Why People Leave Good Bosses

It takes little to no effort to find articles on LinkedIn and the wider press about why people leave bad bosses. Much has been written on the subject and on the effects of working for a bad boss.

I want to talk about the opposite. Something that, perhaps at first glance, makes no sense.

Surely, if people leave bad bosses they should be staying with good bosses in droves.

In the real world people stay with bad bosses for various reasons, they also leave good bosses.

As a boss, a good boss, a leader, you should be doing everything you can to help your people leave.

WHAT?!? I hear you cry. 

I want to keep all my good people.

Sure, we all want great people on our teams.

The reality is that people don’t stay in a role or at a company for decades anymore, or even more than a few years. We all know this, but many of us bury that thought until they resign. It’s like the credit card bill in January - it’s unpleasant and tempting to ignore until the last minute. 

I say that a good leader embraces this. Many of us can talk a decent game about change being good. We need to walk that talk and help those on our teams to change, to grow and be doing everything we can to put their careers on whatever track they’re interested in. 

There’s the apocryphal story of the finance manager asking what happens if the sales manager trains the team and they leave, to which the sales manager replies what if we don’t and they stay.

We’ve all heard that one.

How about this: you might be in the position of training your people to leave your team. Think about it for a minute, you’ll realise it’s true.

It is more than likely your team members will have aspirations that you cannot fulfil. Either you don’t have the head count or what they aspire too isn’t part of your team’s responsibility. Hell, it might not even be something your company needs. 

Real leadership is about finding ways to give people experience that will help them with those goals and trying to find ways to make use of their skills while they’re on the team. It doesn’t have to cost anything, it could be as simple as arranging their schedule so they can make it to a class. 

Have this conversation with your team members. Say to them you don’t expect them to be on the team forever, or even with your company forever. Ask what their long term goals are, not just the 3-5 things you need to put on the annual performance review form. You’ll be amazed at the reactions. I had one project manager tell me she really wants to be a writer. Working with the company’s copywriting lead we got her doing writing adverts part-time. She was happy to be doing something creative, the copywriter was happy to get some help (and I think he liked being a teacher too) and I was happy because she was more engaged with the project management work the rest of the team needed doing. 

None of this is rocket surgery, but you do need to get creative.