What Happens When Someone Leaves Without Saying Goodbye?

Have you ever had someone in your life leave without a goodbye?  Poof, they were gone?

What did you feel? Did you feel “yeah that is the organism of life, people come and go”? Did you feel “good riddance, they were a jerk”? Did you feel “what did I do wrong that they didn’t say goodbye”? Others?

Have you been the leaver who left without a goodbye? What did you believe would happen if you said goodbye? What were you hoping your impact was by not acknowledging your departure to your loved one, the rest of your team, or your boss?

Goodbyes are some of the most stirring material because they touch into our survival instincts from childhood to stay close to parents so we don’t die. We have so many ways we protect our hearts around goodbyes and abandonment.  And most of us come with some goodbye baggage to add to the already loaded biological drive to not be abandoned.

Yet somehow, we treat goodbyes at work or in non-intimate settings as if we should not be impacted by someone leaving.  I find this really odd based on what we know of evolutionary biology and attachment theory. Yet stoicism rules in many workplaces.

We are impacted by goodbyes at work and if we aren’t, what does that say about our shared humanity in that job in the first place?

When our connecting remains very “task-oriented” and we don’t see our colleagues as people but cogs in the productivity machine we impact the psychological safety, creativity, and innovation at that job. 

We treat leaders with the same objectification and userey.  Side note: when we objectify leaders, we pick “objectifiable” leaders to lead us.  Leaders are in fact people with hearts.  But so often leaders are idealized or de idealized and treated as static objects that are immune to having hurt feelings.

The more I have learned about what happens inside of us in our human connections, the more I am curious about the landscapes we are creating outside of us.  Goodbyes are at the very top of my curiosity list.

“It's not the endings that will haunt you

But the space where they should lie,

The things that simply faded

Without one final wave goodbye.”

― Erin Hanson

What impact does not acknowledging the departure of a team member have on the team and the individuals in it?  What impact does a non-goodbye culture have on the organization?  What impact does a non-goodbye culture have on listening?

Can you imagine sitting on the sidewalk to listen to a stranger at Sidewalk Talk, and the stranger, mid-conversation, ups and walks away?  Or better yet, can you imagine, mid-conversation the listener up and walks away? What is left behind for either person in that context when the other just leaves? There is no acknowledgment of what was, what could be, or our shared humanity.

If we are going to make it “safe” to share and if we are going to create psychological safety on work teams, valuing goodbyes deeply and a process for offering them is a big re-humanization shift. 

True Story. I had a team member leave a few years ago. We were in the middle of a call with 20 other members of the team and this person waited until the last sixty seconds of the call to say “Oh I am leaving my role”.  All the other members of the leadership team said “Wait you are saving that for the end of an hour call so now we cannot say goodbye?” Later I learned that this same person did not send an email to their local community members that they had worked with for three years to let them know they were leaving.  What would come up in you as the teammate, leader, or community member if you were on the receiving end of that?

My therapist self knows why people leave without saying goodbye.  I know the inner landscape, the abandonment wounding, and the avoidance of intimacy in that. Heck, I have done it myself.  Where my curiosity lies is the impact on people and their work? 

When we do not say goodbye to a team, an organization, and bosses what are we conveying? What is the message we are sending to the human heart who we have laughed with, fretted with, worked alongside towards a common goal? It is disruptive to the whole organization when goodbyes are missed.

When we say goodbye we make the world a little better.  We say to a person, “While it is time for me to move on, I acknowledge the time we shared and your humanity.” 

Be gentle with yourself. Changing the way we say goodbye is slow to come.  And, let’s start together now, shall we?

How will you start to make this important shift to honor goodbyes?

For me, I will build goodbyes into Sidewalk Talk culture. Not all will have the emotional capacity to tolerate a goodbye in that moment or ever.  I can commit to taking a moment on my own to acknowledge in ritual, writing, song, or prayer that your humanity and my humanity touched, this is what I will miss and not miss, and this is what I will carry forward.

Standing wholeheartedly in our goodbyes is another important piece of creating a connected society.  Being a person who honors goodbyes creates the space for deeper listening and deeper connection. Bringing this commitment to goodbyes at work, creates a more innovative, connected workplace.