What a talk on letting people go taught me about everyday leadership
At the regional conference “THE LÄKO 2026” of the Wirtschaftsjunioren / JCI Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart, I sat in on a talk that most people would rather avoid. The title was “Die Kunst des guten Trennungsgesprächs,” meaning “the art of a good separation conversation”. The speaker was Elisabeth Perfahl-Leibfried, who spent more than two decades in senior HR roles at large international companies and now advises leaders and organizations through structural change and career transitions.
Her answer to the question in the title was a clear yes. A good ending is possible. But the sentence I will remember was not about the final conversation at all. It was this: Tolerating underperformance is not kind; it is unfair. Unfair above all to the people who carry the team.
I went in expecting a session about difficult conversations. I came out thinking about the months that stretched ahead of them. Because a fair ending is not built in the room where it happens. It is built on the first day, and on every ordinary day after that.
So this piece is less about the separation conversation itself and more about one central claim: Fairness at the end starts on day one, and clarity is the truest form of respect. The rest of the argument follows from that.
Both sides are on the hook.
It is tempting to read a topic like this as a leadership problem. It is not only that. Good collaboration is a two-way obligation, and it breaks down when either side stops holding up their part.
The leader owes clarity. That means naming expectations and goals out loud, not assuming they are obvious. It means giving feedback early rather than holding it in. It means not sending a colleague on a private guessing game about whether their work is good enough, and not quietly handing the uncomfortable conversation to someone in HR who was never close enough to judge the work in the first place. The person who keeps outsourcing the hard parts should honestly ask whether they still want the role.
The team member owes something too. Standards you set for yourself only mean something if you are open to feedback, open to requirements changing, and ready to stay in talk rather than go silent. Clarity from above cannot land if it meets a closed door below.
There is a familiar failure mode here that shows up in every culture, even if the words differ. In German, there is a tongue-in-cheek reading of the word team: “toll, ein anderer macht’s,” roughly “great, someone else will do it.” Researchers call it social loafing. In plain English, it is passing the buck: the quiet assumption that the task will somehow get picked up by somebody, so no one does. Clear ownership is the antidote, and ownership is a shared discipline, not a management slogan.
It starts at the interview.
If fairness starts on day one, then it really starts a step earlier, at the hiring decision or the moment a colleague moves into a new internal role. That is where the throughline begins. That is where the pattern begins.
A poorly framed hire is unfair to everyone downstream. The new person inherits a role they were never accurately described. The team inherits a mismatch. And the leader inherits a problem that will later be labeled a performance issue, when it was really a clarity failure at the start.
The same is true for internal moves, which we tend to treat too casually. Someone who was excellent in one role is not automatically set up to succeed in the next one. Moving people well means being just as explicit about expectations, support, and success criteria as you would be for an external hire. A change of seat is a change of contract, even when nothing is written down.
The honest work at this stage is unglamorous. Describe the role as it actually is, not as you wish it were. Be clear about what good looks like in the first ninety days. And when a fit is not there early, say so early, while it is still a small, solvable conversation rather than a large, painful one.
Clarity is a duty, not a favor.
Here is the part leaders most often get wrong, myself included at times. We wait for the perfect moment to give difficult feedback. We wait for the day when the case is airtight, the documentation complete, the timing kind. Yet clarity does not require perfection, and while we wait, the gap widens, and the person has no idea that anything is wrong.
Perfahl-Leibfried made a point I keep returning to. The worst thing for almost anyone is not knowing why. People can absorb hard news. What they cannot forgive is being left in the dark, then blindsided later by consequences they never saw coming.
„Nichts demotiviert ein Team so sehr wie die Duldung von Menschen, die nicht bereit sind mitzumachen.”
Elisabeth Perfahl-Leibfried
Therefore, clarity is not a favor you grant when you feel generous. It is a standing duty. Name the deviation from what you agreed, early, directly, and without drama. Do it as an observation, not a verdict. What is raised early can usually be solved early. What is buried compounds.
This is also where a leader protects the wider team. A group is not a fixed distribution of stars and strugglers. It is a living thing that responds to what gets tolerated. When persistent underperformance or constant negativity goes unaddressed, the steady middle does not stay steady. People who do their jobs well notice what you allow and draw conclusions in regard to fairness. Productivity drifts down, absence drifts up, and the best people quietly update their view of you. Addressing a problem is not an attack on one person. It is a signal of fairness to everyone else.
Making clarity tangible
Principles are easy to nod along to and hard to live. The real question is where clarity actually lives on a common Tuesday.
For me it lives in a shared, visible system rather than in memory and good intentions. I keep the big picture and the why in a place where goals are explicit and connected, so that individual work ladders up to something people can see. I keep the what in a task system where ownership, status, and following actions are unambiguous. I keep the how in a knowledge base, where ways of working and agreements are written down once and are findable, instead of being renegotiated in every meeting. And I keep feedback lightweight by recording a short walkthrough now and then, so a feedback conversation leaves a durable trace instead of evaporating the moment it ends.
The specific tools matter less than the habit. I happen to build this on the Atlassian platform because it is where I work, but the point is not the brand. The point is that clarity should be written down, owned, and visible, so that no one has to guess and no important conversation depends on perfect recall. A clear system is an act of respect.
When an ending is the right answer
Sometimes, despite all of this, the honest conclusion is that a shared future is over. If it has to happen, it deserves the same clarity and fairness as everything that came before. A few ideas from the talk stayed with me, and they translate well across borders, even though the legal and financial elements vary widely depending on where you work.
Say it in the first minute. The one thing you must not do is warm up with small talk or circle around the point out of nervousness. The message belongs on the table within the first sixty seconds, plainly: I am here because we are going to part ways. Every extra qualifier dilutes it. Endless justification does not soften the moment; it weakens you and confuses the other person. The decision is made. The task now is not to be right; it is to be clear and respectful. Clarity here is a kindness, not a cruelty.
Expect the shock, and write things down. The moment the message arrives, the person’s world reorders itself. Comprehension drops close to zero, much like the minutes after a hard medical diagnosis. Nothing said out loud will be remembered accurately. So put everything that matters in writing: the offer, the following steps, who to contact. In the period that follows, that page is often the only reliable anchor they have.
Go with the emotion before you steer. A conversation like this is never a straight line. It helps to first acknowledge and genuinely validate what the person feels before gently guiding toward what happens next. Meet the reaction, then lead. And do it in a settled voice, slowly, with room for silence. Composure has to be audible.
Make a fair offer, and think beyond money. A good ending includes a real offer, not a token one. Not everyone wants the same thing. Some people value a longer, paid runway to get settled more than a larger one-time sum, especially those with families or a strong need for security. Where available, structured transition support that helps someone become job-ready and land their next role can be worth more than cash alone, and in some countries it even offers a tax advantage. The design should be transparent and dignified, never punitive.
Then look after the people who stay. After a departure, especially early in someone’s tenure with the company, the rest of the team quietly gets nervous. Good leaders notice the worried glance and address it directly and briefly: I saw that landed heavily, and I want you to know you are fine. Small, honest reassurances prevent needless second-guessing and rebuild trust. The way you end one relationship is watched closely by everyone in the ones that remain.
The through line
Strip away the specifics, and one idea runs through it all: clearness and fairness are not techniques you switch on for the hard conversation. They are a way of working together that starts at hello.
If you are clear about expectations from the first day, generous with early feedback, honest when something is not working, and dignified if the road has to end, then a separation is not a rupture in the culture. It confirms it. The people who stay trust you more, not less, because the ending fits the way you work together from the start.
Perfahl-Leibfried framed it as leadership responsibility, and I think she is right. But I would put it as a shared responsibility, because clarity, even when given badly, still fails when it meets someone unwilling to hear it. Both sides own this.
Fairness at the end starts on day one. And clarity, offered early and often, is the truest form of respect we can give each other at work.
