By Kevin T. Buckley, CPC

Here's the situation: You are submitting your resignation with the sincere hope that your present employer will accept your career objectives. You are expecting them to graciously give you their blessing as you head off for new challenges.

Wait a minute. They are frowning at you and saying they can’t accept your decision to leave. They are telling you how sad it will be to see you go; how they can’t do without you, and how you are leaving all your friends behind. They are looking at you with disappointment. They are upset about your decision. You are letting them down and at an important time of the year, too. You didn’t expect this and you don’t know what to say.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Why are they giving you this reaction? All you want is to leave with goodwill and their best wishes for your continued success. Why aren’t they accepting what you are saying?

You are now involved in the counter-offer process. They are indicating their refusal to accept that you are leaving. You didn’t anticipate an emotional reaction that seems out of place. How are you going to handle this with tact and diplomacy and still keep your goal in sight? In the counter-offer process emotional manipulation is used to make you change your mind. Management appeals to your loyalty, your sense of guilt or buyer remorse and tries to find your weak point to convince you to stay.

It is the day after you submitted your resignation. You are getting the cold shoulder. They are grilling you like a B-movie perpetrator about which competitor you are joining, how much salary you are getting, and why you are even thinking of considering a move. You are sitting in front of a senior executive and he is patiently painting for you a picture of how great it is going to be for you if you decide to stay.

Day 3. Colleagues from all over the company are calling you and telling you how sorry they are to see you leaving the team. They are taking you out to lunch individually or as a group and over coffee and friendly conversation they are probing your motivations and weak points, to find the chinks in your armour. This is a common tactic to make you reconsider your choice based on the emotional attachments you may have formed with certain people in the company.

Day 4. Your employer announces to you that they will use the opportunity of your resignation to finally give in to your previously unmet requests for a raise. They are assuring you that they were going to do this anyway. You are starting to think that they are finally beginning to recognize your worth. What has actually happened is that you are putting pressure on them and they are reacting to it. They are facing the prospect of replacing you. It is cheaper and less of a problem to offer more money to match or exceed your offer and hope you’ll take the bait. You haven’t received the extra money because they think you deserve it, you have the extra money because they feel they have no choice but to cough it up in order to keep you. Otherwise, you would already have it.

Here is another common approach: your employer doesn’t have extra money to match/exceed your offer right now, so he is promising that soon things will improve; there are new projects developing and if you can just hang on a little longer you can be involved and maybe move upwards in responsibility or authority. If you leave now however, well, you’ll lose out. That is the promise of future rewards offered in lieu of cash. This is one of the toughest counter-offers to resist.

Your employer is responsible for hiring, firing and developing staff. Management has invested money in you and your training. They don’t want to lose that investment. You are good at your job and customers and staff like you. People leave from companies all the time. You have made your decision but now you are starting to question yourself and why you are leaving.

They just won’t quit pressuring you to stay. You are confused and a little ticked off that they won’t let matters be. Stay firm in your integrity and you won’t be bought by promises that things will get better, or that you will be given the opportunities that weren’t available for you previously. Don’t forget why you chose to leave in the first place. Will you have to resign to get what you want next time also?

It is hard because you do have friends there. You like some of the people you work with. It isn’t easy to leave people that you have good feelings about. You aren’t alone. Many people are experiencing the same internal tug of war that you are feeling. Good friendships survive these situations. You don’t have to cut all ties.

You know that the future is waiting for you at your new employer. You understand that it is time to move on. You have made your decision carefully after weighing all the factors. There is a transition time between tendering your resignation and joining the new firm.

Remember that you have at most two weeks to go until you step forward to your future. It is natural to feel a little nervous. Change requires courage and confidence. You have made the right decision. Your employer has his/her company’s interests foremost in mind. This is natural. You are giving your employer a problem to solve. They don’t want to replace you. They may genuinely like you as a person and want you to stay but ultimately they know that people do move on in their careers. They did also to arrive here.

Keep believing in yourself and your decision-making despite the pressures put upon you to stay. Your decision does have validity; it is your decision after all. Your boss wasn’t born in the company. He/she didn’t grow up there. He/she came from another company and made a decision to get there, just as you have made a decision to move on.

See why they are doing this. It isn’t personal. They have a job to do as a manager to keep staff. It is important to keep relations friendly and to stop further discussions about what you need to stay. You know what you want. You tell them you are happy to wrap up your work, and that you have fond memories of working there. In a friendly yet firm way you ask them to respect your decision. Your decision is final. You ask them how you can get on with transferring your files and tying up loose ends. You don’t have to burn any bridges.

Keep your eyes on your goal. Your goal is a brighter future with new challenges and new opportunities to learn and grow. That is where you want to be. Make the change.

This is your future.