MANAGEMENT
Designing a Departure
The most important job of a leader is to protect those best athletes they’ve curated into a team, even as they depart.
A mentor once said, “people stay at a job for their team.” Over the past year I graduated from two jobs: one because it was time for a new challenge and the other in a nearly 50% headcount reduction.
My first departure was from SiriusXM and Pandora, I had been at the company for about nine years, starting as a UX Designer and growing to a Director of Product Design. It was an incredible opportunity to learn, grow and build out a dream team as I matured from a leader to a manager.
When I decided to seek new opportunities, my first step was to think about what I wanted next for my team. This was a group of amazing handpicked individuals I cultivated and nurtured over the years. I wanted to ensure their personal successes, and for the enterprise, so over six months I quietly started to change my relationships.
First, I handed over the leadership of many meetings to the two leads to start building their relationships with more leaders across the company and provide me an opportunity to mentor from a back seat.
Second, I got the approvals to make each of my leads a manager, setting them up to report into my boss after I departed. This was important, with my departure it was an opportunity for each of them to take on a bigger job with more recognition.
Third, I worked with my leadership to get headcount for both of the new leaders, enabling them to start recruiting and establish their own teams. This was important because one of my favorite experiences as a manager was hiring my first direct report, and starting to think about the team I wanted to nurture.
When it was time I shared my departure plans with leadership and HR. The hardest part was sharing my notice with my team, saying goodbye was not easy. I felt like I did my best to hand over the reins, and set the people I cared about most at the company for success.
I left to join another mission-driven company SmartNews, and had the opportunity to start growing a healthy design organization. During my eight month tenure, I worked to update the design review process, created the first design career matrix, and lead round tables to understand and make steps to nurture the team; I hope that my leadership will help their careers blossom even as my own time was cut short in a round of layoffs last week.
So much thought in Human Resources focuses on onboarding new employees without looking at the organizational change when leaders graduate. I’d encourage you, within your career, to be thoughtful about how your departure impacts the other people who remain- especially direct reports. After all the most important job of a leader is to protect those best athletes curated into a team, even as the leader departs.