Three resignations in twelve months. Four in eighteen. Always on the same team, often with a similar pattern: good people who leave shortly after joining, or after one or two years. The explanations tend to point elsewhere: the job market, competitors, "it just wasn't the right fit," personal reasons. The manager's own leadership rarely enters the equation.
When coincidence becomes a pattern
A single resignation can genuinely be a coincidence. A recurring pattern is harder to dismiss. It is a symptom. When people repeatedly leave the same team under the same manager, while other teams in the company remain noticeably more stable, it becomes difficult to explain it as bad luck in hiring. It is a signal — and one that can remain ignored for as long as no one connects it to the manager's own leadership.
Frequently cited figures from engagement and turnover research, including Gallup's "State of the Global Workplace." These are orders of magnitude, not exact values for any single company.
Why managers do not see themselves as the cause
This is the real difficulty. It is not about malicious managers who know exactly what they are doing. It is about people who sincerely believe in the quality of their own leadership — and that is precisely what makes the pattern so persistent.
Self-esteem protection
Successes are attributed to one's own leadership; failures to outside circumstances. This is not a character flaw, but a well-documented psychological mechanism: the self-serving bias. It protects the self-image, but it can also get in the way of learning.
No honest feedback
Very few current team members will tell their manager directly that the manager might be the reason behind the next resignation. The risk is too high, the benefit too uncertain.
A convenient external story
"The job market is tough." "This generation has no loyalty anymore." These are plausible explanations that often go unquestioned because they require nothing of the manager.
Past success as a shield
Managers who have led successfully in the past may treat that success as lasting proof of their leadership ability. The possibility that the team, the task, or the manager themselves may have changed is easily overlooked.
The signs most people miss
- Exit interviews cite "a new challenge," yet the conversation is often conducted or reviewed by the very person it may actually be about
- Top performers leave first. They have the most alternatives and the least patience for poor leadership
- The same roles keep coming up for hiring and onboarding
- The team members who stay grow quieter in meetings and push back less often
- The department's internal reputation starts to decline without anyone ever saying so out loud
"You can explain every resignation on its own. What is harder to explain is why it keeps happening without looking at your own role in the pattern."
What honest self-review actually takes
Have exit interviews conducted by a neutral party: not the direct manager, but HR or an independent function. Otherwise, the full truth rarely comes out.
Compare your own turnover rate: against the company average and comparable teams, not against your gut feeling.
Run regular 360-degree feedback: not only around promotions, but as a fixed, recurring process for every manager.
Ask about patterns, not isolated cases: what did the last four people who left have in common — or, just as importantly, what did they consistently not say?
A single resignation can be a coincidence. A recurring pattern on your own team is much harder to dismiss as one. Anyone who never considers whether their own leadership might be part of the explanation has either misread the relevant data or chosen not to look closely enough. Either way, that eventually becomes a leadership issue in itself.