One of the most difficult situations that you can find yourself in as a manager is when a key team member tells you that they are leaving. Taking this a step further, it’s not just about their decision to leave and the potential headache that this causes you. It’s also about the knock on effect for the rest of your team.
Some team members simply won’t be affected and will keep moving forward as usual.
But others could panic and at best, worry about how to handle the workload and gaps that the person leaves behind. At worst, it may also trigger them to consider their own options and potentially follow that person out of the door.
So, let’s take a look at a few practical ways that you can manage this kind of situation and come out of it the other side in a strong position.
Don’t panic
Despite how you may be feeling on the inside, it’s important not to panic and most importantly, not to show any kind of panic to the rest of your team. When they find out that a trusted and important colleague is leaving, they may also worry and panic a little, so the last thing that you want to do is make the matter worse by panicking yourself.
Instead, take some time to process the situation and if you can, speak to your own manager about the situation and seek their help in making a plan for what happens next.
Move quickly, but don’t rush
When someone tells you that they’re leaving, it’s important to keep control of the situation as much as possible so that you can make and execute a plan for what happens next. This means that you need to take a bit of time to think about the impact of someone leaving and how you can mitigate that impact.
You want to move as quickly as possible because the chances are high that the team will start to find out about the person leaving (assuming that they don’t know already!) and be expecting you to talk to them sooner rather than later.
At the same time, there is no need to rush into talking to the rest of your team about this and talking to them too soon, especially when you don’t have a plan in place yet, can cause more panic and worry than necessary.
Make a plan
So, take a step back and think about what happens next and what you need to do. You need to think about questions such as:
- Is there going to be a skills gap in the team?
- Is there going to be an experience gap in the team? (This is different from skills!)
- If you’re an agency, does the person manage clients who may now need to be reassured about their account?
- What work or projects is the person currently working on that needs to be handed over?
- Do you have the skills and experience within your team to cover for this person leaving? Or do you need to hire externally?
- Are you going to need to get closer to clients or projects at least in the short term to keep things stable?
- Do any of your current team rely on the person leaving more than most?
It’s worth saying that you may know the answers to all or most of the questions straight away, but the chances are that you won’t be able to fix everything immediately. For example, you can’t instantly hire a replacement or handover projects immediately – these things can take some time.
The important point here is that you need to work out what the actual impact of this person leaving the company is and what you can do to minimise that impact.
I’ll be blunt. For some team members, the impact may be pretty minimal! For others, it may be pretty severe. For the rest, it will be somewhere in between.
No matter what, take a bit of time to think about the impact and start to make a plan.
The benefit here, as we’ll discuss shortly, is that you’ll not only be in a good position to mitigate the impact of someone leaving, but you’ll also be able to communicate this plan to the rest of your team. This is one of the most impactful ways that you can stabilise a team when a key team member decides to leave.
Communicate what’s happening with your team
Once you have a plan in mind, you can start to communicate with the rest of your team. You should do this once you have a timeline from the person who is leaving on when they are actually leaving. This forms a key part of the plan, so make sure you know their final day when you speak with the rest of your team.
As mentioned, do this as quickly as possible but don’t rush it.
The plan doesn’t need to be highly detailed at this point, given that you’ll have to have moved quickly to put it together, but it should be detailed enough to reassure the team that you are in control of the situation.
Call a team meeting and tell them that a colleague has decided to leave and pursue a new opportunity. I’m personally in favour of having the person who is leaving on this call or in this meeting, just so that the team can see that your relationship with them is still good and they don’t start assuming the worst.
Once you’ve told them that the person is leaving, you can communicate what the plan is, which should include things such as:
- When the person is actually leaving i.e. their final day.
- What the plan is for them handing over their projects and workload.
- Whether you plan to hire externally or internally to replace them.
You should do your best to acknowledge that losing a good team member is always difficult, but that it’s pretty normal and that you wish them all the best for the future.
How you handle someone leaving, especially in front of remaining team members, will say a lot about you as a leader.
The final thing to say on this is that you should try to normalise the fact that people do leave sometimes. Whilst you want to retain great people, 100% team retention is simply not realistic and is actually potentially damaging in the long run. So when you are speaking with the team, it’s in your interest to be kind and thankful to the person leaving, but also be clear that this isn’t a huge thing to worry about.
Check in with key individuals
Following the team meeting, you should also check in one-to-one with key members of your team and gauge how they’re feeling about their colleague leaving. You’re trying to get a feel for things such as:
- Whether they are personally nervous about the impact of their colleague leaving.
- If the plan that you communicated made sense and covered everything.
- Their feelings on how the rest of the team may be feeling at the moment.
Depending on the size of your team, you could check in with everyone one-to-one. But if this isn’t practical, just check in with senior members of the team and anyone who you think may be at risk of leaving as well.
If you are worried about particular individuals leaving and “following” the person who is leaving, then take the chance to check in with them about what’s happening and remind them about their own career progression and the opportunities that are in front of them.
This is another reason why personal development plans and someone always having a next step is so important.
Be clear that someone leaving always presents opportunities
Leading on from this, the truth is that any time that someone leaves, they leave behind an opportunity for someone else to step up and progress a lot quicker than they may have done previously.
You want to look for team members who understand this and want to grab hold of opportunities to take on more responsibility and accountability. These are the people who can help fill the gap that’s been left and won’t be looking to also leave, but instead want to stay and progress even quicker than before.
