Why Good Managers Still Lose Great People (Ep. 301)

You’ve probably heard it hundreds of times. People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. it’s been repeated so much.

It’s basically gospel in leadership circles. But there is just one problem with it. The research doesn’t fully back it up, nor does my experience working with leaders who either lose people on their team or with employees who quit their jobs for other opportunities. 

So I felt like it’s time to talk about this. In this video and episode we’re going to flip the script. We’re actually gonna look at what the data actually says and why people quit.

Really gonna examine The real and somewhat nuanced role that managers play. And most importantly, I wanna help managers stop drowning in guilt every time someone walks out the door and instead use these departures 

As fuel for their leadership development, not as fuel to their self doubts. this is of course not about letting bad managers of the hook. It’s about giving good managers a more accurate map and showing them how to hire better, lead smarter, and grow through every single transition on their team.

My name is Ramona Shaw and I’m the host of the Manager Track podcast.

so let’s first start let’s start with the phrase itself. People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Where does this actually come from? most of us in a leadership circle, and most leaders attribute this to attribute this somewhat loosely to

Gallup research and do books such as First Break All the Rules and yes, there’s absolutely data in the idea that bad management drives turnover. Oh my gosh. I mean, I wouldn’t have a job if this wasn’t the case, if companies didn’t know that the voluntary turnover in their organization and the cost that accumulate with this has a, a large degree, has a lot to do with the leadership skills and management behaviors in the organization.

It’s huge and obviously I strongly, strongly believe that every single person who gets promoted into leadership needs to have comprehensive leadership training like the one we provide in the leadership accelerator.

But, but this is not the point here. I’m actually taking a contrarian view to say all that true. And at the same time, what can also be true is that it’s not entirely up to 

the manager. So let’s look at some of this data that supports the statement. you know, employees leave bosses in the first place. A study by DDI found that 57% of people have quit a job specifically because of their manager. 

And I, that is real and we can’t dismiss it. And if I had to make a guess. 90% of those who had someone leave the organization because of their management likely hasn’t gone through comprehensive leadership training and doesn’t take their role as a manager, as a leader.

seriously enough. but here’s what the statistic doesn’t tell you. The other 43%. In that 57%, right? Didn’t leave because of their boss. And even for that 57% researchers from a 2025 peer review study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior found that when they dug into exit data, boss issues almost never appeared alone.

But they showed up in combination with other push and pull factors. Things such as overwork, lack of advancement in the organization, not just by their manager.

Personal life changes and better external opportunities. 

So in essence, People don’t just run away from bad bosses. They also run toward better opportunities, more money, more flexibility, more meaning, and the list goes on. so this old adage that employees leave their boss only really captures the, the avoidance side, like moving away from something.

but it ignores the pull side, like moving towards something entirely. So here is the dangerous consequence of oversimplifying it and creating sort of this mantra that employees don’t leave companies but they leave bosses.

Is that when a manager internalizes that exact statement and then sees every departure as personal failure, one of two things happens. Either they become defensive and protective,

and with that they stop growing or they become paralyzed in a way by guilt that they make poor decisions, either poor decisions in hiring or poor decisions in their leadership. They may actually also really try to retain people who either needed to be let go or whoever ready to move on because they were worried that if they quit, they resign or you have to let ’em go, which when we all know that, when we have to let people go, the rest of the organization doesn’t always know the full picture of all this, and they may think.

That this person, uh, terminated or resigned on a voluntary basis, and so. Then we are worried that the reputational impact is on us, the manager, that other people start talking about us not being good leaders, which is why we had so much turnover on the team. And if you truly believe this, it totally makes sense that there’s a conflict of interest a place

if you’re trying to create a really high performing team, and we realize that we have the wrong people either in the wrong seats or wrong people on the bus in the first place, but at the same time, we also wanna build a reputation of being an effective and strong leader and terminating people

or letting high performers or good people move on will reflect poorly on us if that is truly what we believe. You can see this conflict of interest at play, and what typically happens is that we will protect our reputation first, and hence we will hang on to people that should have moved on. And that is really the problem with disbelief that employees don’t leave jobs, but leave bosses,

it becomes harmful when managers thinks this applies to everyone and it applies to all situations. So let’s look at what the data actually shows, and I’m gonna give you a list of different data points here to really give you full picture.

I hires 2024 Talent Retention Report, surveyed over 2000 US workers, and found the top reasons employees quit that year. So 2024. And what’s interesting and somewhat counterintuitive 

is that toxic or negative work environments was the main reason in 32.4% of, the surveyed workers. so this tops the list. And what it’s reflecting though is culture and the environment, not a specific manager.

Culture is shaped by. Many different hands. Right. In an organization, actually leadership at all in every level, peer dynamics, company policies, historical patterns, yes, a manager can contribute to toxicity, which is a problem, but often, they’re not actually the problem. The culture is the problem, and the manager who wants to do well, can’t fix it alone. Right. They’re sort of like caught in this toxic culture as well, so that the culture and the environment, not the manager, is number one. Number two, with 30.3% with poor company leadership.

Again, company level leadership, not just a direct manager. So this includes the CEO executives and often also the strategic direction of the company that someone may totally not align with a frontline supervisor.

So that first direct manager, someone who’s at the, at the front, often has zero control over this, right? Because this happens at the CEO and executive and senior leadership level. So these two factors were number one and number two.

Now at the third position was the dissatisfaction with the direct manager at 27.7%. Like I said, it’s absolutely there, but it’s third

and that is significant because blaming it on the boss is far from the actual story of what happens in organizations. By the way, poor work-life balance was like landed at 20%, which is influenced by role design, you know, company policy, industry norms, workload allocations, and yeah, sometimes also the manager’s expectations on what is okay and what isn’t.

And then right after work-life balance, is compensation with 20.5%. And this is also important because this too is often outside of direct manager’s control, 

in a recent conversation I had with a client, this client mentioned that they assumed before stepping into a leadership role that their direct manager used to make compensation decisions. And it was only after they moved into the leadership role that they realized.

Actually at my level, sort of that frontline leadership level, you practically have no say over compensation. Do you know the compensation? Yes. But you don’t have much of a say. And so if you are a frontline leader and your employee quits because of compensation, that 20%. it’s really not something that you can influence.

Now, can you work on ensuring that you build employee motivation and that you showcase sort of the mission, the purpose, the growth, and the opportunity, all these other factors that can compensate to a degree for lower compensation. But at the end of the day, we’ve all seen it. If someone is young, starts a family, wants to move, wants to make money.

Even if they like their company, someone else offers the same job compensated notably higher than their current role. it’s likely that they jump ship the days of where someone would stick with an organization for 20, 30 years and have that loyalty, that is a thing of the past.

That’s just no longer the case. 

so that aspect yet again is a factor that managers often have no influence over, and yet is a big part of what makes employees quit.

So final 65 employees reported experiencing burnout and 70, you said it impacted the performance. Burnout is systematic. It builds into how work is assigned.

Then further, MIT research found that job insecurity and reorgs are among the strongest predictors of attrition. And similarly HBR’s research shows that those pull first, pull forces sort of the allure of a new role with more money, better culture, more autonomy, at least, you know, that we perceive from the outside are just as powerful, if not more powerful as the, the push forces, like the things that people walk away from.

and in exit interviews, advancement opportunities are. Actually the most commonly cited reasons to leave an organization more so than the boss issue, the manager issues. The bottom line is that multiple factors almost always converge. When someone quits, they usually hit either a tipping point verse.

Several of these were already sort of simmering and something finally pushed them over the edge. or they were simply pinged by a headhunter and they were open to taking the interview before they know it, they have a new offer on the table that offer, includes a higher compensation.

Their partner looks at them. They might have responsibilities with kids and whatnot, and they’ll sign that offer in order to take care of their family. Has likely very little to do with their direct manager

It’s obviously not that managers don’t matter. They absolutely do, and they make it in their top three list of reasons why people quit.

And Gallup has spent decades studying this. In fact, 70% of the variance in employee engagement across teams is attributed to the manager, 70% of the variance.

So I always wanna underscore it’s not 70%, it’s 70% of the variance of employee engagement. And that’s actually pretty big. Now, what it means is that managers are the most powerful single lever in the organization for engagement.

But what it also means is that engagement is not the same thing as retention in 30% of engagement variants. Comes from a pl. plus the plus managers make up 70%, so 30% of the engagement variance in itself comes from other factors like the individual’s own disposition, company culture, the nature of work itself, external circumstances, you name it.

One more thing. Gallup’s 2025 State of Global Workplace Report actually adds another layer to this conversation. In 2024, manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%. That was the steepest drop of any worker category. managers are burning out.

They’re being squeezed between the executives demands and employee needs with often less support, fewer resources, and the added weight of every. Culture and organizational failure or challenge landing in their lab. They’re the ones who are gonna have to translate this back to employees and then, you know, deal with the emotional work that it takes to get the team on board and answer their questions and be there for them and support and care for them while then also.

Flipping the script and taking the business perspective. And I talk to senior leaders and managing their expectations and advocating for the team while also showing up as a leader, while also demonstrating the business understanding. So, yes, managers shape the daily experience of work a hundred percent.

They can make a decent culture bearable or a great culture. Toxic. They have real influence over recognition, communication, clarity, development and belonging. And what managers genuinely influence is whether employees feel seen, heard, and valued day to day. The clarity of expectations and the feedback loops how workload is distributed and prioritized.

Whether growth conversations actually happen and lead somewhere because they care about it and they keep checking in the advocacy for their team’s needs up the chain, the team culture with their own spin of control, all of that is in the manager’s hands. And all of this can be influenced by the manager, but this is really important. I did not say can be controlled by the manager. I say can be influenced. A manager can set the company’s compensation structure, but they can’t advocate for their team.

They can’t prevent a restructure. But they communicate transparently and sort of try to stabilize morale through all the uncertainty. Again, they cannot create career paths out of thin air just to satisfy the needs and desires of an employee, but they can champion an employee’s visibility with senior leaders.

And that distinction matters, right? Influence is not the same as full responsibility and full ownership. And full control managers do have influence. They do not have total accountability for every departure. And it’s in most cases, and. A not just the manager’s fault, it’s usually a bunch of different things that lead to departure.

The manager may be one of them, and also in many cases has nothing to do with the manager. The departure was because of other factors that were pulling them into a more flexible job, into a, a different career path or somewhere where there’s more opportunity or higher compensation wasn’t about the manager

okay, so now we’ve established that the picture is a bit more complex, right? It’s not as simple if you are a manager and someone leaves, and the first thing your sort of internal dialogue says, oh my gosh, what did I do wrong?

Know that this question is worth asking, but it’s only one question to ask yourself Out of many. Now I’m gonna give you a bit of a better framework for what to do when someone leaves on your team, in addition to knowing. That the statement that employees leave bosses and not jobs is

just not accurate. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider what your part was it, but know that that is actually not what’s happening in the field.

So if you actually find yourself in a situation where someone resigns and you wished they didn’t, right, it’s like, oh, I can’t believe they quit. run a genuine and honest postmortem with yourself.

Do that as objectively as possible without spiraling. Exit interviews are one of the most underutilized tools in management. They’re often rushed, especially in the US where you typically have a two week notice period, and a lot happens in those two weeks. And, the exit interview may take place, may not, and if it does, it might just totally be unprepared and rushed.

It should not be conducted by someone the employee is uncomfortable with or where the data goes nowhere. If you want real signal from an exit, here’s what to pay attention to. Time it right, not the data they give notice. That’s not when you wanna have to exit interview, ’cause that’s when they’re gonna communicate.

Because that’s when they’re gonna communicate that they’re leaving. They probably kind of rehearse what they wanted to say. Give it a few days instead when your emotions have settled, but also the employee’s emotions and everyone around has sort of accepted that it’s going to happen and things are 

A bit more calm. . Then second, use a neutral party when possible. Employees are far more candid when their direct manager isn’t in the room.

But also don’t have that exit interview take place with someone who’s either a complete stranger or someone that they don’t get along or don’t trust. If, you know they’ve had issues with a certain person in HR before, let’s say, and then they have an exit interview with that person.

They’re probably not gonna tell that person as much as they would if they were to speak with someone that they actually trust and care about. The genuine dialogue there and them sharing valuable information is important. They need to know that with them saying is data’s being collected and something is likely going to change and make it better for the people who are.

Still there. If they believe there’s nothing to gain from this and only to lose because they may be burning bridges or it’s gonna get back to the manager that they’re gonna talk about, and then there might not be a good reference going forward, or nothing’s gonna change anyways. They’re not gonna share much.

Then, ask good questions. Like there’s very different questions to ask in an exit interview, and some get you more information than others. For example, when you ask, when did you first start thinking about looking for another job? You might get more insights about that timeframe on what happened during that timeframe, versus asking, why are you leaving?

Why are you leaving? Will often lead to people kind of giving their rehearsed answers. Then listen for patterns, right? in those different exit interviews, one departure might just be, you know, noise, but two or three sighting similar things.

That’s a very clear signal. So if you are a manager of other managers and you get the transcripts or the summaries of those exit interviews, and you start to see that, okay, there’s one person left and they did mention the manager, you know, I knew they had a tricky situation, going on or, or weren’t right quite on the same page.

But then you hear that six months later and the second person also mentioned something similar, do not delay, do not weigh this. The moment to act on it.

So one part in this post-mortem is to gather insights and data from the person who’s leaving. Then the second part is, you know, what are you gaining or learning about yourself and your leadership? And that means to ask some honest questions or ask questions and think about some honest answers such as, you know, what?

What, was there a pattern? What was the pattern in how I communicated expectations with this person? Where did I feel like we might have been off and not on the same page? Did I advocate for their growth and their visibility enough? Or did I let that slip or their conversation I should have had that I delay postponed or didn’t even saw coming, or didn’t even realize were important to initiate.

Were there signs of disengagement that maybe I noticed but didn’t address directly, or I can now see in retrospect, but I didn’t pay attention to in a moment. Did their role match what they were told it would be when they first joined, or did they join for something that actually then turned out to be something different?

Were there other structural factors like workload pay, the growth ceiling that I knew about but did not escalate or not escalate with the necessary urgency?

These are all really good questions. They’re not about guilt or blame. They’re all about your own growth and gaining insights and lessons learned from someone. Quitting,

Now of course, we can’t really talk about the postmortem without also addressing that the exit interview is actually too late, right? Anything we do in a postmortem is good. Lesson learned for next time around, but we can change it in the moment. That person has decided they’re going to leave, they’re going to leave.

What you can do more proactively versus reactively is to incorporate stay, inter use.

And that means to ask your current employees on a regular basis. What keeps you here? What would make you start looking, what do you need from me that you are not getting these conversations, these questions

and, when you have those conversations early. You’re able to sort of pick up on the warning signals that you may be able to influence. Too often I hear someone say like, ah, they quit and they told me why they’re leaving, and I had no idea. That’s how they felt.

If they had only talked to me earlier, it would’ve been so helpful and I could have actually tried to do something about it, but now they’ve already signed with another company. So the answer to this problem and the solution to that is to have these types of stay interviews, these type of conversations early on, and it might feel a bit awkward at first, but when you say like, Hey look, I wanna check in on how you’re doing, so that if anything ever bubbles up, we can have a proactive conversation about it.

And next 1 0 1, I wanna check in with you on the following questions. Give them a bit of a heads up so they don’t feel like. confronted, without any time to prep and then have that conversation. Usually super insightful and a great way to sort of keep a pulse on what’s going on

now, last thing I wanna mention is a departure is also a chance to get smarter about who you bring in next. And this is often a missed opportunity, they may, managers may go back and post a similar chop description. You know, they update a little bit, then they run the same interview process, or they hand it over to HR who runs sort of a, you know, their own process.

And then you might wonder as a manager, like, man. History’s repeating itself here. Why are we seeing the same sort of people come through or the same issues bubble up. 

So on that note, Harvard Business School’s research team has a concept that’s called Shadow CHOP description. So this is not the HR approved, legally reviewed CHOP posting, but it’s the sort of the shadow description, the honest plate English description of what this person will actually do day to day and what the challenges are.

What a great day in this role looks like and what will wear them down, what’s likely gonna sort of make it difficult for them. Every job has that. When you interview against the shadow JD or job description instead of the official one, you might stop hiring for resume and actually start hiring for role fit and environment fit.

this is how it works. use departures to also update the interview criteria if your last person burned out. Ask candidates directly how they’ve managed high workload periods, and what signals they give when they need support.

If that person, previous person left for a growth that wasn’t available. Be transparent about growth ceilings in the role and see how a candidate responds to that. If culture mismatch with a factor, then focus more on those culture fit questions then reflect what your team actually likes and how they operate, not just what you wish it to be or what sounds good.

Sort of aspirationally speaking, um, going back to Gallup research, their studies show that Companies get managerial hiring wrong 82% of the time. So they’re promoting people based on tenure or past individual performers performance rather than actual management ability.

And so the same blind spot exists in hiring for roles below management, right? We optimize for past performance.

We look at what they’ve done before and how much that fits. Just because they were doing well before does not guarantee that they’re doing well right now in this new setting. So keep that in mind.

Review your hiring practice, your hiring process, and your hiring questions. The things that you evaluate in when you have those conversations to ensure that you are truly learning from the person who left, because maybe they were dissatisfied with one of those different aspects.

Ultimately the best managers treat departures like, sort of a re business retrospective. What worked, what didn’t? What would I do differently with the next hire? What did I learn about my own communication style priorities or maybe even blind spots? And when managers receive consistent coaching and development support.

Right through training as well, Gallup found that their wellbeing as leaders jumps from 28% to 50%, and that has a ripple effect on their employees as well. So the investment in your own growth as a leader. Isn’t vanity or self-actualization, it’s a retention strategy for yourself, a career strategy, and it supports retention on your team.

The ROI is proven over and over and over again for leadership development. Okay, so lemme leave you with this. The phrase people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Was written to wake some managers up and to let companies know that investing in their managers and their leadership.

Is a no brainer and a must have and a non-negotiable. but for the individual manager sticking and believing that that is the only truth and the one thing that is always the case for every person that leaves would be wrong. So acknowledge the fact that yes, management plays the fact that it’s not the only one typically, and there are many people who leave.

Although they had a great relationship with their manager and appreciate the manager’s leadership style and their leadership competence, so use it as a lesson learned not to blame yourself or feel bad about it. 

if you found this helpful and you have a friend or a colleague who is going through something like this, right, who has recently lost a good person on their team, share this episode with them.

I think managers really need to be understand this so that they don’t go down a rabbit hole of guilt or self doubt after someone leaves. And with that, I’ll see you next week with another episode of The Manager Track podcast. Bye for now. 

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@ourcova.org forward slash masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at our cova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. 

You can find all those links

In the show notes down below.