I had this conversation again today. People usually get hired for competence (their resume looks good) and get fired for character (they don’t get the work done or they do something wrong).

The case today was a long term male employee in a senior management role saying suggestive things to the pretty young female staffers. Upon further review these comments, while stupid, might not have been characterized as sexual harassment (the lawyer said this was pretty low on the harm scale). What they were though was a direct violation of the personal beliefs of the owner of the business. His desire was to foster a workplace of respect and openness but the behavior of the senior employee was in direct opposition to that.

The owner conducted a thorough investigation over the past several days and got the facts. He is taking action to insure this never happens again. He is not firing the individual however he is assigning him to a new role and he is on notice. So much for the character issues, what about his competence?

What if the senior manager was the BEST at what he did? What if he was a rainmaker? What would you do? Well, to retain any shred of credibility you would have to handle it the exact same way. Competence is not even an issue in this case, character is.

Sometimes we do deal with competence issues and we address them in a certain way. Character issues get dealt with but the standard and margin of error is much different. The Owner now has a chance to reestablish his values in the organization. He has been focused externally on getting work (which is where he should be focused) but now he has some damage control to do.

I know he will do things differently going forward. I hope the senior manager does because if he doesn’t I think it safe to say he will be out of a job – because of his character, or lack thereof.

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