The signs someone is about to quit
Hi Everyone,
Gallup asked people who had recently quit who they'd talked to before deciding.
More than a third said no one at all, and the rest mostly confided in coworkers rather than their manager.
Today we're covering the behaviors that show up before that decision is made, plus a ten-minute exercise to spot them in your own team.
The 13 behaviors that predict who quits
Timothy Gardner spent years asking managers one question: what did people do differently before they quit? The answers piled up to over 900 behaviors. Tested against real resignations, only 13 held up, and together they predicted who would leave over the following year.
Those 13 behaviors boil down to three key changes:
1. Effort: Productivity dips. They do what the job requires and little more, and they stop volunteering for extra work.
2. Connection: They show less interest in pleasing their manager, complain more openly, and lose enthusiasm for the company's mission and customers.
3. The future: They avoid committing to work that pays off months from now, and lose interest in promotion or training.
Dressing up for work, a résumé on the printer, and a run of doctor's appointments all dropped off the list. The behaviors everyone expects turned out to predict nothing.
Read this for the complete list of 13 behaviors and how they were tested against real resignations.
Measure each team member against their normal
A reserved engineer who skips the team dinner is being themselves. Your most vocal product lead sitting silent through three meetings is a change.
One change alone means little. If you notice two or three at once, and they persist for a few weeks, it's time to act.
Won't a check-in look like suspicion?
It might — if you suddenly schedule one right after someone goes quiet in meetings.
Fold the question into the 1:1s you already run. Once a month, with everyone, ask some version of "what would make the next year here worth it for you?"
Asked routinely, it reads as investment. Asked once, in a crisis, it reads as damage control.
Try this today
Think of the person whose resignation would hurt most this quarter. Compared with six months ago, are they still volunteering, still pushing back, still committing to work that's months away?
If their behavior has changed and stayed that way for a few weeks, book time with them this week and ask what would make the next year at the company worth it for them.
Go deeper
👉 Timothy Gardner: If You've Got Leavin' on Your Mind (full study) — read this for the complete list of 13 behaviors and how they were tested against real resignations.
👉 Gallup: 42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored — see how fast and how silently most people decide to leave, and what the managers who keep their people do differently.
👉 First Round Review: Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have to Develop Their People — use Russ Laraway's career-conversation format when you want the future question to become a habit.
👉 MIT Sloan Management Review: Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation — read this before assuming the fix is money; pay ranked 16th among the reasons people quit.
Coming up on Monday
On Monday, we'll cover a two-week test for whether your daily standup is worth keeping in its current form.
That's it for this week. Have a great weekend.