It’s interesting how challenges run in themes. My clients span across multiple industries and company sizes and yet, the challenges aren’t that different. This week’s theme was all about people leaving and handling all the things that creates.
In small business, that might mean needing people to work differently or leaning in and doing things yourself that you hadn’t done in years. In larger businesses, that might mean reorganizing coverage or pulling from other teams. Regardless, it leaves a void and the responsibility falls on the leader to figure out how to fill it. In order to do that, it’s important to be in the right mindset. More often than not, when someone leaves, the brain instead goes crazy:
What have I done wrong?
Why do people not want to work for me?
I should have … (Fill in the blank with anything that your brain wants to believe would have made a difference in their decision)
They shouldn’t be leaving.
So the first step is to explore what you are making it mean that this person is leaving. What are you making it mean about you as a leader? About your department or the company? The culture? Their ability to make their own life decisions? How much of that is true and can be proven in a court of law? Here is where you can start to uncover all kinds of stories. Your brain wants you to believe that you could have controlled their decision making by changing your behavior, the way you worked, your decision making, the culture, or their job responsibilities, but none of this is true. It’s not about you at all. Unless you have received specific and direct feedback about your behavior that you’ve been ignoring or resisting, someone else’s life decisions about their work and how they spend their time is not about you. In addition, it is not your role to “save them from themselves” by knowing more about what they should be doing than they do.
The next place your brain will go is into problem solving, with an attempt to find the easiest, quickest path to resolution. It’s the motivational triad – seek pleasure, avoid pain and exert the least amount of energy as possible. Our brain comes pre-wired for this. Unless you consciously decide differently, your mind is going to lead from a sense of scarcity here with thoughts like:
It will be too hard to replace this person.
This project will fail without this person.
Replacing this person is going to take a lot of time and effort.
These are all thoughts of a hijacked brain and it’s important to pull yourself out of it before you start to make decisions. Label the thoughts as just thoughts and scarcity stories, then take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself:
I wonder what I could learn from this?
I wonder what possibilities this could create?
Maybe you uncover processes that are inefficient and can save the company money, you recalibrate the job responsibilities to include things the previous person wasn’t willing or skilled to do, or you bring in fresh energy that positively impacts the team. If your answer to the question is nothing at all or a list of self-criticism, you aren’t ready to go here yet and that’s OK too. Your first goal needs to be getting to acceptance of their decision and the reality this creates for you and the team.
Finally, I will leave you with a reminder that leadership is all about challenges. If it was an easy, comfortable path from point A to point B, the team could probably make it on their own. When you embark on a leadership journey, you accept the challenges that come with it and the willingness to lead through those. Don’t resist them. Lean into them as an avenue to build resilience and strength, both for you and your team members.