Loss

Beingaleader means you will always have to deal with loss. I’ve talked about this previously (https://beingaleader.blog/2020/12/08/loss/) but today I’d like to focus on personnel loss.

Beingaleader means that people with join your team and leave your team. That can be hard. It can be abrupt. It can be devastating at times. It can have ripple effects that you don’t even know about yet. But it will happen. Inevitably.

The point is that some will go for their reasons (legitimate or not) and some will go for your reasons. You can mitigate some of this by creating a culture that values people, values their time and values their contribution to the efforts. You can’t mitigate people moving. But you can try to mitigate people leaving for the wrong reasons. Hurt feelings. Being misunderstood. Or being undervalued. These are all legitimate reasons that personnel leave but your job is to try and limit that kind of loss by creating an atmosphere where people want to stay.

But sometimes it happens no matter what. How do you limit the impact? First, you need to spread the knowledge base among more than 1 person when it is possible. This helps to prevent the sudden loss of information that might be vital to a process. Second, you need to limit the damage that might be cause and shore up the remaining personnel affected by this loss. Sometimes, regardless of reasons for leaving, it causes a disruption in others. There might be rumors. There might be ‘water cooler discussions’ etc. Most of the time this is negative talk and you need to find ways to mitigate that impact. Third, you need to do better before it happens again. Create better culture. Create more buy in. Demonstrate the values that you want to permeate your organization to the best of your ability.

Beingaleader means you will always have to deal with loss. Anticipate. Regroup. Move forward.