What Do You Do If a Team Member Wants To Leave?

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2025. I hope that you all had a lovely break over Christmas and New Year and that 2025 has started well for you.

Personally, I was lucky enough to take a few days out and visit Amsterdam during the break which was fantastic. I then returned to London and caught the flu which certainly wasn’t the plan for kicking off the New Year!

Now, with the new year comes resolutions and fresh starts. It’s the time of year when many of us will look at our careers and think hard about what we want to achieve over the next year and beyond. Generally, this is a really positive thing.

But… let me also draw your attention to a challenge that managers will face at this time of year.

I can pretty much guarantee that at least some of your team will have spent the holidays considering their future and browsing job boards to see if there are any opportunities that they’d like to pursue.

To put it more bluntly, the chances are that right now, some of your team have applied for new jobs over the last two weeks.

Scary isn’t it? 

It’s reality though and something that you need to accept as a manager. We’ll talk in a future newsletter about how to retain your top talent and be as proactive as possible with team retention.

Today though, let’s talk about what you should do if one of your team comes to you and tells you that they want to give their notice and leave.

Stay calm and listen

Firstly, when you have this conversation with a team member and it starts to become clear to you what is happening, it’s very important to stay calm. More experienced managers can sometimes predict when these kinds of conversations will happen, but even the most experienced managers can be blindsided and caught by surprise sometimes. 

So, keep your cool and don’t allow any emotions to take over what you say or do.

Instead, keep things simple and do one thing – listen. 

Remember that this is probably a hard conversation for your team member too and they may have been dreading it and rehearsing what they are going to say to you.

Give them space, don’t interrupt them and simply absorb what they are saying and be present.

Ask questions and get as much information as possible

When the time comes for you to speak, you should take the opportunity to gather as much information as possible from them about their decision and the new role that they want to move to.

This needs to be balanced with not making them feel like they’re in trial! But you have every right to ask fair questions about their decision, particularly if they are someone who you’d like to try and keep and may make a counter offer to.

Even if your instinct is telling you that you’re happy for the team member to leave, you can still take the opportunity to learn about why they’re choosing to leave and what their next opportunity gives them.

A few questions that you may want to ask could be:

  • What does the new role entail?
  • What made you decide to look for new opportunities?
  • Is there anything that the new role gives you that you feel that you’re missing here?

If your instinct is telling you that you may want to fight to keep them, then you need to gauge whether their mind is made up and the decision is final, or if they are open to staying. So you could ask questions like:

  • Is this decision final or are you open to talking about staying?
  • Have you already signed a contract and agreed a start date?
  • What is it about the new role that really interests you?

Whether you want to keep them or not, it’s a good idea to ask a few questions and just be curious. Don’t wander into territory where you’re interrogating them though! Be curious but not too direct or aggressive with your questions.

When you end the meeting, ask them to keep the conversation and decision to themselves until you speak again so that when you do tell others, that you can do it together and in the right way.

Give yourself some space to process the reasons and decide on next steps

At the end of the conversation, say that you’d like to take a bit of time to have a think about everything and to come back to them with next steps. You may well need to talk with your own manager or HR team here as well to let them know and get some help with next steps.

It’s important to do this as quickly as possible and not leave them at a loose end when it comes to what happens next. Ideally, you should say that you’ll speak with them the next day and confirm what the next steps are.

If you’re happy for them to leave and don’t want to fight to keep them, it’s a simple case of agreeing on a few things initially:

  • The date that they will officially leave and therefore, their last working day.
  • The plan for communicating this to their colleagues and clients.
  • How you plan to handover their work to colleagues.

There will be other steps that you may need to take as well, but these are the main things that you as their manager will need to think about.

If you feel that the decision isn’t final and you’d like to try and keep them, then you need to act quickly to come up with a plan and offer to try and do so. I’d highly recommend getting support from your own manager here and potentially, your HR support if you have it.

Before talking about the logistics of this, it’s worth saying that you should think very carefully about whether it really is the right decision for you to try and keep them.

In reality, once someone has communicated their desire to leave and accepted another job offer, it’s hard to go back to how things were. If you do convince them to stay, then it’s usually only a matter of time before they decide to leave again.

So you should only fight to keep someone if their reasons for leaving are ones that you can genuinely work on and overcome, not just in the short term but in the long run as well. 

If you want to keep them, put together your offer

Whilst you’d ideally want to take time for this, it’s important to move quickly. Not just because they will be under pressure to commit to a start date for their new role, but also because whilst this issue is up in the air, it can be a big distraction from your core role which isn’t good for anyone.

As a result, you should put together the essentials of your counteroffer but make it as simple as possible and focus on the key points that the individual cares about. Once you’ve presented this and they say they are open to it, you can then take a bit more time to iron out the details and move forward.

The offer should address their core reasons for leaving and where possible, demonstrate that you’d like to resolve them and ensure that they feel comfortable staying. 

If you’re happy for them to leave, be courteous and make a plan

On the other hand, if you’re happy for them to leave, your focus should be on ensuring a smooth transition of their duties and responsibilities. Just as importantly, you should be professional and treat them with respect during their final weeks or months working with you.

I’ve heard some horror stories about team members being frozen out, ignored and flat out bullied after they have decided to leave a company.

Don’t be one of them.

Instead, make a plan for their final few weeks or months, which should include:

  • A timeline and plan for communicating their decision to the company and their clients.
  • What you need them to do in terms of a handover of tasks, projects and responsibilities.
  • The logistics of leaving such as exit interviews, handing back equipment etc.

Ultimately, the way that you treat people after they decide to leave will say a lot about you as a person and the culture that you want to build. 

I’m not saying that you need to go overboard with making someone feel loved if they decide to leave! But you shouldn’t go in the opposite direction and make them feel like they have made the right decision by leaving because of your attitude towards them afterwards.

Personally, for every team member that decided to leave my company, I’d have a conversation with them and be curious about their new role. I saw every person who left as an opportunity to learn what we could do better moving forward. Sometimes I’d learn something, sometimes I wouldn’t, but no matter what, I wanted them to leave with a positive impression of my company. 

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