Practice Management

Ending the relationship

A reader asks:

“I think it's time to leave my job (where I have been for a number of years) and move on. I don't have anything lined up; I'm just burned out.

“Do you have an (unconventional) advice for how to leave on "good" terms? I want to make this as positive of a resignation as possible. The firm tends to take these things personally.”

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I’m not sure whether my advice is unconventional or not, but I’d try to draw on what we know from relationships in the non-work environment. If you wanted to withdraw from a personal relationship (a marriage?) that you had been in for many years, how would you do THAT?

Here are a few of the rules I’d try to apply:

1. Don’t use your announcement as a basis for bargaining. Once you’ve told the others, don’t go back. (But be prepared for vigorous attempts to get you to stay) Make it a clean break. Set a specific date for your last day.
2. If you don’t want it to come across as personal, rehearse your exact words so that you remove any personal references from them (“It isn’t you, it’s me”)
3. There’s no point trying to re-interpret history. Refuse to get drawn into a discussion of the past, and who could have done what (and to whom) differently. It’s about your individual future not your mutual past.
4. Be prepared to apologize – a LOT. No matter how you look at it, you will be letting them down and causing substantive problems for them. There’s no avoiding that. Don’t try to minimize the real and emotional hurt you will cause.
5. Do everything you can to help them find your replacement.

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 What do the rest of you think? How do you end a relationship ?

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Full post as published by Passion, People and Principles on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).