A golf course I play at has a new head greens keeper. I found this out reading about a change in staff and seeing the old guy, we will call him Michael, was not listed. Hmm. This guy was good and there was little reason to let him go. (I will not go into the overhead calculation of his salary and how much less costly it will be for the club to let him go and hire a younger less expensive (less experienced) guy). (Nope, I will not do that……not that kind of guy…not me…)

I will go into the fact that after almost a decade of loyal and successful service they fire the guy to save a few bucks and then say nothing about it. No message saying “Michael has left to pursue other things and we wish him well….we thank him for his service..etc etc…” Nothing. To quote General Douglass Macarthur (kind of) “Old greens keepers never die, their grass just turns brown.” Actually, in this case they simply took the grass away.

I hate it when people get treated like dirt. It is bad leadership. It also sends a message to the remaining employees that the exact same thing could happen to them….not exactly a morale or productivity building strategy. This organization has done this before. They will do it again. Now, I am sure THAT motivates people (to update their resumes).

Don’t lead like a jerk. Jerks don’t win….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 3:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.