Last Working Day! — How to manage this gracefully?

There are more books(eg. The First 90 Days by Michael D Watkins) that are written on how to onboard yourselves into a new role in a company. On contrary there are not much of literature on how to exit a company/a role gracefully.

With more than two decades of my professional career, I had found how we exit is critical factor to succeed in our future career. Below are the pointers, I feel we need to take it into consideration

Pic Courtesy: The Guardian

1. Don’t burn the bridge! There will always be highs and lows in a tenure, be it longer or shorter. Work place is all about humans we interact, in fact more than 50% of our life we spend at work. Leaving a lasting & positive impression while you leave is very important.
2. You cant have all people mourning or impacted with your exit! There are certain co-workers who may be on critical side even if you do good job or help them with good intention, don’t boil the ocean to change their perception. Its futile exercise or it may prove to be counter effective. Just be you and move on.
3. Exit interview is not a forum to settle the score! Often people think, exit interview will be the forum to vent out all the issues and conflicts to inflict damage on people they hated to work with. Unfortunately, its not going to change anything. Pls share the feedback rationally and avoid any emotional outburst. Keep all the records clean and ensure the organization you are leaving would love to re-hire in future too (Whether its happening or not, that doesn’t matter).
4. Complete all the handover on time, people shouldn’t struggle after you leave! Don’t try for sadistic pleasure on people struggling with lack of critical info after you moved out. Ensure all the handover topics are covered and all workflows are in place when you leave. If the continuation of operation or a project is seamless even after your exit, you are leaving a legacy!
5. Don’t be curious to know about the work place you left! I have seen many people have curiosity to know the happenings on work place they left for good. Its not going to help you, living in past is waste of time. Move on, try focusing on new role and try to create a positive impact there. Often your ex-colleague will mistake your curiosity as gossip-monger and it wont augur well for your name and reputation in the industry.

Last, but not the least! Don’t cry during your exit… Its a natural process.

“Everything that has a beginning must have an end”