Navigating Difficult Conversations in Performance Management

Joel Peterson has spent a career leading teams, building businesses, and managing people at every level. Along the way, he’s learned valuable lessons about the best ways to bring on new talent, as well as when and how to let people go.

Peterson is the former chairman of JetBlue Airways. He also teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He shares his approach to hiring for top leadership positions and why it’s so important to slow down and take plenty of time with interviews. He also explains how he coaches new hires who are struggling and how he knows when it’s time to let someone go.

You’ll learn why Peterson says you shouldn’t wait for a “triggering event” to fire someone who’s not performing. And you’ll learn why he never outsources that difficult conversation to human resources.

Key episode topics include: leadership, dismissing employees, hiring and recruitment, managing people, difficult conversations, firing. 

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Rules for Effective Hiring — and Firing (2020)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast.
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org.