I was on a call with a founder recently who was walking me through a list of people he needed to let go. Some of them were blatantly underperforming, and he wasn't losing sleep over parting ways with them. One person had stopped putting in effort after a promotion. Another was shipping buggy work consistently enough that the rest of the team was losing patience.

But then he got to two names, and his whole demeanor changed.

"These guys aren't bad," he said with a pained look on his face. "They moved here for this job. We sponsored their visas. They're decent people. They try. They're just ... not at the level we need."

I could see the guilt all over his face. He liked these people, and they were technically not bad at their jobs. But being "not bad" was simply no longer cutting it.

They were Average Performers.

This is a conversation I have more than almost any other in my coaching practice: letting go of someone for being good. And it's the one that keeps founders up at night, not because they don't know the right decision, but because the right decision feels cruel.

The myth of the obvious firing

Most content you can find on the Internet about letting people go assumes you're dealing with someone who's clearly not working out. They have an attitude problem, they're toxic, they're bad at their jobs, or they're checked out. In those cases, the decision is neither hard emotionally nor intellectually. They are so below the bar of excellence, that you know it's a disservice to the company and to them to continue employing them. You part ways, and while it never feels good to fire someone, you do it and don't think twice about your decision.

The far more common scenario, especially at scaling companies, is the person who is average.

We all know this kind of Average Performer. They show up. They seem to care. They do work that is acceptable. Everyone seems to like them well enough. They get their stuff done on time, and it's not breaking all over the place.

The problem is, they are pulling your company back, because your Talent Density bar is high and they are performing squarely in the middle.

This is especially painful when you are the one who hired them.

Maybe you brought them in at a title they hadn't quite earned yet because you were moving fast and needed bodies. Maybe you sold them on a vision and asked them to uproot their life. The guilt of that is real, and I never tell the founders I coach to ignore it. But I do tell them they need to separate the guilt from the decision, because conflating the two will paralyze you.

What happens when you wait

I've watched this play out enough times to know the pattern: a founder identifies someone who isn't meeting the bar. They think about it for a week. Then two. They have a conversation with the person about "stepping up" that's vague enough to feel like coaching rather than a warning. Another month goes by.

Meanwhile, the people around that person, the ones who are performing, notice.

They always notice.

One operator I work with described it to me like this:

That line stuck with me, because it's such a clear example of what you lose when you keep an underperformer. The real cost of waiting isn't actually the severance or the awkward conversation. When you wait because letting them go feels too hard, you slowly erode the company's standards. Your best people start wondering whether this is a place that actually rewards excellence, or just a place that avoids conflict.

A Players attract A Players. B Players attract B, C, and D Players. Keep the B Players at your own peril.

The conversation itself

I get this question constantly: "I know I need to do it, but how do I actually have the conversation?"

Here's what I walk my clients through.

Remember the founder who was torn about letting go of his Average Performers?

He ended up letting both of them go. It was painful, especially because it put their visas in jeopardy. But he did the right thing: he gave them generous severance and accelerated their equity cliff. He wasn't legally obligated to do it, but he did it because it was the right thing to do given what he had asked of them. He helped them both find new roles they completely thrived in, and they were able to transfer their visas successfully.

The team took notice, and it won him goodwill for two reasons: first, he showed that Average wasn't cutting it, which showed the remaining High Performers that he recognized and did not disrespect their skills. And second, he showed them that even in hard situations, he behaved honorably. That's the kind of founder people want to work for - especially when the news is bad.

Reframing what "being a good leader" means here

I hear this a lot from empathetic founders: "But Regina, shouldn't good leaders be able to develop everyone on their team?"

I understand the instinct, but I want to push back on it. There's a version of leadership that founders fall into where "good leadership" gets conflated with "making everyone comfortable." Keeping someone in a role they can't thrive in isn't kind. It's avoidant behavior. It wastes their time in a position where they're not growing, and it wastes your team's time compensating for the gap.

It also robs your A Players of the attention they deserve from you! You only have 24 hours in a single day. Do you really want to spend your time trying to pull up Average Performers, or do you want to spend it unblocking and accelerating your Great Performers?

The most caring thing you can do is to be honest quickly. It's better to tell someone in Week Two that they are not meeting the bar, than let them spend a year thinking everything is fine, only to be slapped across the face with reality later on.

When you're preparing to make these decisions, I always recommend this exercise I learned from a very brilliant CEO of a unicorn Tier-1 backed company:

Decide first whether this person should be here, based purely on what the role requires right now. If the answer is no, then you figure out how to execute with integrity and generosity. Don't let the difficulty of the implementation talk you out of the right call.

The communication to the team

After the conversation, you have to talk to the remaining team. This is where a lot of founders fumble. They either say nothing (which creates anxiety and rumors), or they say something so vague that it reads as dishonest.

What I coach my founders to say is something close to this:

"We have high standards. Not everyone is going to meet them. When someone doesn't, we make changes. The people in this room meet the bar, and I want you to know that I take that seriously."

You don't need to trash the person who left. But you do need to signal to the remaining team that performance matters, and that you're willing to act on it. That's what gives your best people confidence that they're in the right place.

Until next time,

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