You have an exciting work environment...people are running around like crazy, lots of energy and enthusiasm all over the place, and everyone is having a great time...except for one employee who doesn’t “get into that”. This employee is sitting at the desk, quietly doing his/her work. And you notice when you are in meetings, this employee rarely speaks up. Do you see them as a hindrance to your organization? Hopefully not!

Every employer has to deal with staff leaving. Sometimes it’s best for the employee to move on whether it’s for family reasons or because he or she wants to grow professionally. Sometimes, you may find that you have a few challenges going on internally. Nonetheless, as the manager, you should ensure your employee’s offboarding process is as smooth as possible. A successful offboarding can not only benefit you, but the exiting employee as well. Let’s explore a few of strategies that will ensure a successful offboarding- starting with the opportunity to receive feedback.

To remain relevant organizations of all sizes must stay agile in order to respond to market changes. Planning is essential to keeping competitive edges sharp with knowledge leaders, the talent, in the right place at the right time.

As a consultant, I often go to organizations and provide advice and counsel to leaders at varying levels in the organization. For a good number of clients, that advice is at the management level and higher, and I don’t have regular communication with non-supervisory employees. So while visiting a client site a few days ago, I was in the break room getting something to drink, and happened to strike up a conversation with an [non-supervisory] employee about the political primary. We held a pretty robust conversation for a few minutes, and near the end, he looked at me and said, “Who ARE you”? It caught me off guard, and frankly I found it quite amusing. But in thinking back about the conversation, I realized that this is a question that people struggle with all of the time. So it got me thinking about human communication, and what we are REALLY saying when we communicate.