Balancing empathy and rationale as a founder during hiring and firing decisions is a critical skill, especially when scaling up a startup. When building your team, it’s important to quickly identify whether team members will be the right fit in the long term.

Startup founders often hear the mantra “hire slow, fire fast,” but in reality this can be challenging to put into practice. When running a startup, the pressure to meet milestones on a tight schedule makes the prospect of hiring slowly scary, as it can feel like it will take too long to find the right job candidates. Similarly, firing quickly can be just as difficult.

There are situations where an employee might be a great cultural fit but a poor performer, and other times when an employee is high performing but a terrible cultural fit. Both types of employees can be very hard to let go, but for different reasons.

Hiring and firing decisions can significantly impact your company’s culture, morale, and overall success. Here are three ways to strike a balance of empathy and rationale when building your team.

Trust your gut instincts, but validate with data

Your intuition is a powerful tool. As a founder and CEO, you are often heavily involved in the hiring process during the early stages of building your team. It’s important to trust your gut instincts as they are often informed by years of experience, pattern recognition, and a sense of what works best for your company. However, relying solely on instinct can lead to biased or inconsistent decisions. To balance empathy and rationale, it’s essential to combine intuition with data-driven insights.

Hiring: When interviewing potential hires, trust your initial impressions but also implement a structured interview process. Hire an outside party, such as a consultant or recruiting firm, to help identify the right questions and process to evaluate candidates objectively. They may suggest questions that you never would have thought to ask that can be imperative for identifying the right fit.

For example, if your gut tells you a candidate is the right cultural fit, corroborate this with behavioral interview questions and reference checks that highlight their past work environments and interactions. Asking a reference standard questions will never give you the full picture. It’s critical to ask references to describe situations that reflect a candidate’s behavior and work ethics.

Firing: When considering letting someone go, your instinct might signal that an employee isn’t a good fit. Confirm this by reviewing performance metrics, colleague feedback, and documented performance reviews. This ensures that your decision is not based on personal feelings but on concrete evidence.

Recognize and address cultural fit early

Cultural fit is a crucial factor in hiring and firing decisions. A mismatch in values and work ethics can disrupt team cohesion and hinder productivity.

Hiring: Prioritize cultural fit alongside skills and experience. Create a clear set of core values and use them as a benchmark during the hiring process. For instance, if collaboration and an innovative mindset are key values, assess candidates’ past experiences in team settings and their willingness to share creative ideas. Incorporate team-based interviews to observe how candidates interact with potential future colleagues. At AOA, we’re a people-first company. When there is a strong cultural alignment, we often find we can support employees who may be struggling with performance. These individuals tend to be eager to learn and are open to constructive feedback, which enables us to help them improve and succeed.

Firing: When an employee consistently clashes with the company culture and team members despite support and intervention, it is time to part ways. These types of employees are often the most damaging to a company. When you’re a small team, having a member who consistently clashes with the rest of the team is like throwing a stone into a pond because it can have such an enormous ripple effect. We often underestimate the power of one person in a small team.

Communicate transparently and compassionately

Effective communication is essential when making tough decisions about hiring and firing. Transparency fosters trust, while compassion helps maintain morale and respect.

Hiring: Be honest with candidates about the role’s challenges and expectations, and the company culture. This sets a clear precedent and helps candidates make informed decisions about their fit. It’s important not to create an image of the company that doesn’t truly exist. You don’t want talent to accept a job based on false expectations because that can quickly lead to high turnover.

Firing: When firing an employee, conduct the conversation with empathy and respect. Acknowledge their contributions and the difficulty of the situation. Explain the reasons for your decision clearly. If possible, help them find their next career opportunity.

Letting team members go can be very stressful, especially when the employee was a great cultural fit but struggled with performance. Regardless of your personal feelings toward this employee, it’s important to try to walk away with a mutual understanding that this wasn’t a good long-term fit.

Striking the right balance between empathy and rationale is challenging, but these three tips have proven invaluable throughout my founder’s journey. Keep your company’s goal and mission at the forefront of your decisions. Without the right team, you’ll never get there.

Oriana Papin-Zoghbi is CEO and cofounder of AOA Dx.