Joiners and Leavers
Have you or someone you know ever joined a team and felt unclear on how best to navigate effectively within the team?
This blog will focus on two of the most overlooked areas in organisations and teams: the impact of joiners and leavers. These transitions in a team’s life-cycle are opportunities for growth, reflection, and re-calibration.
“A system is never the sum of its parts; it’s the product of their interaction” – Prof. Russell L. Ackoff
Teams are much more than the sum of the individual people within a team. When we think of the wider effects of joiners and leavers, we see that it changes the shape, interactions, and performance of the team. Have you been in an organisation where people have joined well or left poorly? What did you notice about the conditions of the team and the environment?
Teams as living organisms
Supporting teams to navigate safer, smoother, and more respectfully during joiner or leaver transitions can have a positive impact for everyone affected with the change. Humans are complex beings, and teams of humans are even more complex. The experiences, preferred communication and collaboration styles, ways of working, ways of thinking, ways of reflecting, and the conditions for team members to work at their best will vary at the individual level. People are not easily replaceable like batteries from a handheld remote. Teams are living organisms and change in the same way a forest changes through the seasons. Given the time, sunshine, weather, and water, we get to see the growth of flowers and grass. Similarly, teams need the right ingredients to grow, learn, collaborate, embrace healthy conflict, feel psychologically safe, and improve with helpful practices and experiments.
- How are you cultivating the conditions of your teams to thrive?
- What is needed to help enable your teams to embrace change in team membership?
- What are the experiences of people when they joined or left the team?
Ways of joining a team
Teams change over time, and one of the key lifecycle moments is when a new joiner becomes a member of an existing team. Just as when someone joins a family, when there is one new member – everyone’s role changes. Here are some ideas that might help improve your new joiner experience, improve their sense of belonging, and create a more engaged team:
| Outcome | Practices |
| Develops self-managing practices and ownership. A smooth onboarding experience, increases alignment and builds better relationships. | Request an existing member of the team to be their buddy, to be there for help or questions. Create an evolving light-weight check-list for joiners to easily follow and add recommendations where needed. |
| Better understanding of the ways of working, the organisational processes and creating human connections across the organisation. | Invite the new joiner to facilitate stand ups to get familiar with their team’s workflow, the work, and learn how team members collaborate and work together. Organise introductions with colleagues to get familiar with the people, processes, and ways of working. Invite the new joiner to update any light-weight existing onboarding checklist to enhance the process. |
| Team cohesion because when people trust each other they feel safe to be vulnerable and have difficult conversations. | Organise a team social, whether it be a breakfast, lunch, or a remote get together. Team socialising helps create better connections, and share stories to learn about each other beyond work. Invite the new joiners to the teams’ existing meetings and forums. |
| Increase awareness of the history of the team and formation of an enriched team identity. By maintaining this sense of identity and connection to purpose we develop a connection from the past into the future. | Facilitate a unique retrospective experience for the person and the wider team where they map how each person joined the team, identify the conditions of the environment when they joined, and share their onboarding experience. Co-create a space for listening to each person, one by one, and becoming aware of the history and values of the team. This session can lead to a strengthened identity and help reinvigorate a teams’ motivation and purpose. |
What practices do you use to shape effective beginnings for our new joiners, and what does it say about your prioritisation and cultural values?
Ways of leaving a team
One of the most difficult scenarios for teams is when a person within a team either chooses to leave or is asked to leave. At first, the team may feel surprised, confused, or in some cases think it was expected. Oftentimes we find that the communication is vague and even discussing how it impacts the team is a controversial topic. Another aspect is the impact on team dynamics when a person leaves or joins. If a proactive leader or the “social glue” in the team leaves, it can either create room for others to lead, or it may create an imbalance in the team and have undesired consequences on how the team performs. We often drift through this period, muddling along. However, we can shape healthier conditions for the team and the person leaving, and anyone else affected by the change by being more aware of this transition.
- What kind of leaver experience is respectful and helpful for our colleague and the team?
- How might we facilitate a workshop or retrospective with the team and help them transition?
- What do we value most about the person leaving?
- What did they bring to the team? And how might we continue to grow what they shared with us?
- How might we thank them for their contributions to the team?
When the leaver process is facilitated with the intention of creating an environment for the team to transition with respect, openness, and consciously creating space for psychological safety to grow, we see vastly richer results for all parties involved. Endings can be painful and have a high emotional cost for teams and organisations when managed with haste, silence, or fear. We have the choice to make a difference to the way teams change shape, especially when people leave or join existing teams. Valuing smoother transitions can result in growing the team space with healthier foundations, and people experiencing a better sense of awareness and belonging.
It becomes increasingly important when there is a difficult leaving, to help the team be aware of the challenges and the gifts that the person brought, and help increase awareness of any shadow consciousness they might develop.
The same is true around the secrecy and the hidden impact that has on psychological safety, trust, and commitment. When this becomes the culture then it can result in death by 1000 cuts.
When you reflect on how you facilitate the process of people leaving your teams or organisations, what secret messages does it send to the people who have left and those who remain?
