Retaining Great Teachers and Leadership: Do People Quit Their Jobs or Their Bosses?

This time of year is always interesting and exciting with the personnel shifts we see in schools and districts.  Some people leaving, some retiring, some shifting to new positions, changes in leadership roles, changes in school and district office leadership, etc.  For some districts, it's offers a time to bring in new and fresh ideas, energy and enthusiasm, experience, and different perspectives.  For other districts, it fearful to try to staff schools when you are competing with districts that have a greater competitive advantage.  One of the most important concepts for leadership to understand is “why people leave their jobs.”  This was a topic at the BB & T Leadership, Distinguished Leadership in Practice, and numerous advanced leadership trainings over the years. 

 

The saying that most people seem to use is “People don’t quit jobs, they quit their bosses.”  While this quote has a good degree of truth to it, there’s more to the story and underlying cause.  It’s not the boss as a person many times that pushes the person to leave but instead the climate and outcomes generated by the boss’ or organization’s leadership.  There was an article in the January 11, 2018 edition of the Harvard Business Review that specifically looked at the dynamic of why people left their jobs for other positions.  Of course nobody wants to work for a horrible boss, but employees leaving because they disliked their boss only accounts for a small percentage of workplace transitions in the study.  The study went on to specifically analyze why people left their jobs at Facebook.  Goler, Gale, Harrington, and Grant (2018) said “But our engagement survey results told a different story: When we wanted to keep people and they left anyway, it wasn’t because of their manager…at least not in the way we expected.    The decision to exit was because of the work. They left when their job wasn’t enjoyable, their strengths weren’t being used, and they weren’t growing in their careers.  At Facebook, people don’t quit a boss — they quit a job. And who’s responsible for what that job is like? Managers.”  Managers didn’t necessarily mean the CEO, but referred to those in direct supervision or even temporary supervision of departments and sections of the workforce. 

 

Sometimes change is individually, organizationally, or mutually beneficial when someone leaves.  There is also an organizational cost that goes along with these transitions where the organization can lose a huge investment in human capital and incur a large expense in training someone new to be able to perform at that position at an adequate level.  The biggest question is “how do we retain our irreplaceables?”  How do we keep our top performers and high achievers motivated, growing, challenged, and appreciated?    While money does have a degree of impact, it isn’t the primary reason most high-achievers leave their jobs.  On the flip side, mediocre or below-average employees rarely leave employers that compensate them very well.  In the end, many organizations often take the easiest route of promoting them in hopes they will do less harm in a different position.  Could you imagine a football team where the 5^th string tackle, 3^rd string quarterback, and 4^th string linebacker were the team captains and the waterboy was calling the plays?  It’s not good for a team if the starters and superstars are frustrated and want to leave or don’t perform up to their capabilities.  I don’t imagine a team with this type of approach would be very successful.  Is education really any different?  The simple key to being successful is great teaching and great leadership with high expectations for success! 

 

The Harvard Business Review study worked with a People Analytics team.  They crunched the engagement survey data to predict who would stay or leave in the next six months, and in the process learned something interesting about those who eventually stayed. They found their work enjoyable 31% more often, used their strengths 33% more often, and expressed 37% more confidence that they were gaining the skills and experiences they need to develop their careers. This highlights three key ways that managers can customize experiences for their people: enable them to do work they enjoy, help them play to their strengths, and carve a path for career development that accommodates personal priorities.  If you want to keep your people — especially your stars — it’s time to pay attention to how we design and support their work. Most companies design jobs and then slot people into them, education is no different. The best leaders sometimes do the opposite: When they find talented people, they’re open to creating or adjusting jobs around them to challenge them and to leverage their strengths for the organization.  I’ve always tried to make the most of our teachers and put them in situations that took advantage of their strengths, challenged and empowered them, and gave them opportunities for leadership and input.  One of the biggest frustrations as a leader is knowing you have someone special that can make an extremely positive difference for children and losing them because you weren’t able to design the work to give them opportunities to grow in the way other schools could or when your managers or assistants frustrated the top performers and high-achievers to the point they left.  It’s sad and a travesty for children when either one of these happen.  It’s almost like a player fumbling on purpose or a coach knowingly calling a bad play or kicking your star running back off the team without you being able to get them back. 

 

When I think of the moves I’ve made in my career, I’ve never left because of pay, hating my boss as a person, or because I didn’t like the people that I worked with on a daily basis.  I’ve worked with some great people over the years and I’ve been blessed, at five schools, to work with many people that love students and put doing what’s best for kids as their priority in all decisions.   Every boss I’ve had, I’ve learned something from…..sometimes what to do and sometimes not what to do, but always learned from them.  I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to work for five different superintendents, that each was willing to take a chance on me, and I’ve respected their leadership.  I think very highly of my current boss and my loyalty to him is unwavering.  Being able to work for him and the potential for career opportunities were what got me here. 

  

Why people leave spills out in exit interviews — a standard practice in every HR department to find out why talented people are leaving and what would have convinced them to stick around. But why wait until they’re on their way out the door?  Many times employees face a personal/professional trade off when they take a position deemed as a promotion, ending up sacrificing more time away from family and friends due to driving distance or work requirements.  Exit interviews consistently show that the same employees would’ve stayed if there was an opportunity for some type of advancement or challenge in their current organization.  In education, we often don’t have these opportunities available to be able to keep our top performers.  We don’t have teacher-leader positions that allow teachers to still work with students, their passion, and also leverage the strengths of what they do to help other teachers improve.  There aren’t positions within an organization to prepare people for the next level of leadership and the organization ends up having to go outside to hire instead of being able to do succession planning.  This is often true for both school and district leadership.  Do we have the positions to prepare teachers to be teacher-leaders and instructional coaches/interventionists?  Do systems design assistant principal positions/trainings and other school leadership opportunities to prepare them to be ready to lead a school?  Do we have mid-level district office positions that transition school leaders to be able to successfully take on the roles of district level leadership positions while still taking advantage of their strengths in leading a school?   Research tells us, through both engagement and exit surveys, that lack of relationship/trust with their boss, not enjoying the work, not being challenged, and not having the opportunity for advancement are the major reasons people leave their job for another job……all are a direct result of the organization’s leadership to some degree.  As a school leader, I want to do everything I possibly can to retain great teachers, great support staff, and great managers/leaders.  This is important for all levels of leadership to understand and work toward addressing prior to it being substantiated in another exit interview.