How to make people shooting suck less for them and suck for you
Maybe if you shoot a hundred people, you will eventually get used to. But I doubt. Firing people is horrible. Nothing stressed me most over the last twelve years of operation Basecamp.
Sure, but it's hard to be the one to fire someone, it is always worse to be one shot. I have really been fired once in my life, but the experience traumatized me the same thing.
Twenty  years later, I remember almost everything - the number of steps up to  the entrance, the messy desk, the coffee cup half empty. Stronger still, I remember running all the range of emotions: Shocked, angry, disappointed, sad. Total humiliation of having to go back into the office because I forgot my fucking bus card, I could not go home without it.
It is no exaggeration to say that the experience has helped shape the desire to run my own business. For partners, not bosses. All this, only to be fired from a job of manual labor at a relatively  young age, which had essentially zero practical consequences for my life  (beyond the emotional anguish!)
Yet  while I can extrapolate from that terrible day, and imagine what it  might feel like to lose my job if it was my career, if I were real bills  to pay and perhaps a family food, it really is just that: A mental image.
But it is exactly this mental image that contemplate shooting someone so haunting. Tell an employee that their time in your business is in place is the ultimate power of the boss. It is not to be taken lightly. It will not be felt lightly.
And yet, sometimes dismiss an employee is all that must be done. There are all sorts of good reasons this person in this work of our company is just not working out.
Because  while it is possible that someone is blissfully and totally unaware  that things are not going well, which is usually not the case. Most of the time, it is at least a sense that things are not great. It can still be a shock that "things are not great" turns into a person getting fired, but at least the seed is there.
The  best scenario is when the employee and the boss are in complete  synchronization about where the relationship is going, and despite the  best efforts of both sides, it's just not. So the termination becomes the natural conclusion without drama.
This scenario is probably as likely that one is completely unconscious. Yes, it happens and when it does, that's great. But do not count on it. Expect that it will be traumatic and be pleasantly surprised if it is not.
Here are some of the main considerations that we took the few times we had to fire someone:
Reduce time to fake smiles
There is never a good time to fire someone, but delay implementation does worse. Every interaction between when the final decision was taken and until its led is a painful charade. Humans flee emotions like sieves, so the more you have to carry on the  false pleasantries, more the feeling of humiliation or even betrayal  will.
The best time is uncomfortable right now. Do not drag out and dread.
Come prepared
Since this is usually a very stressful situation, prepare. It  may not seem as natural to read a statement that clearly states a)  you're fired, b) what are the terms we offer, and c) so, but it will  ensure that you are taken into account and covered all the important bits.
Give  the person a separation agreement that includes all the details because  it is not unlikely that the shock will mute their memory. Tell  them to read it carefully, considering the assistance of a lawyer (they  usually give up certain rights to take the severance and must include  all terms), and return only after they have signed considered everything.
Be generous if it stings
If  you are firing someone because society is in poor condition, you may  have no choice but to send someone packing with the bare minimum. But if you're firing someone because you have decided that things do not work, you should be so generous that it stings.
No matter what you think that person could or should have done while he was still time. Unless they go on to gross negligence or malice, it is mostly about you. It is on you for not vetting better, not to respond better, not run better. The buck stops with the boss. Each personal failure is ultimately your fault. Just that possess.
Then consider compensation consumed with this responsibility. At Basecamp, our rule was a month's salary for each year of hire. So if someone has been with the company for three years, which is the  value of three months' salary, with a minimum of strings attached to the  separation agreement.
Do not leave the door open
It is a natural reaction for someone getting fired to see if there is a way to prevent it from actually happening. Not invite hope where there is none. If you are not sure that someone should be fired, so do not fire them! Find another way to give a second or third or fourth chance.
Only call this meeting to fire someone if the decision has been made and is final. Then make that astoundingly clear immediately. When someone getting fired, it is not a place for casual conversation. Treat the moment with clarity and dignity. Do not put a false sense of security by opening with small talk or smile.
Decency confidence
Just because you shot someone does not mean they are instantly untrustworthy. They clearly earned your trust enough to be hired and worked in this confidence that a few minutes before they were fired. So the company trope to have emptied their office, access to all  systems immediately revoked, and someone escort them out of the building  is not only unnecessary, but antagonistic.
Again, yes, sometimes people are dismissed due to which precautions must be taken. But most of the time which is not the case. Treating someone with instant suspicion because they no longer work for you is just unnecessary salt in the wound.
Be friendly, be decent.
Inform everyone
When people disappear from society, without warning and no explanation, everyone will just assume the worst. Am I then? Are we going out of business? Was it because of that one moment in which he has said or done that?
If you leave a vacuum keeping the private reason, it will be quickly filled with uninformed stories. How is that going to help someone? It is better to be reasonably honest useless without dwelling on staff. But the rest of the company should know, and quickly, that their colleague is out.
It will surely be a bad thing for comfortable writing, but firing people is not supposed to be easy! It's supposed to be hard and terrible, lest you lose respect for traumatic way, it is often the other side. Which is why you should not try to use euphemisms too much. Do not tell others that someone just fucking graduate when they really fired.
Learn from this
You have someone wrong for him to come to this. The company has done something wrong. Something could probably gone and should get better, and if she had, maybe you would not be in this situation. It is essential that you and the company to learn all I hope uncommon, for example where someone is fired.
It is difficult to collectively learn something if you do not try diligently. So please try. Have a proper retrospective. Accept blame, or at least most of it. He's so damn easy to just put on the employee, and it is almost always  bad easy way to a hard look at yourself, your policies and your  business.
Again, it is normal to feel a failure to some extent because of it. firing people should be expensive, stressful, and at least a little personally embarrassing, if not downright humiliating. You want the scars to remind you how to hire and be better next time.