Four People Quit in 30 Days. Only One Told Me Why.

I lost four people in one month.

I was in my early twenties and I thought I had it figured out.

Four of seven. Not a department; a massacre. Three of them gave me the exit interview version: "Found another opportunity." "Time for a change." Clean, professional, meaningless.

I was too young and too proud to hear what they weren't saying. I told myself the problem was them.

Then I asked the fourth person a question I'd never asked the other three.

"Tell me the real reason. Even if it's something I don't want to hear."

She paused.

And then she said something I've never forgotten:

"I feel that you like us, but you don't really care about what we think or do. You like us as people, but it's hard to see how you care about us individually."

No anger. No accusation. Just a woman telling her boss the precise thing he'd been making impossible to say.

That sentence cracked me open.

I had a listening problem wearing a leadership costume.

I liked being the expert. I liked having the answers. I liked the feeling of being needed. What I hadn't built, not one piece of it, was a structure for hearing what my team actually thought. No mechanism, no rhythm, no safe channel.

The assessments, the Pulse Surveys, the ground truth methodology I teach now; every bit of it traces back to one team member who was honest enough to say what the other three wouldn't. She didn't owe me that. She gave it to me anyway.

And it only happened because I asked.

Here's where this stops being my story and starts being yours.

Your last three departures, do you know the real reason they left?

Not the exit interview reason, the 2 AM reason. The thing they said to their spouse on the drive home that they would never say to your face.

If you don't know, you're flying the same plane I was flying in my twenties. The only difference is you're doing it with more experience, a bigger team depending on you, and higher stakes if you get it wrong.

One place to start: the Pulse Survey. Twenty questions. Anonymous. Your team answers what they'd never say out loud. It tells you what your exit interviews won't, before the next resignation letter hits your desk.

P.S. Three of those four people gave me polite reasons because it was easier than telling the truth. The fourth gave me the truth because I made space for it. Your team has a version of that truth right now. The only question is whether you'll hear it from a survey, or from a resignation.

Lead Boldly,

~ MW

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