Right Person, Wrong Seat: Lesson to Learn When Firing Someone

A small engineering firm owner posted a story recently that a lot of business owners will recognize, even if the details don’t match exactly. Three employees, soon to be two. He hired a young engineer, fresh past his EIT exam, and put him in charge of an entire division: real salary, a company truck, health coverage, and a cut of that division’s profit.

The new hire came in with energy but not much focus. The owner worked with him on that. The focus improved, but the work stayed sloppy. Three months in, after a hard conversation about output, the employee said the quiet part out loud: he wasn’t motivated anymore, and he didn’t want to keep pushing. So the owner let him go.

Then came the part that’s actually worth sitting with. The owner, using the EOS framework, called it right person, wrong seat: good character, understood the business, just never should have been running a division. And then he asked the question that matters more than the firing itself. Was I asking too much? Was my expectation of ambition too high?

That question deserves a real answer, not just reassurance.

What GWC actually tests

EOS, the operating system this owner was already using, has a specific tool for exactly this situation, called GWC, short for Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it. All three have to be a clear yes for someone to be right for their seat. Not mostly, not enough, not with more support. A clear yes.

Get it means the person actually understands the role, not just the title. Want it means they genuinely want the work itself, not the paycheck or the promotion that came with it. Capacity means they have the skills, time, and mental bandwidth the seat actually demands. If any one of the three comes back as no, the person is in the wrong seat, whatever their character looks like.

Applied here: the work was sloppy despite improved focus, which points at a Capacity gap more than a Get It gap. And the resignation line, that he wasn’t motivated anymore and didn’t want to put more in, reads on the surface like a Want It failure. But it’s worth asking whether that’s really what happened, or whether it’s what a Capacity failure sounds like when someone doesn’t have the language for it.

Motivation often isn’t the disease. It’s the symptom

A 25-year-old EIT is not yet a licensed engineer. That credential is the exam you pass on the way to becoming one, not proof you’re ready to run a division’s P&L, manage a team, and carry client relationships all at once. That’s a demanding seat for someone with a decade of experience. For someone this early in a career, it’s an enormous jump in a single step.

People who are quietly in over their heads rarely say that out loud. It’s an uncomfortable thing to admit, especially to the person who just handed you a truck, a profit share, and a title. What they say instead often sounds exactly like a motivation problem: I don’t want to put in the effort anymore. It can be true and still be the wrong diagnosis, because the actual cause was never laziness. It was being stretched past what the seat should have asked of someone at that stage.

EOS Worldwide has written about this exact pattern: a strong individual contributor gets promoted because they were excellent at their previous job, then struggles because leading a function requires a different skill set entirely, one they were never actually tested for before the promotion. Their own account of it describes the fix as recognizing the gap and having an honest conversation, not assuming the person simply stopped trying.

So, was the expectation too high?

Probably, yes, at least for that seat at that stage. That’s not the same as saying ambition itself was the mistake. Wanting a young hire to grow into more responsibility is a completely reasonable thing to want. The mistake, if there was one, was in the sequencing: handing over an entire division, with full P&L accountability and a profit share attached, before there was solid proof the person could carry the PM-level work cleanly on its own.

EOS’s own diagnostic tool for this, the People Analyzer, exists precisely to catch this before it becomes a three-month surprise. Run quarterly, even in a two- or three-person company, it forces an honest look at whether someone is a clear yes on GWC for their current seat, not their potential seat, before more gets handed to them.

There’s a similar idea in a recent piece from Forbes Coaches Council on first-time firings: the two questions worth separating are whether someone is a good person and whether they’re right for the role. This situation is a clean example of both being true at once: a good, capable person in a seat that outgrew what he’d actually been proven ready for.

What to actually change before the next hire

The firing itself was very likely the right call once someone tells you directly they don’t want to keep trying. Respect that answer and move on. The more useful lesson lives one step earlier, in how the role got structured in the first place.

**Separate the seats before you combine them. **PM-level execution and division leadership are two different jobs. Prove someone can do the first, cleanly, before attaching a profit share and full ownership to the second.

**Treat a big promotion as a trial, not a coronation. **A defined 90-day period with clear, written expectations gives you real evidence either way, instead of a gut feeling that only shows up three months later.

**Check GWC before you hand over more, not after things go sideways. **A five-minute honest conversation with yourself about Get it, Want it, and Capacity costs nothing. A three-month experiment that ends in a resignation costs a lot more, in money and in team morale.

**Know where you stand either way legally. **Employment is at-will in every US state except Montana, so a performance-based termination like this one is generally on solid ground, provided it isn’t tied to a protected characteristic or retaliation. USA.gov’s guide to wrongful termination is a useful plain-language starting point if you’re ever unsure.

The actual takeaway

Second-guessing yourself after a firing isn’t a sign you got it wrong. It’s a sign you’re taking the responsibility seriously, which is exactly the instinct that makes the next hire go better. The honest answer to “was I asking too much” is often yes, a little, but the fix isn’t lowering your ambition for people. It’s testing readiness for a seat before you hand someone the whole thing at once.

Frequently asked questions

What does “right person, wrong seat” actually mean?

It’s an EOS concept describing someone who shares your company’s values and character, the right person, but doesn’t have the fit, skill, or readiness for their specific role, the wrong seat. The fix is usually moving them to a different seat rather than losing them entirely, though sometimes no seat in the company fits and they leave.

How do I tell if someone lacks motivation or lacks capacity?

Look at the timeline. If someone started strong and their output or energy declined as responsibility grew, that usually points to a capacity gap; they got stretched past what the role should have asked of them at their stage. True motivation problems tend to show up early and stay flat, not decline as things get harder.

Was I wrong to expect ambition from an early-career hire?

No, expecting growth is reasonable. The more common mistake is sequencing: handing someone a fully-scoped leadership seat, with financial accountability attached, before there’s solid proof they can handle the execution-level work underneath it first.

How do I promote someone into a bigger role without repeating this?

Treat the promotion as a defined trial with written expectations and a set check-in point, not a permanent handover on day one. Run a GWC check, get it, want it, capacity, honestly before expanding someone’s scope, not after performance slips.

Am I at legal risk for a performance-based termination like this?

Generally, no. Employment is at-will in every US state except Montana, meaning a termination based on documented performance issues is legally sound, provided it isn’t connected to a protected characteristic, discrimination, or retaliation.