The Departure of a Star
Your right-hand person leaves. Now what? (Spoiler alert: You’ll survive!)
Your right-hand person leaves. Now what? (Spoiler alert: You’ll survive!)
Every business person has one. That go-to person. That gunner. The one who always does more and does it better than expected. The one who just gets it. Who understands your shorthand. Who turns your seeds of ideas into gardens of excellent reality. And then one day she says … “Can we talk?”
Gulp. Worse than any breakup you’ve ever experienced, the departure of a work star can feel like a punch in the gut from which you can’t imagine recovering. (Yeah, we’ve been on the other side of it in our past lives.) The good news is you will recover, and if you handle this crossroads right, you can recover in better standing than you were before.
Here’s how:
1. It’s not personal. Everyone deserves a chance to try new things. No one stays in the same place forever. Especially these days. Resist the urge to be anything but happy (fake it ‘til you make it if you need to) and supportive. Don’t say anything about leaving you in the lurch and staying longer. I’ll just seem petty. And never (EVER) say anything negative about where they’re going. Be there for them the way you’d want someone to be there for you. In the short term you’ll help someone you care about, feel good, and set an example. In the longer-term you’ll leave the path clear to work together again. Have a party in her honor. Write him a good recommendation on LinkedIn. And be there for them if ever they should need you.
2. Resist the urge to fill that spot. At least right away. When everything is going pretty well, you develop patterns without even knowing it, patterns that can mask the bigger picture. Use this ripping off of the band-aid as a learning opportunity. Before you jump out of fear, take some time to really evaluate what you need in the role, whether this is even the role you really need, and if there’s someone in the organization with different but still valuable skills who’s dying to help out.
3. Talk to the team. Don’t let your feelings (so. freaking. overwhelmed.) immobilize you. Talk to every team member individually. Put them at ease about coverage. But more than that, take the time to listen. Ask them for their take on the needs for the group. What would they want to see in a new hire? How do they view the role? Bet you’ll get information you weren’t expecting.
4. Get help (without committing). Bring in talent to help you out at this stage, but talent you don’t have to permanently commit to. (Oh, hey!) Help from outside will allow you to keep up morale among a team that may be overtaxed with work (filling a creative role well takes at least six months). We often get called in for this reason at Honor Code. A large retailer lost their head of copy. We came in and made sure nothing was missed and filled the holes. But we also assessed all the existing talent and bubbled up hidden problems we saw, developed strategies to optimize the broken processes, kept up morale and training so the work product kept improving, and provided ideas and leads for permanently filling the role.
5. Psst, consider skipping a new hire completely. These days, some of our clients choose not to rehire a traditional full-timer at all. Apart from the savings on overhead and personnel headaches, they like the flexibility. They can have a single, steady person in the role, but bulk up to three people for holiday or other big parallel projects. For one large, national client, we bring in specialized writers depending on the assignment, and have added senior design talent to help with visual elements too. At first people are itching to get someone permanent in, but often they realize it makes more sense not to. There’s something intangible about having an always-fresh perspective, especially if they’re willing to be on site some of the time to invigorate the team. Plus you can allow key employees to focus on what really engages them, making them more likely to stay. It’s where things are going.
6. Send flowers. Or food. Or a card. Wish your star well in their new spot and share words of real gratitude for everything they did. Our scientific survey (ok, karma) says you’ll sleep even better if you do.