Duty of Care: Managing Team Changes

As a general rule, changing the people on your team is exceptionally disruptive. If you're removing someone from the team, either voluntarily or involuntarily, then there's work to cover, budgets to revisit, future planing to revise; it's a bumpy road even at the best of times. And layoffs are an inevitability at this point: there is no company I know of that has not had layoffs in my lifetime. Even if you have the best team with the best productivity and best responsiveness, someone somewhere is going to want to "reduce your headcount", aka fire your team members.

So what can managers, especially first-line managers, do to minimize the disruption?

First, don't pretend it didn't happen. Get your team together (if it's possible and it will help, get together with the team member that's leaving) and let them know that this meeting is just for the team, just for the people most directly effected by the decision. Share what information you can about the departure. Stick to the facts and share only what you are absolutely sure you can – there are always things about any team change that you can't talk about, for lots of good reasons. You, as the manager, are creating space; the time to talk about your thoughts and feelings is later. Let everyone else have a chance to talk about how they feel, and make a space for that. Listen to that the team is saying, and don't let conversation wander into speculation. Watching someone depart often feels scary – "Am I next?" – because it feels like a breaking of trust. "You couldn't protect us from this, so were you ever able to do it?" Make time to talk about what the changes will mean for the team, including soliciting feedback on workloads, deliverables, and the like. Make sure that everyone knows who's picking up what loose ends. And if you can, let the team go a little early, to have time away from work to process the grief and anger and fear.

Secondly, no later than the next day, you should be able to report what "The Dip" will be to your reporting chain. The Dip is the loss in productivity and capacity that has just happened to your team. Don't let anyone above think that you can do the same work with fewer people. "At first approximation, our team will process X fewer points/tickets/bugs/customers per hour, which means that our weekly and monthly cadence will be reduced by Y amount." Review the KPIs of the team to make sure they're still capturing what you're trying to capture and what, if any, caveats or asterisks need to be added or removed. This is an ideal time to review with your manager the team OKRs or goals and deliverables, to rethink or restructure if necessary. With very few exceptions, there is not going to be less work after the team shrinks. You want to make sure that everyone who isn't you knows what the impact looks like, so they can adjust appropriately.

Thirdly, don't forget that you are impacted too. Losing a team member can be traumatic, so make sure to schedule extra 1:1 time with your manager, so you can share your non-factual thoughts. You are a human, as human-shaped as the people on your team, and you will need to acknowledge, identify, and process the emotions just as much as anyone else. As Pema Chödrön says, “Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.” Taking care of the team means taking care of the members of the team, and that includes you.