A veteran in the sales sector has recalled the first time he had to fire a junior and the guilt he felt afterwards. Manish Tiwari is an entrepreneur with 23 years of experience in the corporate world. He quit his job in 2022 – at a time when he was earning ₹50 lakhs per annum – to build his own business in sales coaching and mentoring.
In an Instagram video shared recently, Tiwari recalled the first time he was forced to fire a junior.
Missed deadlines and misdemeanors
The Delhi-based entrepreneur said that in 2005, he was forced to fire a junior named Azhar. He described Azhar as someone who was “young, eager… but reckless.”
“Bombay, 2005. I had just 6–7 years of experience. And I still remember the first person I had to let go,” Tiwari recalled in the caption of his Instagram post. “His name was Azhar. He was young, eager… but reckless. He joined the sales team and for the first few weeks, he tried.”
However, after a few weeks, Azhar’s performance began to slip. His workdays were marked with missed calls and delayed deadlines. Finally, there came a day when a client called Tiwari directly to say that Azhar had stopped responding to him completely.
“To make things worse, we discovered he’d stolen something from the office. Small, but enough to break trust,” the sales coach recalled.
“Office se niklo”
Although it had only been three months since Azhar joined the workplace, Tiwari was forced to contend with the fact that he had to be fired.
“I still remember that moment vividly,” he recalled. “I looked him in the eye and said, Office se niklo (get out of the office).”
This harsh directive was quite at odds with Tiwari’s usual calm demeanor. His team members were shocked into silence. “The entire floor went silent. No one saw it coming, because of the way I usually talk – polite, happy and cheerful. I sat there for few minutes, sinking in everything,” he remembered.
Tiwari said he felt guilty when he saw Azhar’s face, but knew it had to be done. In hindsight, he does not regret his decision.
“He was just a kid trying to figure things out. But I also knew, in sales, your word is everything. You don’t just represent yourself. You represent the client’s trust, your team, your brand. Azhar broke that,” he said.
“But today, I feel, letting him go wasn’t cruelty, it was clarity. Looking back, I think I did right by him,” said Tiwari.
He ended his post by reflecting on what it means to be a good leader. According to him, a good leader is not just someone who is “nice” to his juniors but someone who sets standards. “You don’t grow a business with talent alone. You grow it with people,” he wrote.
His Instagram Reel has received over 7.6 lakh views since being shared online a day ago. In the comments section, many agreed that Tiwari was right in firing an employee who lacked sincerity and stole from office.