Why top performers leave and the career conversation that keeps them

We all know the truth about that line. It’s not you. It’s me. Yeah, it’s always you, right? It’s if it wasn’t you, then the me would figure out how to deal with it. Because when something doesn’t feel like a fit, whether it’s a relationship or a job, if the thing was okay, if it was the thing, we wouldn’t be leaving. So when your team members tell you, ah, you know, it was great. Things were going well.

I just wanted to move on. I wanted to find something else. This, this, this. It wasn’t them. It was the job. There probably was something that you could do now, right now is a moment when we can’t really afford to be losing top talent, so I just wanna say that right outta the gate. It is very hard to find great people. It’s hard to find motivated and committed people. It’s hard to find people that really, really care about the work they’re doing.

Right now we’re at 21% engagement in the workplace, so you got four outta five people that are like, nah, I’m not into this. So if you’ve got that one person and they come to you and say, Hey, you know, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m just ready for something new. It means you missed an opportunity to keep that person. And I’m telling you this now because hey, if that person hasn’t come to you yet, then there’s something you can do.

And if you just lost a great performer and you’re in the midst of hiring, then this will help you prevent it for next time. I’m Leah Garvin and this is The New Manager Playbook podcast, where I’m on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job. And hiring and rehiring and retaining talent, that’s hard hiring new folks. It’s a literal, full-time job between looking for candidates and interviews and and checking references and, and maybe doing trial projects.

Onboarding this takes months of time, takes time from you, from your team members. It’s huge losing a team member. It costs on average of 50 to 200% of their salary to rehire that person. Now the high performers, they’re on the high end of that, right? They’re on the 200%. And so when we have the potential to stop someone from leaving, well we gotta take that. And as I talk to more and more folks that have recently left a job, and I talked to managers that have recently left a lost a good employee, and we’re able to get a little bit of insight into why that person left.

What I’m hearing more and more and more is team members saying, well, I just didn’t know if I had a future on the team. I didn’t really see my, my future in this company, and that is something that is entirely in our control. It’s entirely preventable As managers, what we don’t have control over is where the future’s going, the direction of our industry, where competitors are going. We, there’s a lot of stuff that’s out outside of our control right now.

But what we do have full control over is giving folks certainty that while they are on your team, that there’s a clear path for them, that someone is thinking about their growth. Now, they may not like the path, but I’m not hearing from folks that are saying, Hey, my path was mapped out really, really clearly, and I thought, eh, this isn’t for me. Okay. That’s the, it’s not you, it’s me. When it’s really you. That’s not what I’m hearing though.

I’m hearing I didn’t know what my path was. I’m hearing folks say my manager didn’t really talk to me about it. And, and it’s hard, right? Because we are told as leaders, we’ve gotta, you know, map out what each role is and how it fits into the bigger pu uh, how it fits into the bigger puzzle. We’ve got to talk about the vision and the mission and the strategy and how all that cascades down. And a lot of times, you know, if we’re doing that, then good on you, but sometimes we don’t actually flip this and we don’t explain to folks, well, okay, for your job.

What does that mean to for you in one year, in two years, in five years? We don’t do that step. We, we assume our team member sees that for themselves. And with so much uncertainty right now in the workplace with so much changing, our team members need us to talk about that. They need us to have these conversations. It’s not only about the company strategy, it’s not only about the company vision. People wanna know, ding, ding, ding, what’s in it for them?

We all wanna know what’s in it for us. And when we’re only talking about the company vision and we’re only talking about the priorities and we’re only talking about deliverables and we’re only talking about what’s gotta get done in the next six months, we are missing that anchor that keeps your high performers. And what is that, their career path. And so I might, I might have taken a turn with this one that you weren’t expecting. Yeah.

In the name of the episode, I’m sure. Gives it away. I haven’t thought of it yet, but, uh, I’ll probably give a bit of a teaser too. I probably did give a bit of a teaser. Career conversations are your anchor conversations that show people, someone in this freaking place has thought about where I fit into the bigger picture and where I’m gonna be in the future. And that right there, having career conversations, that is the thing that is going to keep your high performers longer.

It’s going to keep them more loyal. It’s going to show them that, hey, you know, there is something out there for you. It’s going to prevent that conversation that I know we’ve all had with a team member of, yeah, like I, I like it here. I like you as a manager. I just didn’t know what the future was for me. We solved this through career conversations. Now, what are career conversations? Well, these are a one-on-one. I recommend you do it at least twice a year.

Maybe you do it more frequently, but we don’t wanna like overdo it twice, two, three times. That’s good. Maybe quarterly at most. And we’re having conversations with our team member around what are their bigger picture goals? What are the types of projects they could be working on in the company? What are visibility opportunities that they need? We’re talking about the bigger plan. We are demonstrating to them first, we’re paying attention. We’re very present. We’re pay, we’re, we’re demonstrating to them that we are interested in what they’re interested in.

We are demonstrating that someone in this company is looking out for you to achieve those goals and is, is kind of helping chart that course and is demonstrating that they have an advocate. So that they know in in rooms, they’re not in in meetings, they’re not in this manager that they have shared this information with is doing something to help them achieve those goals. And that right there creates so much engagement. It creates so much goodwill, it creates so much resilience.

It creates so much buy-in. This is what we wanna be doing with our team members. Now the beauty of career conversations is not just that we get this information here, that the person’s, you know, like feels like that anchor, it’s, it also really helps us delegate. So it’s this one two punch that both creates alignment and loyalty and also allows us to delegate really meaningful work that’s going to help us scale as leaders. So it is like, these are non-negotiables, my friends.

And they’re not performance reviews. So many times we, in our performance review, we jam in, Hey, what did the last six months look like or the last year look like? What are our goals for the future? And then we’re like, Hmm. So like, what do you wanna do? Big picture? And we talk about it for five minutes, 20 minutes maybe. And, and we don’t follow up again until the next year. That’s why we wanna do these career conversations first, separate from performance reviews, if there’s, you know, an opportunity to do that because they’re not about the just immediate results.

They are about the bigger picture. When someone is hearing their sort of score or how they did, they’re not really open a lot of times for the bigger picture, the longer term thinking, they’re thinking, well, how do I get my rating up or my score up, or the ability to get my bonus or my raise, or whatever. They’re, that’s not the headspace they’re in. That’s why it’s, it’s not the best to combine them. If your company requires you to combine them, then hey, who am I to say?

But I think it’s still worth having a check-in later in the year, a few months later, at least. Saying, let’s talk about some of those career goals. Let’s come back to that. This isn’t about you getting that promotion next cycle. This is about a few cycles out, a few years out because this, again, this is where you are hooking them, not just from one performance milestone to the next one, race to the next. You’re looking at, Hey, what do you wanna become in this company?

And a lot of times you might hear in those conversations, I don’t know if I really want to do this kind of work in the future. I don’t know if I wanna be here in the future. And that might freak you out as a manager, like, well, do I really wanna know that if the person feels that way, they’re leaving? Either way, you, it’s, it’s actually way better to know it because you can actually create even more loyalty and, and, and buy-in by saying, Hey, you know, that’s okay.

It’s okay. You don’t wanna be here forever. Neither do I, you know, while we’re here, how can I support you? What do you wanna do while you’re here? I have had leaders say that to me, and I ended up staying in a team two or three years longer than I would’ve, because I thought to myself, wow, look at all the great things I can develop while I’m on this team. They didn’t get mad that I said, I, I don’t know if I wanna be here forever.

They said, well, okay, that’s all good. Like, let’s see, how do we build up some of those skills? I then was able to utilize those skills to make my current role better, make my current team better. And I really liked being able to do those things that I was interested in, and it made me stay on the team longer. So we don’t have to be afraid of like, what if they say they don’t like this job?

We also don’t have to be afraid of, you know, if we don’t have a clear action plan coming outta the conversation. Let’s see your, let’s say your team member is super, super clear on what they want and you don’t feel like you have the tools to help ’em get there. Listening to their goals, brainstorming, saying, okay, well let me think about that. Let’s come back together soon. You don’t have to have all the answers on the spot, but you’re listening.

And that’s why I said the biggest thing, the biggest retention driver around this. Is your team member has shared their goal with you, who is as their manager in a, in a position of more power and authority and influence, and they’ve shared it, and now they know somebody that is, like I said, in a position of more authority and influence and power. That person has more of a shot, more of an opportunity of helping them accomplish that goal.

So just doing that. Then following up proactively or saying, Hey, a couple weeks later, I was thinking about our conversation and I found this project that you could take on. Wow. Now I know I didn’t just share and I wasn’t just lip service, but my manager thought about it. They care. They want me to help. They want me to achieve that thing that I, it’s really important to me. Wow, I’m sticking around. There is something here for me.

You see what I’m saying? Our team members form a belief. There’s nothing here for me. When no one has done anything to contradict that belief, but this is a perception and when anybody has a perception, new information, we would hope will shift that. Right. New information. This conversation you following up, you identifying a couple projects, maybe a visibility opportunity. This can shift that perception. That’s what we’re dealing with this perception of, there’s nothing here for me.

I don’t have a path. No one cares about me. No one sees what I’m doing. We have that entire thing in our control. We can shift that by doing these simple things, and it all starts with career conversations. Now, I mentioned the delegating piece as well because we also feel as a team member, there’s something there for us when we’re getting opportunities to grow and stretch and take on new op and new challenges. When we’re put our, when, when we’re put in front of leaders we maybe haven’t talked to before or visibility opportunities or we have professional development opportunities, all of these things also show us, Hey, there is more for me at this company than just this one role.

I’m doing this one task and performing. So the delegating big projects, which we know what is meaningful to your team member by having these conversations. We know that. Once we do know that we can start exposing them to different things. Hey, you’re interested in breaking into this new team, kind of across the company. Let’s have you sit on, in, on some of these cross-functional meetings where you can see the kinds of projects they take on, or you wanna change roles.

You work in ops right now and you wanna get involved in marketing. Okay, well, why don’t you, you know, shadow a marketing person for a day and kind of see what the kinds of things that they do, right? So it, it just gives you this huge amount of visibility into opportunities. You can expose that person to. Then when you have new things come up and they’re on your plate, the more you’re able to delegate those or bring them into the fold when they’re aligned to these goals.

The more you’re showing your team members, literally somebody in that has influence over your career is looking for opportunities for you. Not only that, I’m actually offloading cool opportunities that came to me onto you, and when we do that as managers. We’ve gotta first tune into some abundance mindset. We can’t be in a scarcity like, oh, if I hand off this cool project, nothing else is left for me. Or What are people gonna think I do all day?

This comes from that confidence as a manager that there’s more to come. So if that’s something you’re dealing with, I’m just putting a pin in that. I will talk about that in the future. We can’t get trapped in not wanting to delegate or not wanting to have the career conversations because we might hear something we don’t know how to answer. We might get a project that we don’t actually want to delegate. I’m not saying you have to delegate everything, but if something is super aligned to a goal your team member has, and it’s something that you could hand off, it is a good candidate and you’ve just gotta believe there’s more coming your way.

The reason, again, that I bring this up is that sometimes we’re avoiding these things. We say it’s ’cause we don’t have time. We say, I don’t have time for another one-on-one. I can’t have a career conversation. We don’t, no one has time to stop, but it’s actually, we’re kind of avoiding things that we don’t wanna deal with. So I, I, you know, I just have to call it out because it is, when we start to identify, is it really time versus something I don’t really wanna deal with.

We know that now we can, we realize, okay, well actually I just needed to learn how to deal with questions I can’t answer, or I need to really deal with how to make sure that I know what to focus on when I’ve delegated stuff. But the truth is. None of this matters if you’ve lost your high performers because they don’t know where their role is going or they don’t see a future for themselves. That, my friends, is worse than being in that career conversation and listing their goals and saying there, there really isn’t anything there for them.

And having to have that conversation or having that realization there. It is not worse to be in the delegating. Situation and having handed something off and been like, oh, that that was a project I really would’ve wanted to do, but your high performer crushes it and they love it. That’s, see that’s a better situation. Losing your good people. We can’t afford it right now. We can’t afford it. There is so much pressure on us as leaders to be performing.

There’s so much pressure on us as leaders to be doing more with less. We are not getting backfills right now. We are not getting new headcount right now. We are not getting budgets to hire in new areas right now, many of us, right? And so the be the most important thing we gotta do is to keep the people that are helping us deliver and helping us hit those results and helping us do more with less. That’s the most important thing we can do in the career conversation.

It answers the question. The biggest thing that I’m seeing of why people are leaving right now, that I don’t feel like there’s anything there for me. When we answer that question, this is what’s there for you. Your team member can decide, is that what I wanna do or is it not what I wanna do? And if it’s not what they wanted, that’s okay, but we never want someone to leave because of the uncertainty. That’s the part that we can solve.

That’s what career conversations give you. And if you want more around career conversations, all right, I got so many resources for you, but primarily the New Manager Playbook, right? I talk about career conversations. I give you a template in the book, so definitely check that out. And the New Manager Playbook program, if this is a challenge within your company, within your broader team, this is a core piece of the New Manager Playbook digital program. And again, we have exercises and worksheets to really help you get through this because this is something that is driving high turnover and this is solvable, so you know where to get a copy of the book, Amazon, or on my website.

But if you wanna solve this at scale, because we really have to be solving this at scale. Check out the new Manager Playbook program. Write to [email protected] and we’ll get you set up for a demo and you can figure out, okay, how do I bring this to my team? How do I solve the career conversation issues? How do I solve the delegating challenges, the one-on-one challenges? All of those things are things we cover in depth. In the New Manager Playbook Digital program because we wanted something out there to help train managers at scale in a way that was engaging, a way that was time efficient, in a way that really gave them the tools that they need.

Hello, at leo gar.com, we’ll get you set up with everything you need. And again, it’s a meeting that you need to be having more than once a year. Routinely. Get to know folks goals, get to know their aspirations, and start to map that path out. This is not something that has to be a question. We should all know what, what is in store for us, even if there’s a lot of unknowns, who is looking out for us and our teams?

And you know what the answer is, it’s the manager. So you have to show your team members that you really are in the career conversations. That’s the way to do it. See you next time.