Resignation and Attrition

I had a resignation recently when one of my three Team Leads tendered her resignation. This is the second resignation in my team of 40 this year (for more information on the structure of my team, I had written a posting on Thursday, 10 July 2008 with the title A difficult decision). The company I work with requires a three months notice period. However, she gave a month notice and bought out the remaining two months and with some remaining balance of her leave, she was only required to remain working for another two weeks. Her last day in office was on Tuesday last week.

I quickly recalled one of my senior Service Advisors who was on an extended maternity leave. She agreed to return and took over the job and there was a 5 days hand-over between her and my previous Team Lead. Although this is not deemed to be adequate hand-over period, however I am confident that my new Team Lead would be able to handle and face the challenge.

During a briefing that I had with my new Team Lead, I emphasised the necessity of teamwork, communication and respect from her team. These were the areas that were not adequately provided by the previous Team Lead. The previous Team Lead was strong operationally, however she lacks the depth of leadership, accountability and teamwork skills that are really basic necessity in guiding the team to meet its objective.

I had a one-on-one session with my previous Team Lead two days before she left. As part of the one-on-one session, she provided me with a couple of motivational and formative feedback on me (refer to my earlier posting on types of feedback dated 24 August 2008 Self awareness a key to self improvement and success) . I then provided her with my motivational and formative feedback that covered the areas that I had mentioned above i.e. her motivational was her operational strength and her formative was the requirement for her to build on her leadership, accountability and teamwork skills. This was a unique process that I had never done before and the risk was real, it can turn messy if the resignation was a negative experience on her. Fortunately, it was not as bad as some people would have thought and the session went well.