Peter Smith: When Top Talent Leaves and What It Says About You

As I left the building for the last time, my overriding memory is of locking eyes with one of my colleagues as we passed each other. 

He knew exactly what was going on. No words were needed. 

It was an ignominious exit, a dictate from the CEO who believed it best for the company and customers to keep my departure under wraps as long as possible. 

“Let’s tell them you’re going on vacation,” he said. 

After all, there was Christmas business to be done, and we couldn’t risk customers questioning the direction of the company if they found out one of its top people was leaving.   

I recall that moment whenever I witness the different ways companies choose to handle departures. 

Some organizations do the right thing, and others, alas, reveal themselves to be callous in ways they couldn’t begin to comprehend. 

There are myriad reasons why top talent leaves companies. 

Sometimes the employee believes a ceiling has been reached. 

Occasionally, it’s a family business with limited opportunities for non-family members. 

Sometimes it signals a desire to expand their resume by doing things not available to them at their current company. 

And, of course, let’s not forget the elephant in the room—people don’t leave companies; they leave bad managers. 

Like most adages, there’s truth in those words and, I suspect, that might just be the main reason why talented employees choose to seek greener pastures. 

It is impossible to determine the number of companies that hire and promote leaders who are ill-equipped for the role, but there are enough of them to echo one of Warren Buffett’s many great sayings, “When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”

Jeffrey Yip and Dritjon Gruda wrote in “How To Manage an Insecure Leader,” an article in Harvard Business Review’s March/April 2026 issue: “Research suggests about 36 percent of adults have an insecure attachment style.

“The 2024 Korn Ferry report found that 71 percent of U.S. CEO’s and 65 percent of other senior executives experience symptoms of imposter syndrome—the persistent fear of being exposed as incompetent.” 

I’m surprised the research Yip and Gruda referenced shows only 36 percent of adults as having an “insecure attachment style.” 

I would have guessed most, if not all of us, occasionally experience feelings of imposter syndrome.

The negative consequences of poor leadership, of course, can wreak havoc across organizations.

In “Thinking In Bets, Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All The Facts,”  psychologist and poker champion Annie Duke wrote, “When our self-image is at stake, we treat our fielding decisions as 100 percent or zero percent: right versus wrong, skill versus luck, our responsibility versus outside our control. There are no shades of grey.”  

Such polarized thinking is completely at odds with the emotional and cognitive intellect required to be an effective leader and manager of people.  

It also follows that having someone in a leadership role without the requisite skillset and wiring greatly increases the likelihood of poor judgement being exercised in managing top talent and in how they handle key departures.  

Weak leaders often take the resignations of top people as a personal affront, and the prevailing attitude can ignite conscious and unconscious retaliatory behaviors. 

A friend recently shared with me that when he resigned, his boss said they were cancelling his exit interview as they “had more important things to focus on.”   

This guy was a real talent and role model until he decided it was time to move on. 

The dismissive and disrespectful message sent to him—and, by default, to the remaining employees—was an indictment of that leadership and culture.  

Top performers don’t always noisily advocate for themselves. 

They’re often too busy making things happen to call attention to their concerns. 

They reasonably expect that their status, pedigree, and performance ought to warrant the manager having their back. Until they don’t. 

Very often, the first you know of the problem is when the employee tenders their resignation. 

This frequently follows a pattern of their concerns having been ignored or whitewashed with cheesy managerial platitudes and general indifference over an extended period. 

By the time the resignation arrives, it’s too late to do anything about it. 

As bad as missing or ignoring the signals that your top talent is becoming disengaged—a problem affecting four of every five employees, according to Gallup research—mismanaging the eventual departure exacerbates the problem internally, sometimes to the degree that it creates even more employee exits.   

Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of “7 ½ Lessons About the Brain” and one of the most influential researchers in psychology wrote, “There is a real biological benefit when people treat one another with basic human dignity. And if we don’t, there is also a real biological consequence, and it eventually trickles down to a financial and social cost for everyone.” 

Treating departing employees with disrespect has a tendency to reverberate throughout the organization.   

And, very often, the arriving karma can take the form of both killing morale and accelerating the departure of other team members who notice the excuse-making, rationalizations, and even the subtle smears. 

In “Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve” Whitney Johnson wrote, “If you aren't being respectful of the people who work for you, something is wrong, including the possibility that this management curve is the wrong curve for you.”  

While there are dangers in ever pointing to one thing as a leadership panacea, you simply cannot underestimate the value of empathy.  

Leaders with the capacity to switch off their own internal soundtrack long enough to demonstrate kindness and decency for the departing employee, and for what they may have gone through that resulted in them making such a difficult choice, are more likely to handle separations with dignity and professionalism.  

Few companies welcome the loss of their top talent, but their departure should never diminish the work and accomplishments that preceded their decision to move on.  

And, critically, it should never be a license to impugn their character or integrity.    

Their separation is an opportunity to acknowledge, sincerely and appropriately, their body of work and to allow their colleagues to do likewise.  

It doesn’t need bunting, balloons, or champagne, but it surely warrants honest reflection, an appreciation of the person, and sincere good wishes for their next steps.   

Anything less reflects poorly on your company and culture.