What to do when an employee tells you they’re thinking of leaving

Your favorite team member just told you, I think in about 6 to 12 months I want to move to New York and live my dream as a Broadway star, whatever. They tell you essentially that they’re going to leave eventually. And it just is a punch in the pit of your stomach because this person is great. They have a fantastic attitude. They’re proactive. They’re getting their stuff done. They bring up the energy and the enthusiasm on the whole team.

And when this person leaves, you know it’s going to be a real loss. But the thing is that person didn’t give their two weeks notice. They told you eventually they’re going to be leaving. And I want you to tune into that because what happens more often than not is we hear that and we think to ourselves, all right, this person’s out of here. It’s not salvageable. And we give up. But the truth is that just like we don’t know if someone who didn’t say anything is actually looking for another job, we don’t know if we have the ability to actually keep that person.

And that’s what we’re talking about today. How to re-engage folks that may be looking for something else if they really do like working with you and why it’s so important not to give up. Welcome to Managing Made Simple, a Real Talk podcast about the ins and outs of leading a team. I’m Leah Garvin, your host, and bring a decadive experience driving team operations in places like Google, Apple, and Microsoft on a mission to make leading your team easier.

From delegating to feedback to one-on-ones and more, each week is a mini master class on making leading your team easier. Whether you’re managing one person or a hundred, everyone is welcome to hang out on Managing Made Simple. So first and foremost, I want to acknowledge how much it sucks to hear that because you had this whole vision for this person. Okay, they’re in this role now. And because they’ve been crushing it in a two or three years, they could take over this thing.

Maybe they’re going to be a manager. Maybe they become your right hand. Maybe they offload a bunch of work from you and you had this whole plan mapped out. So when the person comes to you and says, yeah, in a year I’m thinking this, it kind of takes the wind out of your sail. And it’s completely understandable to be disappointed, to feel like, well, should I even invest in this person anymore? What is this? And I say that first because it is a total natural tendency to think, okay, you want to be responsible.

You don’t want to be hostage to someone that ends up leaving or you have all these systems that you need to get back from them and you kind of didn’t figure that out first. So you want to be smart about it. But I got to tell you that what I’ve seen over and over again is that people’s plans change. And just like people might leave for another opportunity, they might stay. They might figure it out. Maybe in a year’s time you find that there’s a little bit more flexibility in location that there wasn’t before, right?

There might be all sorts of things going on. And when we don’t actually give someone that chance to like figure stuff out and we write them off because they have some goal for themselves in the future in a distant time, like what are we doing here? So if someone is a great employee and you want them to stay, this is the conversation to have that, or this is the moment I should say to have that conversation of, hey, you’ve been doing a great job.

You have been crushing it. I love working with you. Let’s talk about what this could look like. I call this the sit down. It’s the conversation that re-engages your team members. It sometimes is a conversation to share feedback. Sometimes it’s a conversation around expectations. In this case, the sit down is your place to start to say, okay, what could the future look like? Now, I want to be real clear again that your team members that have not said they might be looking for something, or maybe they’re starting a family or they’ve got, you know, they want to live on another part of the country or they’re doing something else.

Just because I didn’t tell you doesn’t mean they have some plan of leaving in six to 12 months or two years or five years, whatever. It’s just, so why are we penalizing the person that told you? And that’s the thing is if you want to have a culture where things aren’t blindsiding you or people can tell you that openly, then that allows you to have the time to actually make a backup plan. So it’s actually a real gift that that person gave you.

And so again, that’s why we don’t want to punish them by writing them off and being like, well, a year, why are you giving me a year? Why don’t you just leave today? Because that person didn’t have to tell you. They wanted to give you a ton of runway. And I’ve been in both situations and it sucks when your manager, you try to be nice and helpful and give a lot of notice and they’re like, oh, you’re dead to me now.

Like, and they start boxing you out and disinviting you for meetings, even though you’ve given a lot of notice. Yeah, I’ve been there. And then I’ve been on the other side, right? Where I gave notice and my manager was super excited for this goal that I had in the future and they worked with me and I ended up staying like six months longer than I would have. So they actually got a lot more time out of me and I did great work.

I wasn’t checked out. I didn’t have a senioritis. I wasn’t like over it because the person was really still invested in me. So when someone gives you notice of some sort, it is not over. If someone gives you two weeks notice, sure. But like if someone gives you a long period of notice, this is a moment where we still want to, you know, utilize them to the best that we can. Now, the thing here though is, I mentioned we don’t want to be, you know, irresponsible about it with every single team member because yeah, someone could at any point decide that, you know, they’re moving on.

We don’t want to have systems and kind of processes in people’s minds. We don’t want to have all of important critical files on individuals’ computers that can’t be accessed. Like this is just basic hygiene of running a business or having a team that’s collaborative. Okay. I’m talking about this, whether when I worked at Apple, we all had to have all of our files on the server. When I worked at Google, it was the same. When I worked in a small creative agency, it was the same, right?

We have to have our files somewhere other people can access them. If someone’s sick the next day and you have a deadline, right? It’s common sense. We don’t want to have things where if we couldn’t get a hold of someone or if they never came back, that the entire system breaks down. And it sucks because I hear that a lot. Like I have business owners come to me and say, I have to rebuild this whole role.

Someone left and they took everything with them. And it’s like, why did you get in that situation at all? Like, sorry, but yeah, no, everything needs to be shared. It’s just so easy to share files these days. Always have things shared. Does that mean you have one shared pooled email address? No, not necessarily. I think there might be, there’s going to be things to hand off and maybe email conversations is one of them that is not something that you’re going to have like full visibility into.

But shared files, processes, tracking sheets, budgets, things that have multiple hands on them, all of that should be in the shared place. And that’s what I mean when I talk about systems. What is the process? I always say process. Everyone gets like, what’s your kind of policy even worse? How do people know where to put stuff? How do people know when to put that thing there? What happens at the end of each day or each week?

That’s a process. That’s a system. At the end of every week, we update the budget tracker and put it here. At the end of every day, we put our working files on the server. We track all of our work in this shared system. That is all I’m talking about. It doesn’t mean you’re introducing a million different bureaucratic things. We always should have the ability to find where things are at. That’s what Snippets is about. It’s a place that you have that bird’s eye view of at the end of each week, do I know what got done?

And do I know what people are working on next week? And do I know what to celebrate so I can say, hey, good job on that thing? That’s all it is. It’s not heavy handed. It’s the lightest touch possible to give you the information you need. And when we shouldn’t realize we need this when someone is quitting, that’s what I’m trying to say here. The person that gave you six or 12 months, that’s awesome they did because you’re like, oh, gosh, I got to scramble and put that together.

But the person who didn’t give you notice and just didn’t come back to work the next day, you don’t want to be screwed by that where you’re having to get their computer and retrieve all their files or maybe not get it because they use their own device. That’s not a situation you’ve got to be in. And that’s part of day one setting up your team the way that is sustainable. So we want to be smart about it.

We want to always have the ability to access the information that we need. But when someone gives us this kind of notice, we don’t want them to feel like, again, that they’re punished for being thoughtful and wanting to let us know. Now, I love to bring the devil’s advocate perspective in. I spent way too much time at Google and working with engineers to not have people always throw in the, but what if this? So I know what you’re thinking.

What if that person tells you that to try to get paid more or to try to get a promotion or try to have some leverage over you? They know they’re a great employee and you felt like really excited about that person. And now they said, yeah, I think in six months I’m going to try to get into the role because I want this thing. And it just doesn’t seem like it’s available here. And that changes your perception of them because you think, wait a second, I thought they loved it here.

And now they’re kind of dangling some thing over me that I really can’t do. I’m not able to give them a promotion this year. I’m not able to pay them more. Whether we’re a middle manager in the corporate world, an HR leader, or a business owner, we all might be on the other end of that conversation and we’re like, I can’t really do anything about this. Or the way they went about it is not how I’m comfortable with that.

They said they’re leaving because of something that I can’t do. That is a conversation that could be a sit down, right? And saying, hey, I appreciate hearing what your goals are. Let’s talk about what’s realistic to do here in this company, what the promotion timelines look like, or what the raises look like, or whatever it is. And here’s where I see you going. And here’s what do you feel comfortable with or what’s exciting to you. And you have a conversation.

And you still show that person, I really value you. I want to make this work. But the way that we make decisions about promotions is based on x, y, z. And it’s not based on this timeline, right? And if someone leaves and it truly was not possible for you to meet their needs, it’s just like a mutual bummer. But OK, we’ll move on. I really want us to never feel like thinking. Never feeling like people are irreplaceable is not really what I’m trying to say.

But you know what I’m getting at? I think there’s fantastic people for a role. And they could be the person that is crushing it and is doing an amazing job. And they may have needs that don’t meet what you can achieve. And I think getting stuck and thinking, if I don’t do this, then I lose this person that I will never find again in my life. If that decision, if the this, whether it’s paying them something or giving them a title or something like that, if that’s going to cause resentment, then your whole dynamic just changed when you agreed to that thing.

So if you have a person that says, you know, I’m leaving because I need this thing. And in that conversation, you’re like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize you wanted that. Let me give that to you because heck, yes, you are crushing it. Let’s go. Then that’s a fantastic outcome. But if you get in a situation where they ask you for something, a raise, a promotion, and you’re thinking, I’m only agreeing to this because I don’t want them to leave.

And you feel like it wasn’t time or you didn’t have the money or it wasn’t warranted. Agreeing to that, you’ve got to be able to agree to that and not resent it. I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m saying it’s tricky. I’m saying it’s hard. I’m saying it might shift the perception of them and it might give them a new standard to uphold. And so if you do that, because I love giving you your advice, if you do that, have a conversation around what new expectations come with the raise or the promotion.

So as simple as, hey, Sarah, having a promotion in your current role is not based on the current responsibilities. I can’t pay that more. I understand that you’re wanting to take on this new thing because it offers you this salary. I think the way you’d be able to meet that would be shifting your role into this, taking on these additional responsibilities. And so this is the way success is measured there. Would you want to shift into that role?

Is that something that you’re excited to do or eager to do, able to do, whatever? That’s the reset. Now you don’t get in a situation where you have agreed to just pay the person more because they made an ultimatum, right? So we can always adjust to these things. We can always be flexible. What I’m trying to sort of illuminate here is how to avoid situations where you got in your own way or made a decision you weren’t comfortable with or couldn’t sustain.

So the first one is writing someone off when they haven’t even quit yet, right? We want to avoid that. Then the second one is when someone asks for something, feeling like I’ll never be able to replace this person ever. If it’s not possible, then that’s okay. And then the last one, as we just covered, is like if there’s a new expectation to be set around a shift, then set the expectation, mutually agree on it, and then boom, we’re good to go.

So I think it’s really important to have an environment on your team where people can share future plans because that is how you reduce being blindsided. That is how you get that another opportunity to get all your systems in order and make sure that you have all the data that they’ve been dealing with, all the handoffs, all the conversation on the client so you don’t get screwed on the back end. This is a gift when someone tells you in advance.

So then it’s about how do you continue to leverage that person, not see it as an ultimatum, and then if there is a need that you can meet provided XYZ happens, then explore it. All right, so someone giving you that long notice, it’s not the kiss of death, don’t write them off, but think through some of these questions and then you will be feeling like you are not blindsided, you’re still in control of the situation, you’re still collaborating through how to go forward.

And I got to tell you, a lot of times that person stays so much longer than they would have if you didn’t handle it so gracefully. All right, see you next time. Thanks for tuning in and I hope this podcast makes leading your team feel just a little bit easier. If you liked this episode, check out my most popular tool for staying in the know of what your team is working on without having to micromanage at leahgarvin.com slash snippets.

And if you’re looking for more support for yourself as a leader or for the team you’re managing, don’t hesitate to reach out at leahgarvin.com. See you next time.