3 Ways To Tell Your Boss You’re Quitting

Quitting your job is hard. But in our minds, we make it much harder than it has to be. We generally think that quitting is a bad thing. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Quitting should be a happy time for you. Here’s why:

1. You are a business. It’s a business decision.

You are your own business, even though your work for one. Every decision you make career-wise, should be viewed as a business decision. What will give me the greatest opportunity to succeed in the future. What opportunities will allow me to generate the most amount of income for me now, which ones will have the greatest earning power in the future?

Let your boss know that your decision is one you don’t take lightly. But just like a business has to make hard decisions, you have to do the same. Businesses make choices over supplies, providers, vendors, etc. based on money, availability, future potential, etc. You should do the same for your own career. Tell your boss this, he’s probably not thinking about that.

2. Quitting is not betraying your company, staying on too long may be.

Quitting is, too often, seen as turning your back on your employer and your co-workers. It’s not. We should approach any work situation thinking of what we can bring to our employers in terms of our skills, abilities, and talents. Also keeping in mind that in return, your employer will also provide you with economic compensation and experience in the workplace in return for your efforts.

But once you’ve been able to do all you can to help the business and it becomes just a daily grind, nothing new, same thing day after day, what then? What do you do when you feel like you’ve been able to push the organization as far as your talents and abilities allow you to? What about when the business outgrows or moves in a direction that may not be a good fit for your skills and abilities? Quitting is letting your company move on or telling the company you’re ready to move on to new projects and they can use a new set of eyes on the work you’ve been doing. Tell your boss this, he’s probably not thinking about that.

3. Remember to have a career end-goal in mind.

We almost never take on a position or job thinking that it’s where we want to be until we retire. We’re can be starting out, looking for that entry-level position that will give us additional experience and a resume point that will open doors in the future. We may be mid-career, looking to take on a specific type of work that will allow us to expand into a new field, or get a little bit more experience in a particular area of business so that we can quality for the top positions in our field. Eventually we’ll realize that we’re ready to take that last job where we’ll be before we retire.

Regardless of where we may be on the career ladder, today’s workplace is not the workplace of years past. We no longer sign up with a company and stay on until retirement. Successful careers require that we jump between opportunities as those opportunities come and when we see that our effectiveness in our current capacities has reached its limit.

This should be a happy time

Quitting doesn’t mean giving up on people and the organization you’ve (hopefully) grown to love. You’re taking on a new position with new opportunities, new challenges, new and unique ways for you to utilize your skills and talents, and hopefully there will be better compensation too.

Regardless, quitting your job is never a bad thing when you’ve always put in a honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.