record does not support.
The preparation for the harder cases follows the approach in difficult conversations at work.
The Floor And The Ceiling
The legal and contractual requirements set the floor, and they differ by country and by situation.
Two things stay separate in the HR partner's planning.
What the process requires, which counsel confirms and which is followed exactly
How the conversation is conducted, where the manager has far more discretion than most assume
Nothing in a process prevents a manager from sitting down rather than standing, saying they are sorry or letting the meeting run longer than scheduled.
A process that meets the requirements and ignores the second item produces a compliant outcome that people describe as cold for years.
Early Signs Of A Rushed Process
The leader cannot state the reason in two sentences
Nobody can produce the selection record when asked
Meetings are booked before counsel has confirmed the stage
Managers receive the script on the morning of the meetings
No date is set for the next-day conversation
The team briefing has no owner or time
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor holds the conversation structures and the manager briefing in its stakeholder conversation component, and the communication sequence around a restructure in its change and adoption component.
Its template pack includes the conversation preparation canvas and the follow-up record.
Related reading: how to give constructive feedback to employees.
Sources
1. Schmidt, E., Rosenberg, J. and Eagle, A. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell. Harper Business.
2. Scarlett, H. Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence-based Practical Guide to Managing Change. Kogan Page.
3. Stone, D., Patton, B. and Heen, S. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Penguin.
4. Kline, N. Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind. Cassell.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
What should you say in a redundancy meeting?
State the decision within two sentences, give the business reason in plain terms, stop talking, then give the dates and the practical next step. Hand over the details in writing and book a follow-up conversation for the next day.
How do you tell an employee their role is at risk of redundancy?
Say that it is a proposal and not a decision, if the process is still open, and explain how the person can respond. Counsel confirms which stage applies, because the requirements differ by country and situation.
What should a manager not say during a redundancy conversation?
Euphemisms, claims to know how the person feels, forecasts about their future, blame placed on the board, and side promises about references or rehiring. Each creates a reason or a commitment that is not in the record.
How do you answer "why was my role chosen"?
Explain the pool and the criteria as applied to the role, then promise a written selection summary by a named date. The manager does not guess at scores or offer a reason that the selection record does not contain.
How do you prepare a manager to deliver redundancy news?
Test their reason and their account of the selection, agree who speaks, then rehearse aloud with the three questions and three reactions. Settle the seating and timing, and agree the phrase for answers they do not have.
How do you communicate redundancies to the rest of the team?
Brief the team the same day, before rumours start. Cover what was decided, how many roles are affected, and what changes in the work. A senior leader should also be visible in the following week.
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