Change with Confidence: Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that Keep Change Leaders Up at Night

Chapter 32

What Do I Do If Someone Is Pulled from My Team?

We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized.

—Charlton Ogburn

Despite your best efforts, business priorities or personal circumstances can change your team roster. Many leaders believe that losing a team member will have little impact on team dynamics. This is rarely true. Teams develop connections, rapport, and alignment based on shared experiences, and a new team member can disrupt this positive and evolving dynamic. They will need to be brought up to speed, which causes lower productivity as they learn and others train them. Unless the exiting colleague is a poor performer, your productivity will be reduced when team changes ...