How You Leave Matters
We spend far more time thinking about how to get a job than how to leave one.
I see it often in conversations with leaders, where there is real focus on the next role, the next step and the opportunity ahead, with time spent preparing, positioning and getting ready for what comes next. Very little attention is given to how something ends.
And yet, when I reflect on the people I have worked with over the years, it is often the exit that feels the clearest.
It reminds me of those last moments in a restaurant, where the way you are looked after as you leave, how smoothly the bill arrives and the final interaction on the way out is often what stays with you afterwards.
Work is no different.
The way we close a chapter stays with people, and it is not only about the person leaving. The way a business handles that ending matters just as much.
Because leaving is a shared experience, even if it does not always feel like it in the moment, with one person making a decision about what comes next and a business responding to that decision in real time.
This becomes even more noticeable when the experience has not been straightforward, when the environment has felt heavy, relationships have been difficult, or things have not unfolded in the way you hoped they might.
In those moments, it can be easy to focus on moving forward quickly, to draw a line and shift attention to what is next without giving much thought to how the chapter is being closed.
With a bit of distance, I have come to see that this is where reputations are often shaped most clearly, not in the big moments, but in the quieter ones at the end.
When you’re talking about why you’re leaving, perhaps at resignation or at exit interview, it helps to focus on where you’re going and why that matters to you.
What are you moving towards?
What values does it align with?
What does this next step make possible?
That shift brings clarity and ownership to the conversation. And the same applies when you reflect on your time in the role.
Talk about what you built, the outcomes you delivered and the impact you had on the business and the people around you.
For the business, it shows up in the way someone is treated once they have made the decision to leave.
How conversations are handled, how contribution is acknowledged and how supported someone feels as they step away.
These moments are noticed.
They shape how people talk about the business long after they have gone, and they influence how others watching that experience feel about staying.
Leaving well does not mean everything was positive, or that either side needs to reshape the experience into something it was not. It’s about being a grown up, and being balanced.
When I think about the people and businesses I have respected most over the years, it is often shaped by how they handled these moments of transition, in the way they spoke about each other, treated each other and closed one chapter before moving into the next.
There is something quietly powerful in that. Because whilst anyone can begin something with energy and intention, finishing well asks for awareness, perspective and a willingness to take a slightly longer view.
And when your own moment of transition comes, whether you are the one leaving or the one leading, there is value in asking a simple question.
How do I want this to be remembered? Because the way you close one chapter has a way of following you into the next.
