While it’s never fun receiving that dreaded email from a valued team member, it’s bound to happen at some point.

It’s not your fault…probably

People resign all the time, for a variety of reasons:

• They may have gotten an opportunity that aligns closer with their core values
• They might be moving to a different country (if your company doesn’t allow remote working)
• They might be going through some personal challenges
• They may have reached their growth ceiling and feel bored
• Many other valid reasons

or

They are working for a bad organization, or for a bad manager. But let’s assume that it’s not one of these, since you’re reading here and care about your team.

Could you have prevented it?

Sometimes you can delay it, or prevent it. You may have even seen it coming during your 1:1 meetings. If it’s career development related, you could have posed the team member different challenges, or moved them to a different project (depending whether your team schedule allowed it). My guess is that you did try, if you did see it coming.

Other times, the tour of duty has just come to an end. In this case, there isn’t much you can do but support them until the end.

How to act

Unless your team member had a really bad time, and hated every second of working with you, they most likely felt a bit anxious about resigning.

The best thing you can do, is to be supportive and understanding. Keep your 1:1s going, keep involving them, keep consulting them. It’s a very small world, and you will encounter them again in your career (or someone that knows them, or worked with them, or wants to work with you and asks them for a reference).

Practical things to do

In parallel to keeping the status quo (as much as possible), there are a few things you’d want to start doing:

• Tell your team as soon as you can. Give your team members enough time to deal with the news, but also allow them to fetch from the person that is resigning. For instance, they may have had something specific they still wanted to learn from the person that is leaving.
• If you were in the unfortunate position to have a bus factor with the person leaving, adjust your team schedule immediately to get the context flowing to someone else.
• Work with the team member that is leaving and get a brain dump of improvements they still wanted to make. There is a good chance that they have a list of things in the back of their mind which aren’t tasks, and aren’t urgent, but are most likely important.

Learn and improve

Use your last 1:1 as an opportunity to learn. Ask them what you could have done differently, what worked, what didn’t work. Ask them about the organization, what they would change if they were able to, who they think is invaluable, who needs some more training.

People leave, and it sucks. Hopefully these thoughts make it a little easier to deal with.

👋 Ruan – co-founder of Prescience