How Do CPOs Know When A Chief Is Thinking of Leaving?

It’s a gut punch every Chief People Officer dreads: the sudden resignation from a senior leader who they’d thought was solid. It’s a reality that CPOs learn to live with, but the costs (in every sense) are huge.

Critically, the signs may have been showing up long before the resignation letter - just unspoken and not easy to see… because Chiefs tend to be skilled at presenting ‘okayness’.

Whilst they were still showing up at ExCo, hitting targets, and saying all the right things… something was a little off:

• they weren’t bringing the same energy to strategy discussions,

• they were that little bit harder to pin down,

• they politely declined opportunities they would have jumped at before.

If you're honest, as a CPO you could feel the hesitation but maybe you weren’t quite sure how to name it. It might even have felt like an inquiry directly with them would have been an overstep.

This is what it looks and feels like when a Chief is thinking of leaving. The trouble is, by the time the resignation lands with you, it’s already too late.

Most Chiefs don’t leave suddenly.

Leaving tends to occur incrementally, and it could be for any number or combination of reasons, related to work and/or to home. It often distils down to a sense of loss in momentum and/or ability to increase impact in the current setting, experienced over time until it becomes intolerable. An exit then becomes an intended move to new and greener pastures.

Chiefs won’t express this out loud because they don’t want to cause drama, they don’t see a path to resolution, or maybe they haven’t fully admitted it to themselves yet.

This is where coaching can be powerful.

When I coach Chief Officers individually, it’s not always about helping them ‘perform better’. It’s about creating a space where they can purposefully self-reflect, better align their ambition with the strategic agendas for the business, and more intentionally influence events around them for the good of all involved.

That re-calibration may include issues within the system that would otherwise go unseen and unresolved, or it may be an internal shift for the Chief themselves, or an expansion of role that had previously not been considered. In all cases, it’s a win for the Chief and a win for the business.

Of course it’s not always the case that staying is the right answer - a well managed positive exit can be the most productive option for Chief and business alike. But even here, the chances of arriving at that positive conclusion are greatly increased with coaching. Far more often, however, coaching enables powerful re-engagement that presents as a boost (and relief) to both the Chief and the organisation they’re serving.

This is the value of working upstream.

As a CPO, you have constant new ‘incoming’ that demands your continual immediate contact, but you also understand the need to be working upstream too - on the things that may not be creating noise now but could be high impact later - be that mitigating risks or increasing outputs.

So if you’re a Chief People Officer and you want to avoid a silent drift at the top, don’t wait for the resignation letter. Invite the self-reflective conversation. Create conditions for personal insight. Open a space to hear what’s not yet being said.

This is what I do. Discretely but powerfully enabling Chiefs, who carry so much, to stay on purpose with themselves and their business - and contribute even more.