Moving towards a role you really want is one of the more exciting moments in a career, and also one of the easiest to underestimate. When someone feels pushed out of a role, everyone expects them to find it hard. When you've chosen to go, the assumption is that you'll simply be delighted, and usually you are. So the harder feelings (guilt about leaving a team, and the quiet worry about being a beginner again) tend to get filed away.
In my experience they rarely stay there. They come out sideways, usually as a handover document on its fourth rewrite or a late reply to an inbox that is no longer yours. Add the very real pull of wanting to leave your old role in good shape whilst starting the new one well, and it's easy to feel you're short-changing both.
I'm grappling with this first hand at the moment, in the middle of an internal move I'm genuinely excited about, and it has reminded me that good intentions only get you so far. Leaving well also needs some structure, and it helps to think about it in stages: before you move, whilst you're moving, and in your first few days in the new role.
Before you move, decide what finished looks like
Without a clear definition of done, your old role will expand into every gap you give it. So write down the things that need to be true for you to feel you've left well, and keep the list short enough that you could genuinely finish it.
Then look at the people as well as the tasks. Most handover plans are task lists, yet it's the relationships you'll still be living with in six months. Think about who deserves to hear about the move from you directly, who is inheriting your work, and who helped you get here and is owed a proper thank you.
It also helps to agree a cut-off date with your old and new manager, ideally in the same conversation. That protects you from drifting, and it gives everyone permission to stop asking.
Finally, make time to end well for yourself as well as for everyone else. Every transition starts with an ending, and most of us rush straight past it. Before the ambitions of the new role take over, look back at where you started and write down what you're proud of: what you built, and the people you helped grow along the way. It's a way of tying the role off properly, with a bow on it, so you arrive in the new one knowing what you're bringing with you. Then be honest about the rest, including what you'll miss and what you're quietly relieved to leave behind.
Whilst you're moving, say the ending out loud
A handover document covers the practical side of leaving, and it matters. On its own, though, it can become a very productive way of avoiding the harder conversation, which is naming the ending with the people it affects.
Tell your team specifically what you're proud of and what you'll miss about working with them. Give your successor explicit permission to do things differently. That's harder than it sounds when the thing was yours, and it's one of the most generous things you can say.
Keep an eye on yourself as well. Research on emotion regulation has found fairly consistently that suppressing feelings carries a cost, raising stress and putting a strain on relationships.1 If you catch yourself over-functioning in the old role, it's usually a sign that something hasn't been acknowledged yet, and it's worth asking what.
In the first few days, stop being the answer
Expect it to feel wobbly for a while. William Bridges drew a useful distinction in Transitions between change, which is the external event (the new title, the new team), and transition, which is the internal, psychological process of adjusting to it.2 The change happens on a fixed date, whereas the transition takes as long as it takes. He called the in-between stretch the neutral zone: the old role has gone, but the new one doesn't feel like yours yet. Feeling unsettled there, even in a role you really wanted, is a normal part of the process. It doesn't mean you've made the wrong call.
Old questions will follow you into the new role. Redirect them warmly and quickly ("Sarah has that now, and she's brilliant"), because every one you answer yourself is a small vote for not having left.
It's tempting to prove the move was right by doing a great deal very fast. You'll get further by listening first and asking what people need from the role before you decide what you'll bring to it. The same goes for your own habits: some of what worked in the old role will serve you well in the new one, and some of it you can quietly leave behind.
And put a coffee in the diary with your old team for a month or so from now. The work will be in someone else's hands by then, which makes it the right moment to show that the relationship mattered to you as well.
How you leave shapes how you arrive
However tidy the handover, a move is rarely a clean break. Your skills come with you, and so does your reputation, particularly if you're moving internally and the team you've left are about to become your stakeholders. The way you close one chapter tends to set the tone for the next.
I'm still working on most of this myself, which is rather the point.
A question to sit with
A year from now, how would you want the people you're leaving to describe the way you left?
And what could you do this week to make that true?
Sources
¹ Gross, J.J. and John, O.P. (2003) 'Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being'. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), pp. 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348
² Bridges, W. (2004) Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
