How to leave an organisation after 13 years: lessons from ending well
Disclaimer:
This is my journey and everyone else’s intentional or good endings will look different to this. I also had a largely positive experience and circumstance in this instance. I recognise that not everyone leaves roles in this way. As the vital work of @charitysowhite and #notjustncvo show in the UK, it’s clear that too often people experience traumatic ending of role. Civil society has a long way to go in terms of a healthy culture and ending things well.
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I’ve recently closed a significant chapter of my life and tried to do so very intentionally. I’m sharing some reflections on the process, knowing the ‘how’ of change is so often overlooked. While there is lots written about how to start things up, there is less obviously available about how to close things down. I guess this is also part of the closure journey for me too.
Call it over sharing — call it really putting the ending process under a microscope — for the things we ignore need closer attention while we’re still getting to grips with and understanding — it’s offered in the spirit of learning in public. Part of my practice over the last 10 years has been a commitment to living the changes I am working on, knowing that endings and loss a necessary and overlooked part of the (transformative) change process.
I’m telling the story of closure using the six stages identified in the Stewarding Loss ‘Sensing an ending’ toolkit and the blog is peppered with some of the ‘principles for better endings’ too that illustrate my experience. While the Stewarding Loss work is primarily about organisational endings, I found it useful for thinning about ending personal relationships to organisations too.
Pre-decision ➾ How do you know when a decision is needed?
If i’m honest I didn’t really know at what point I realised I was taking the decision to leave a job at Forum for the Future and close a cycle. Leaving my job had been on my mind for years, but not seriously, it wasn’t until early in 2021 there was an intuition and coming together a number of different things. I’m not sure on the order of them , but with the benifit of hindsight I now realise there was a culmination of factors :
- increasing sense of frustration — knowing I wasn’t brining the energy I wanted to, to my work and so wasn’t operating at the best of what I can offer.
- reflecting on the reality of covid and that work had become my escapism from that but not created healthy or sustainable patterns for me personally.
- I was speaking so much about this being a time of change and transformation — but was I really living that out for myself? Ir was i just comfortable doing what i’ve always done, where i’ve done it? The increasing discomfort that I wasn’t living the change I was advocating for others to do, really started to eat at me
- having so many side projects in play the boundaries of work had vanished, these projects were eating too much into the evenings and weekends — wondering what if I put these things more centrally in my life
- tuning into the Great Conjunction that happened between Dec 2020 — May 2021, starting of a new 200 year astrological cycle, often deemed to be turning points for people and societies
Certainly timing and bit of serendipity factor into this too. Reading these things in a list, retrospectively, makes it sound like I had it all together, which it didn’t feel like at the time — more like a jumbled busy mess. My experience has shown me that on a personal level it’s difficult to know when to consider or know when an ‘end’ is in sight.
Taking a decision ➾ a sense of release & relief
Given the culmination of factors listed above, my initial step was to take a sabbatical from work. Just a month, but a physical space away from work, disrupting my usual day to day patterns and behaviours and hoping from that to see things more clearly and objectively rather than be swept up and consumed by the everyday and what you know.
I wanted to use this time to reflect on the last decade of work, which I did and consequently started a process of writing and consolidating the learning from the last cycle of work. I found notes and a loose consolidation from 2010/2011 of the previous cycle of life which I’d forgotten about — but I now realise was almost the opening from the last 10 years. Recognising that we all have our own different cycles of time.
I wanted to ensure that on starting this next cycle I wasn’t just swept away by the exciting new shiny things, but that intention was rooted into the patterns and undercurrents from the work that has come before. This ended up giving a clear direction for where I wanted to put my time and energy and made clear that where I stand to do the work was a choice and a decision I needed to put on the table. Many sketches of options followed, but it wasn’t a straightforward process.
I needed to talk it through with my partner in terms of financial considerations, I spoke to those who have left Forum previously (it is notoriously difficult place to leave as is full of potential and great work) and with those I have been working most closely with about what, by me shifting my role and relationship would mean for the systems changing work we’re committed to and the relationships we’ve built up. There was also a helpful realisation of being part of a rich ecosystem full of potential and that to working outside of the organisation I’d be standing in for so long, means forming and creating new ways to be working or learning together across that ecosystem.
The ‘final’ decision came after a night reflecting and chatting around a fire with Anna Birney followed by spending a night sleeping in a tent at The Quadrangle — a wakeful and cold night it has to be said, but something about being physically grounded that I think allowed for that to happen. I woke with clarity about needing to leave Forum and a surprising sense of relief.
Committing to the ending ➾ Say it out loud to hold yourself to account
I had to tell people — I started with those who weren’t my close colleagues. This was part of practicing saying it out loud and being accountable to them for my decision and not second guessing it either. Fixing a leaving date and writing a resignation letter was easy, but I was surprised at the emotion that came on pressing send. The formality of it made it more real.
I might be retrospectively justifying it but it did feel like my decision to leave Forum was also the natural culmination and close of the 10 year cycle. The writing i’d started took on a new purpose — almost acting as ‘external’ handover notes on a decade of practice. My leaving date the deadline for sharing them publicly so they don’t get added to the mountain of half finished and unread blogs I had been collecting previously.
Designing the ending ➾ Make it bespoke
I found that the thing that took time was really my own story and narrative about leaving and closing — and new learning that really having ownership over the narrative and story is an essential part of any closure process. It felt important to tell people I was working with or had done closely personally before hearing it elsewhere. And I didn’t tell people straight off until I was clear on what my own narrative was — which took longer as there were multiple narratives at play — one that was full of frustration and another that was full future intention of potential. In reality both were true and alive for me and I didn’t want to shy away from that. I didn’t want the present negative emotions to cloud or impact relationships I’m committed to continue or distract from the deep gratitude I have for the organisation I was choosing to step away from.
There were formalities you might expect like exit interviews, hand over notes and conversations and planning leaving celebrations. But i also took some time to design some other, more bespoke elements for me and this cycle, really recognising the role i’d been playing in the organisation.
I think it is easy to assume that when coming to the end of a role, you just give up. But for me this wasn’t about not giving up on the organisation and on what I could do or offer — or just cruising to the end — but almost dialing it up in a final burst of energy. Doing this has helped me to give value to and see the role I’d been playing and not feel like I was leaving and fizzling out but knowing i’d left and had given it my all.
1. Investing in relationships that enable people to thrive
I spent some of my last month having conversations with those I’ve worked closely with — helping to remind me that a core of my practice is about building trusting mutual relationships with listening as the base. Having worked my way through Forum from one of the most junior parts of the organisations to being part of the wider organisational leadership team — it also felt important to offer coaching support or maybe just pep talk for those coming up from similar roles and for whom I see so much commitment and potential from.
Investing in relationships and 1:1 conversations takes time, almost to justify taking the time to do this to myself, I offered a simple set of questions to everyone I spoke to. As well as just being lovely to take the time to chat to people — from the conversations i realise has been quietly and informally supporting and enabling, lightly coaching people across the organisation perhaps more than I had realised.
2. Experimenting with endings in an organisational context
I created two mini sessions as a bit of a leaving offering to the organisation. as well as a way for me to try out in a safe space some of what I have learnt from recent Apprenticing to Grief training. They were sessions to apply grief tending practices in an organisational context, which from what I can see has been lesser explored. Forum had always been a place to experiment and try out new ideas, so it felt apt to leave doing this and felt like a great last space to hold and test out one last new process and topic.
When playing a role in an organisation of developing new ideas, practices and approaches — it can be hard to see the impact and value you have — but someone doing these things helped me to see what I can and have been offering.
Implementing the ending ➾ Be open to what comes
Part of this was being intentional whilst also open and not too controlling of the journey . Welcoming conversations I might not have expected and learning how to let go. Being ready for the ups and downs of emotion that came with the last few weeks.
But without a doubt, the hardest thing was letting go of the potential of what Forum could be/do and evolve into next as I still see so much potential and believe in the work and the people there. To step back from strategic conversations and ideas, to not engage in the early forming of next projects and ideas but letting go. Making space for others, but I know this is going to take some time to fully release.
There was a practical element which helped with this — removing myself from many slack channels, consolidating and deleting inboxes and strip backing things back. Feeling the many layers of sediment that had built up over 13 years reduce down and slowly recognisng that weight this shifting is and unexpected benifit that I hadn’t anticipated.
For me, ending well has been about feeling I said all I needed to, taking time to write and connect and about owning my own narrative/s about this choice and story. But it was the ‘exit through the gift shop’ interview process (thank Jo and Roberta) that really made a different. The intention of Jo’s was to create an equivalent of oral histories for the organisation of people leaving, knowing that so much knowledge and practice disappears as people leave. It felt like a space to process the mass of learning and practice and changes in context — it was so valuable and provided a warts and all space to process the changes I’ve seen and experiences over the years and to distill the headline messages from my time. It ended up being a great way to craft my parting words too.
And I was touched by the creativity that had been unleashed by my colleagues in this chapter ending..…there was an infographic timelines, celebratory drinks and so many lovely messages. But the highlight has to be the choreographed dance videos — seeing other people dancing and moving to one of my favourite songs, moving together, as it turns out was an amazing expression for the enormity of feeling I don’t have words for.
The feeling I had on my last day was this:
‘Thank you all for making the end of this chapter such a joyful process. I feel showered in love and gratitude. Thanks for the mirror to help me see what I really do and the impact it has. I’m so touched by the creativity that has been unleashed over the last couple of days too! I feel seen and valued and so grateful to you all and Forum for being such an amazing place to be working, learning, growing and changing all this time.’
Leaving a role, and an organisation while still in the midst of a pandemic ended up being a bit of an anticlimax with the last day spent working at home. Deleting outlook became the symbolic way of marking the moment. Torrential rain followed as I walked up the hill to collect my son from nursery, but it was the backdrop I needed to let the big tears roll down my face.
The assumption I had of leaving a role after this long would be a feeling loss and sadness but the dominant feeling I’ve been left with has been more like joy and gratitude, the only relate able feeling being that the last days felt like my birthday!
Beyond the ending to new beginnings ➾ an indistinguishable line
I have an intention that part of the work for the next 10 years is about contributing to a shift in the culture and practices around death, loss and endings as part of the process of change. So it’s only apt to have spent time ending this cycle well as this is very much my own personal exploration of living the changes I hope to impact in the coming 10 years and through this next cycle. Taking time to tell the story really feels like an investment and an essential part of that.
Now three months on from leaving Forum, having spent much of that time learning to reclaim the daytimes, do the things I had designed out of my life (lunches with friends, playing tennis,, reading fiction books) as well as doing work I love. I’ve been reflecting on how my experience is telling me it’s a fine line between and endings and a new beginning. How perhaps we are seeing a false binary between a beginning and an ending. Yes there can be material things and indicators that make them distinct, but beginnings and endings are often indistinguishable — as they are part of the same continuous process of life.
Which now leaves me with the questions:
➾So what if we don’t see these things as a binary but part of a continuum, does that open up the potential and possibility for more change?
➾And what, if done with intention, closures and endings are part of helping us feel more alive and the connected to what is most important to us?
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I’m always interested to hear peoples reflecions on writing that is shared. What resonates? whats different to your own experience of ending roles well? Or does this give you ideas about how we can create more space and ways to speak about loss, endings and change?
