When a good person resigns, it is tempting to assume they were lured away by more money. Sometimes that is true. Far more often, it is not.
The data points to leadership
The research is consistent. SEEK has found that poor leadership is the top reason people choose to leave a job, and that the majority of people would leave, or have left, a role because of poor culture. Culture, in turn, is built or broken by the people doing the day-to-day leading.
In other words, your best people are far more likely to leave a manager than a company. And the manager they leave is usually not a bad person. They are a capable individual contributor who was promoted into leadership and never given the tools to do it well.
What good people actually want
When you ask people why they stay, the same themes come up again and again:
- They feel their manager genuinely cares about their growth.
- They get clear, honest feedback and know where they stand.
- They are stretched and developing, not stagnating.
- They trust the person they report to.
None of these are about money. All of them are about leadership.
The cost of getting it wrong
Replacing an employee commonly costs a large share of their annual salary once you account for recruitment, lost productivity, and the time it takes someone new to get up to speed. Lose a few good people to avoidable leadership gaps and the cost runs well into six figures, before you count the hit to morale and momentum.
The fix is cheaper than the problem
Here is the part most organisations miss. The research on coaching is just as clear as the research on why people leave. The majority of people who receive coaching improve their performance, relationships, and communication, and most organisations that measure it make back their investment.
Investing in how your leaders lead is one of the highest-returning things you can do, precisely because the cost of poor leadership is so high. If you want to keep your best people, start with the people leading them.
