When Resignations Get Messy: Strategies for Leaders Facing Emotional Exits

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast. I’m your host, Julianna Yau Yorgan, and this is episode one of two of a two-part series that I’m doing on really messy resignations.

So, you know, usually when people resign from a company, it is because they’re looking for another opportunity. And sometimes, as we know, they don’t always go as planned. planned. So today I’m going to be talking about how to handle this from the position of a leader. So as a leader who is on the receiving end of someone who is resigning, maybe not as nicely as they ought to.

And the next time I’m going to talk about this from the perspective of if you’re doing the resignation, you’re doing everything you can to be as civil as possible. But your leadership team isn’t returning the favor.

So if you’re a leader tuning in I would assume that you are looking at a resignation that’s messy not because they are breaking any laws or any official company rules. Those obviously you need to deal with through the proper channels with your HR team or unfortunately if it’s that bad I would assume you would involve an actual lawyer.

But this is more to do with if they are just being really nasty, complaining about things that did or didn’t happen, whether they’re true or not, with your team, the company, whatever it is, or they are just being really difficult, refusing to do work, refusing to help with transition. How do you handle a situation like that? Because as much as we’d like to have these people exit on semi-civil terms, we know that sometimes people are just so so frustrated that they’re beyond that.

Luckily I have only seen that personally once when I was a leader and most recently I’ve been doing some work with an organization and their leadership team unfortunately has been on the receiving end of one of these nasty resignations. The person we’ll say accused the organization of doing all sorts of things that never actually happened, accused them of not being supportive, of bringing in new people who they weren’t aware of and they felt that they should have been involved in that recruitment process.

And putting aside the fact that they actually were involved, they just declined to actually participate. This person was just causing a lot of havoc for her boss. and coaching her boss through how to handle that was a little bit different because I could feel the frustration that this leader had with, you know, having tried to support this person for a really long time not getting the kind of work that she needed out of this person, giving them a chance anyway. And then being faced with all these accusations that she felt she had to defend both personally and for the organization and for the other individuals that this person was attacking.

And what it came down to is a question of what do you hope to get out of defending yourself in the organization? Because, unfortunately, when a person is resigning in such a nasty way, throwing out all sorts of accusations, just being generally uncooperative, they’re beyond reason, unfortunately. So a lot of the times we hear about how people quit their bosses, not companies, and it’s true now. So the part that we don’t usually talk about is whether or not the experience that they’re having is agreed upon, I’ll say, by everyone or if it’s just how they’re experiencing it. And I say that because in this particular example, I know from actual fact that a lot of what she was experiencing was her interpretation of the situation.

Now, I’m not saying that it wasn’t her real experience, but in this circumstance, a lot of her frustration was due to not communicating with her boss prior. All of these complaints were new to her boss. And really, you know, if the person was reasonable, if the person even wanted to resolve these matters, to remain with the organization, to improve her working conditions, her route would have been to have these conversations in a civil calm-ish manner you know keeping in mind that sometimes these are very emotionally charged and and really try to work through it but she was beyond that so I had to work with this leader to really see okay what what do you want to accomplish by trying to either argue her or put the record straight.

And really what it came down to is she didn’t want it on an official record that These accusations were made and in case anybody ever looked into their records that these were Resolved issues basically. So the plan we kind of devised was to Treat her with as much respect as possible. This is something that I did as well when I had a a nasty resignation on my own team, was just to handle the matter very matter-of-factly, thank them for their service, thank them for their time, and offer what was possible, what was reasonable for helping them off board and wrap things up. And the accusations really, really did still sit unwell, I’ll say, with this leader.

So what we did was make sure that on official file, there was documented conversation between her and the rest of the leadership team to go through the complaints and make sure that they had an open, documented discussion about the complaints and make sure that they resolved them internally so that they could show that they were reasonable people who wanted to make sure that they weren’t doing wrong by their staff. But again, just not having that conversation with the disgruntled employee who Really didn’t want to hear reason didn’t want to have these matters resolved in a professional way.

So that that’s one example, you know, there’s so many more out there But I think for leaders out there who are really frustrated with you know, I’ve spent so much time I’ve given so much support to these people and and they’re still disrespecting me remember that this is their world that you’re kind of part of right now for these emotionally charged, difficult resignations. And your role, your responsibility to the organization is simply to handle that resignation as professionally as you can.

And then obviously, if there are things you’re unsure of, definitely leverage your HR team, they’re there to protect you from a legal basis. And then from a I’ll say more moral perspective, that’s something for you to work through to figure out what is that ultimate objective that you want resolution wise with the situation.

A lot of leaders that I’ve worked with as well are worried about what that says about their their leadership in general to have somebody so emotionally leave the team and just remember that people aren’t watching what that person does, they’re watching how you react. So how you respond to this person, how you handle the situation will speak more to your leadership style than the fact that they’re causing all this drama upon their departure.

So if you’re still listening and this is something that you’re experiencing, I hope that’s been helpful. If you’ve got another type of situation you want to talk about, about resignation, definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. Always love to hear from all my listeners out there and next time I’m back in the podcast for a solo episode, we’ll talk a little bit about what to do when you’re the actual one resigning and your leadership team isn’t taking it well.

Okay, that’s all for this time. I’ll see you later.