Anyone who’s been in a management role knows the feeling when a top team member resigns. While they move on to greener pastures, you’re left to pick up the pieces.
Recruiting a replacement, interviewing candidates, giving someone new the time to settle in, learn the ropes, and hoping they’ll be just as capable. It’s a big task! When a valued team member resigns, leaders almost always ask the same question: “What could we have done to keep them? “The answers usually point to salary, workload, or career progression. Sometimes they’re true, but often it’s not the whole story.
In reality, most good people don’t leave organisations. They leave roles; and more specifically, the leadership experience attached to those roles. Leaders create everyday environments for their team members, and if they don’t like it, they leave.
The quiet erosion that precedes resignation
Rarely does a resignation come out of nowhere, it is usually the result of long-brewing discontentment. Long before the formal conversation, there is usually a quiet erosion of energy and trust.
It might look like:
- A capable person becoming less vocal
- A once-engaged contributor doing only what’s required
- A high performer withdrawing rather than pushing back
As leadership expert Marcus Buckingham puts it,“People don’t leave companies. They leave managers.”
Leadership behaviours, especially the subtle and repeated ones, shape how people experience their role far more than company policies or values statements ever will.
On paper, a role may look clear, purposeful and well-supported. In practice, it’s lived through daily interactions:
- How expectations are communicated
- How decisions are made (or avoided)
- How feedback is given or withheld
- How pressure is handled
When these elements are misaligned or inconsistent, even strong organisational cultures can’t compensate. Peter Drucker famously observed“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
For most employees, their leader is the culture. And when that experience becomes draining or negative, loyalty to the organisation quietly weakens.
The leadership blindspot
One of the most common leadership blind spots is assuming that no news is good news.
People who are capable, conscientious and productive often don’t complain loudly. They often just adapt and accept the frustration until eventually, they decide to leave. By the time feedback shows up in an exit interview, it’s usually too late and often played down as the person leaving sees no point in giving honest feedback and would rather not burn bridges.
When people feel their growth, contribution or that their voice is being constrained rather than enabled, they begin looking for environments where they can do their best work again.
Why retention efforts can miss the mark
Good people want to feel trusted and valued. They want to be treated with fairness and with clarity. When those needs aren’t met consistently, motivation fades.
Many retention strategies focus on adding more. From incentives and perks to adding new engagement initiatives. This is all great, but it detracts from focussing on addressing the draining cultural leadership issues that already exist, in effect, these initiatives can be more of a band-aid solution. Chronic ambiguity, unresolved tension, lack of honest conversations and feeling managed rather than trusted are just some examples of issues that ought to be addressed if they exist. Roles become unsustainable when expectations, priorities or standards remain unspoken or constantly shifting.
Perhaps instead of asking “Why are people leaving?” leaders should ask “What is it like to work in this role, under my leadership, day after day?”
Leaders who keep good people tend to:
- Address issues early rather than letting them fester
- Be clear about what matters and what doesn’t
- Hold standards without becoming rigid
- Create space for honest conversation, even when it’s uncomfortable
People will tolerate pressure and accept challenges. What they struggle to accept is feeling overlooked, undervalued or unsure where they stand.
When good people leave, it’s tempting to attribute their departure to external opportunities. Sometimes that’s true. Often, though, they’re simply seeking a role where their effort feels worthwhile again.
Rod Matthews