RWAnswers: Changing Jobs and Maintaining Good Relationships 

“How do I tell my colleagues about leaving for another job while maintaining good relationships?”

Marina Akchurina, independent counsel in her private legal practice, founder and expert in her own online educational school on negotiations AkchurinaOnline and an owner of the Telegram сhannel “Marina Akchurina | Negotiations with the Wolves”:

If we are considering the context of a voluntary resignation and it is important to maintain good relationships, I would suggest following this algorithm:

1. First, directly communicate the fact.

“I have accepted an offer from another employer, I will be working for 2 weeks and as of this date I am leaving.”

2. The second step is to acknowledge the fact that your boss may not be happy and by leaving you may cause some inconvenience.

“I understand that you are not happy with this decision / that the team is short of people right now / that we are working on a big project right now and this news is unexpected for you. But the decision has been made, and it is what it is.”

Tailor the wording to your circumstances.

It is important to be prepared that at this point, the employer may be having some sort of outburst of negative emotion. This is normal. Accept that your leaving may cause stress for the employer. Take these emotions calmly and move the dialog to the 3rd point. 

Also be prepared that your boss can try to persuade you to stay. Think in advance how you will act in this situation. 

3. And lastly, offer your solutions.

“I propose to discuss how I can, in these 2 weeks, make my resignation as painless as possible for the company.”

It is also important to be clear about your boundaries: “I am willing to help you — do whatever you need, train new team members, hand over things, etc. But within the boundaries outlined.” This can be 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a month at the most, depending on what you are willing to do in such a situation.

Olga Fedorova, clinical psychologist at a behavioral therapy center:

Changing jobs, teams and environments can be difficult. Not only will you have to say goodbye to something familiar, but you will also need inner resources to adapt to the new place. 

I would suggest starting with your own analysis of “good relationships” with your colleagues, try to analyze what helps to maintain them in your former place of work. Maybe, for you, maintaining good relationships is having coffee at lunch break, conversations in the office kitchen, discussion of common tasks. Does moving to a different workplace and changing such a routine really make your relationship with your coworkers less good? Yes, it probably can make a difference, but if you want to preserve the relationship, to continue it — there is a good reason to come up with a new shared routine, albeit one that does not involve working together. 

If you are anxious or afraid that your decision will affect the opinion of colleagues about you, and you have such thoughts as these: “they will judge me”, “they will be disappointed in me”, “they will think badly of me and stop communicating with me”, I would suggest that you make a check with reality. Try asking yourself questions: what facts support these thoughts, are they really facts or are they just my assumptions? What are the facts that refute my thoughts? You will likely be able to discover many facts that support or refute your anxiety, which in turn will help you communicate your decision to your colleagues honestly and openly. 

P.S. What complexities and cognitive distortions can be encountered in such reflections: 

1. Personalization — when one takes a wide variety of events personally, personalization makes one think, “it is all about me!”. Because of this, we can often attribute responsibility for the events/behavior/feelings/thoughts of others to ourselves. But the fact is that we are only partly responsible and sometimes, even if we have done everything “very right”, we may encounter unpredictable reactions from others and it will not be because we did something wrong. 

2. Negative prediction of the future — it seems that even the question itself may already contain a negative prediction, but a negative prediction is just our assumption dictated by worries and anxiety. You value your relationships with your colleagues and this is cool, be honest and open, check with what is in the present, and in the present it seems you have good relationships with your colleagues who will most likely support you.