How to Deal With a "Tiger"

The day after the Tiger Woods story broke, I posted the  following question on LinkedIn:

What would you do ifyour top sales person pulled a “Tiger Woods”? Assume the person is married but not fooling around with people from the office…

I was curious to see how managers would deal with this situation. The question was posted before the full extent of Tiger’s exploits was made public.

The question generated hundreds of responses. People fell into three camps:

Fire immediately (20% of responders)

Try to help (20% of responders)

None of my business (60% of responders)

The majority of responders feel that employees should not be judged by what they do in their personal lives. As long as job performance is not affected, an employee’s extra curricular activities are of no concern.

On the other extreme, some people believe adultery is a character issue and equate it to cheating at golf. Since trust is such a large part of sales, can you trust a person who cheats on their spouse?

Many responders focused on the risk of not addressing the situation citing questionable behavior that becomes public may have a negative impact on the company. In addition, other employees may lose respect for management if the situation is not handled appropriately.

Three weeks after I posted the question, Tiger’s wife and  sponsors (except Nike) have left him. Tiger is still in seclusion and has not yet publically addressed themedia.

Much can be said from the old adage “messy personal lives usually spill over to professional lives”.  I fall into the be pro-active camp – if one of my top performers is engaged in risky behavior, I would address it.  Employers make an investment in their people and should take action to protect that investment.

I wonder if Tiger’s sponsors were aware of his activities? I find it hard to believe that a sponsor paying millions of dollars for image marketing would not conduct extensive background checks on a regular basis.  Accenture’s brand marketing revolved around the “Be a Tiger” campaign. How would you like to be the marketing person who came up with that idea? Yikes!