Who Needs To Go? Is It You?
The idea of quitting your job isn’t a new one. Nor is encouraging someone to consider leaving. Or even being fired.
It can be shameful because being asked to leave implies failure. So, too, is admitting that you’re in a place that isn’t right for you. Or that isn’t right for you any more. If you leave, that invokes a different kind of shame: an implied judgment on the place you’re leaving.
But the shame, anger, and fear that may be associated with leaving – not to mention the possible joy in getting out, and the guilt that may come with feeling joyful in departure – makes the experience unspeakable. It prevents us from framing departures in ways that are empowering to individuals and healthy for communities.
This month’s Unspeakable topic is: “Who needs to leave your school? Is it you?”
It can be painful, and sometimes unfair, to quit or be the one whose contract isn’t renewed. And sometimes it’s actually, secretly, great.
If we made this truth speakable, would we be more forgiving of people who make career detours, whose progression of titles and schools isn’t an unbroken link of long tenures uninterrupted by family leave, choosing the wrong school, or exploring something new? Would it be easier to let go ourselves, and look back on cycles of work with gratitude even as we leave? Would it change the conversations we have with great people who are ready to move on, but are clearly struggling to say so?
And what would this mean for our students: Would we create different, more diverse and tolerant cultures? Would we be capable of holding space for more varieties of talent? Would we be more capable of seeing and meeting the needs of children who are not on a linear path to a four year college?
Leadership + Design often attracts people to our programs who are at a turning point in their career. We sometimes joke that when people come to the Santa Fe Seminar, they’re probably about to quit their job. (But not always! Please keep funding your employees’ attendance in our programs!)
But my instinctive disclaimer above only highlights the unspeakable reality that people often re-evaluate their professional choices. So let me try again, louder and more honestly, for the Heads of School, Board Chairs, and Principals reading this:
YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE THINKING ABOUT QUITTING. OF COURSE THEY ARE.
People join communities like schools because they are wired to seek connection and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. At the same time, they inevitably find themselves out of sync with the values and experiences of the larger community – sometimes unmanageably so. This tension is “The Paradox of Group Life.” It means that thoughtful people are always seeking to harmonize their values with the values of the group, and their needs with the needs of the group – but some level of friction will never go away. Underneath the question, “is it time for me to leave?,” is a deeper question about how one fits in the world and the kind of community in which one belongs. If we want to retain those thoughtful, purpose-driven people, we need to consider whether we can allow people to grow and purposefully rehire a newer version of one's self without having to actually leave.
Hopefully they don’t all decide to leave, and those who decide don’t leave all at once. But departure doesn’t necessarily mean that anything bad has happened. Departure can be disruptive and tear down the fabric of a culture. It can also be a highly generative act. Sometimes we outgrow our work or become less interested in it. Sometimes the job changes beneath us and we need to consider the fact that maybe we aren't the right person to do that job – not because we aren't good, but because our highest point of contribution is not what is needed in that role.
Departure allows the school to redefine a role or repurpose the funds attached to it. It allows schools to hire for the skills that are needed now, not the skills that were needed then. It provides a potential source of new ideas and energy.
How might you know if you’re the one who needs to go? Here are some potentially clarifying questions:
How does it feel to go to work in the morning?
What good work will you be able to do if you stay? What good work have you done? Is the bulk of that good work in the future or in the past?
Is the culture in line with your values?
Do you respect your boss? Does your boss respect you?
What is the best thing the school could do with the resources you consume if you left, and what does that mean to the students and its mission?
Do I like my colleagues and think they are capable of managing the tension between pushing me and supporting me?
Do I use my job as an excuse to not engage in what I love to do, or do I find ways to bring what I love to my work?
Is the school in a position to execute a planned transition? Have you set them up to manage the transition well?
We’ve been spending a lot of time this year guiding our clients through ecocycle planning, a method for making space for new ideas, practices, and programs by intentionally sunsetting those things that may no longer add value or feel relevant. In that model, there are four quadrants for activities conducted by your organization: birth, gestation, maturity, and creative destruction. Some new practices or programs are being prototyped: they’re in the birth stage. Other practices or programs are well-established, refined, and delivering high value: they’re mature. But the trickiest quadrant to map is creative destruction: what are you ready to get rid of, with gratitude?
When you leave a school, you free up space, time, and resources for the school to create something new. The same is true in your own life: when you leave a school, you free up space, time, and resources for you to create something new.
Leaving the classroom was hard for me, and I didn’t leave for another full-time job. Instead, I cared for my children, who were 1 and 4. I did some freelance writing to help pay the bills. I read a lot. I got on Twitter. I visited schools to see different ways of doing things. And I started mucking about with design thinking. By some measures, it was a highly inefficient period of creative exploration, but the work that I developed was part of the origin of Leadership+Design. None of it would have happened if I hadn’t cleared the space to do so. This is what we mean by creative destruction. And yet, I deeply loved the school I left in 2010. When I left, I cried.
Some time later, I became a Head of School. It was an amazing adventure, but at some point, we had accomplished the work I had embarked upon. The school was ready for a different Head with a different style and a different set of experiences to achieve the next stage of work. I loved that school. When I left, I cried (and then I cried some more).
Just last year, I was on a team that was challenged to find ways to cut the budget. Enrollment had contracted. We knew people would be let go. These are challenging conversations – the decisions you make impact real people. But as I looked at the number we needed to cut, and the number remaining, a thought occurred to me: that is a Greg-sized number remaining, and maybe the school maybe I’m not the right person to be part of what’s next. Maybe the school isn’t the right place for me. I left much earlier than I planned to. I also knew it was the right thing for the school.
(And even in that paragraph I find myself flattening the truth to make it translatable. I omit the doubts I have about leaving, and I simplify the reasons I left. There’s always more to the story.)
People want an uncomplicated narrative of why you left, and these things are never uncomplicated. It can be hard to be honest about why it’s time to move on. There’s so much humanity there, so much messiness. And while we know that life is messy, we also know that most people don’t want to hire a mess. So we keep it tidier than it is.
And that’s part of the unspeakability of firing someone, being fired, quitting, being the one who is left when someone leaves. We have to talk about this.
Someone reading this is thinking about quitting. Maybe they should stay, and maybe they shouldn’t. But that question is a healthy one. And so are both of the answers.
