Should I stay or should I go?

Hi, all!

Today I’m trying out something new. For those of you who follow my LinkedIn posts, you may have seen that I put the call out for any challenges People professionals are currently struggling with, and boy did some interesting ones come in!

(Did we really expect otherwise, given the wild curveballs we in the People world regularly have to work with?)

For today’s newsletter, I’m focusing on a challenge that many of us grapple with on a day-to-day basis: How to know when it’s time to call it quits.

Here’s the ask:

“It’s been a year & I’ve hit a wall. Same moans and groans about the Board - white, male & oh so stale! Snr management team work their socks off. Should I stay & persevere or go and start all over again?”

First off, Anon, I just want to acknowledge just how stressful it can feel to even consider leaving a job. Especially for a People professional. Because not only are you tasked with supporting your own job satisfaction and career growth, you’re also tasked with supporting the growth and happiness across the company. And the thought of leaving can feel like leaving your employees in the lurch. It can feel like giving up — on yourself, on your People team, on your leadership team, and on your employees.

After all, isn’t it your job to fix what’s not working??

But the reality is: That’s a lot of pressure for one person. In fact, it’s an unrealistic expectation to put on any one person or team.

Progress has to come from the entire company working together to push forward in the right direction. It requires company-wide commitment, humility, curiosity, and collaboration.?

So am I saying you should go ahead and quit?

Well, it depends.?

While for most employees, this question can simply come down to something like, “Do the company’s values align with your own?” the tricky thing about asking this question when you’re on the People team is that part of your job as a People professional is to help shape the company’s values. Which means that if the company’s culture isn’t what you think it should be, your first step shouldn’t necessarily be to part ways, but rather, to make an honest effort to push it in the right direction.

Not the easy answer most of us wish we had, I know.

While only you can determine when it’s ultimately time to walk away, here are a few things I recommend considering in order to help you make the right decision for yourself:

1. What efforts have you made to improve what’s not working, and could you be approaching these efforts more effectively?

This is a tricky one because it can sometimes be hard to know what you don’t know or view the situation from a more neutral perspective. So let me offer a specific example.

You mentioned a few issues with the board being stale. If I extrapolate from that, my best guess is that the board is causing some of your frustration and dissatisfaction at work.?

Let’s assume that this is in part because they’re pushing back on changes or initiatives you’re asking for. It could be that talking to them feels like talking to a brick wall, where you keep making your case argument, but still: They just won’t listen.

What you might be overlooking, however, is a different approach — one that leans less on making a strong argument, and more on listening to their concerns and finding ways to address those in your discussions.

For example, maybe they’re pushing you to stop growing the team, while you’re pushing hard to keep growing the team. A discussion like that could go round and round for hours without either side feeling heard or satisfied.

But what if, instead, you set aside your expert debate skills, and instead started asking questions:

• Why is it so important to keep growing the team? Is it that you want us to reduce burn?
• If so, how much burn would we need to hit before you felt comfortable with continued growth across the team??
• What (realistic) timeline would make you comfortable while allowing us as a team enough time to find other ways to reduce burn?

The point is to make sure you’re actually talking to your stakeholders rather than talking past each other. If you don’t feel confident you’ve been genuinely listening and working towards genuine partnership vs working against each other, it’s worth testing this out before making a final decision. Because the reality is: If you’re not able to effectively do your part to partner with stakeholders at your current company, chances are high that you’ll run into the same issues at a different company, too.

For more tips on how to ask smart questions during conflict and disagreement, check out our recommended list here.?

2. Is there a willingness from the rest of the company to partner with you on the changes you feel necessary for the company’s success?

Building off the previous section, if you’ve found that you genuinely have made an honest effort to communicate, listen, and reasonably compromise, but your company (or leadership team or board, etc) is genuinely unwilling to partner with you, that’s a pretty big flag.

The hard truth about working in HR is that you only have as much power as your leadership team allows you. Bold statement, I know. But while People teams are responsible for so, so much (recruitment, company culture, payroll & benefits, learning and development… the list goes on), we tend to not have a whole heck of a lot of actual decision-making power.?

Instead, our jobs often fall firmly within the realm of advising and influencing, rather than making the final call ourselves.?

Which means that if you’ve got a team that’s completely unwilling to partner with you or seriously respect and heed your advice, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to impact the change you’re likely hoping to see.

If you suspect this might be the case, my recommendation is to just ask the question directly:

“I’ve tried repeatedly over the past few months to push us in X direction, and I have to be honest: It feels like there’s a complete unwillingness to compromise or move in that direction. It doesn’t feel like I have actual power in my role. Does that track with your understanding of the situation? Are you open to making some of the changes I’m advocating for, or am I pushing at something that’s never going to happen?”

What I love about asking a direct (but respectful) question like this is that you’ll get 1 of 3 responses:

1. Genuine surprise. The person on the other side of this didn’t realize that’s what they were doing or how they were making you feel. In which case, you can begin working towards an improved relationship.
2. A hard, but honest truth. You might learn that you’re never going to be able to make the change you’re hoping for at this company. In which case, painful though that might be to accept, now at least, you’ll have the gift of knowing, so you can walk away with greater confidence in your decision.
3. Waffling. You might get a lot of hemming and hawing, without a straight answer. If that’s the case, and you continue to not see any change, it’s time to consider that the answer is probably a hard truth the person might be too scared to say directly.

3. How much energy are you willing to give?

I can’t emphasize this enough: You need to be honest with yourself about how much energy you are or aren’t willing to put into your job.?

And to be clear: This answer varies from person to person. Which means there is no single right answer.

Some people love making their entire lives revolve around their job; they love an especially hard challenge and the satisfaction of doing everything they can to solve it. Some people see their jobs as a thing they do from 9 - 5, preferring not to exert too much mental or emotional energy when it comes to work. For others, it’s a blend of the two.

Be honest about how much energy you’re willing and happy to put into making things work, and at what point you run out of energy. Because putting more energy than you have or are willing to put in will quickly start to negatively affect your mental, physical, and general wellbeing.

For the record: There’s no shame in honestly acknowledging your energy reserves for work — whether it’s on the high or low end. There’s nothing inherently better or worse about the amount of energy each person is willing to give; it just means you need to find the kind of company that will pair well with the amount of energy you're willing to put in.

And let me just say this: In my honest opinion, work should be fun. Work should not be miserable. A miserable job depletes your energy levels so much faster than one where you’re having fun and enjoy the people you work with.

Not sure how much energy you have to give? Try this: At the start of every day, give yourself a score of 1 - 5 answering the following question: “How motivated do I feel to come to work today?”

If you find yourself consistently rating yourself at a 3 or less, that’s a pretty clear indicator that you might be using up more energy reserves than you’re comfortable offering up.

4. Consider your personal growth goals.

Zooming out for a minute to a bigger picture view, you also want to make sure that staying isn’t holding you back from other goals you might want to achieve.

Will you continue to have growth opportunities in your current role, or will staying mean you’ll have fewer opportunities to grow — both financially and in terms of experience? Are the challenges you’re currently facing such that you’re burning yourself out unproductively instead of exploring now and exciting challenges you’d otherwise have the opportunity to explore in another role with another company?

Is there a better place to achieve the broader goals you have in mind? Maybe your goals aren’t company-specific so much as industry-specific. Maybe you want to help transform your field into a more inclusive and ethical environment for everyone, which means you need to find a company that will empower you to make these changes.

Speaking of growth, I’ll be hosting a webinar on how to turbo charge your HR career next month. Register here.

5. Consider any personal risks you need to account for.

The reality is, not everyone has the privilege of being able to up and quit their job. Maybe your role is specialized enough that finding another role will take an intensive amount of time and effort. Maybe you can’t take the risk of switching jobs right now in the event that things don’t work out — especially in today’s economy. Or maybe you have anxiety issues that will manifest tenfold with all the changes that would come with switching jobs right now.

I’m not saying these are reasons not to leave a job that isn’t working out. But I am saying you may need to be extra thoughtful about your timing and approach.?

Think about the level of risk you’re comfortable with, and lean on a plan that reasonably accommodates that.?

Got a People-related challenge you’re currently struggling with??Share it with me anonymously for a future newsletter feature.