The resignation letter I never sent
During my 24-year career with Sigma-Aldrich, I planned my resignation four different times. Twice I even told the company about it. Let me tell you about one of the times I didn’t.
In December of 1998, I was serving as Vice President of Research and Development for a company in Boston. My responsibilities included overseeing all chemical synthesis and quality control. The president of the company was my direct supervisor, and one week we discussed the possibility of promoting one of our chemists to lab supervisor. From my recollection, we agreed to move forward. Her words to me were, “That sounds like a great plan. Let’s go ahead with it.”
So I did what any action-oriented leader might do: I partnered with HR, wrote up the announcement, spoke with the employee, offered him the new position, and announced the promotion to the company. No moss grows under a rolling stone, and I didn’t want this one to sit idle.
But that Thursday, I was called into the president’s office. What I expected to be a quick check-in turned into a two-hour reprimand. She told me we had never agreed on the promotion, and she accused me of direct insubordination. For two hours she berated me, saying people didn’t want to work with me, that I was cruel, arrogant, and mean.
Those accusations cut deeply. They were the opposite of how I wanted to show up as a leader. After that meeting, I went back to my office, shaken. I opened my computer and began drafting my resignation letter. I couldn’t imagine continuing in that environment.
Before pressing “send,” I picked up the phone and called my longtime friend—and now coaching partner—Dan Coombes, back in St. Louis. I asked if he knew of any opportunities. Instead of offering me job leads, Dan began asking questions.
What did I really want as a leader?
What kind of relationships did I want to have with my boss, my peers, and my team?
Would resigning move me closer to that vision—or further away?
As I answered his questions, I realized I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to be an effective leader who developed people, and I wanted to repair my working relationship with the president. Together, we sketched a different path forward: go back to her the very next day, share how the conversation had affected me, reaffirm my commitment to leading in the opposite way she had described, and ask for her help in pointing out specific examples of where I needed to grow.
On Friday, I did just that. To my surprise, she agreed. For two weeks we met, and both times she said, “I haven’t seen anything.” By the second week, she told me we didn’t need to meet anymore, that I was doing a fine job. Our working relationship settled back into a functional rhythm.
The entire episode revealed more about what was going on with her than with me. But here’s what I learned: without Dan’s coaching questions, I would have walked away, angry and hurt, and likely burned a bridge. Instead, I grew. I discovered the value of slowing down, clarifying what I really wanted, asking for specifics, and inviting accountability.
That’s the value of a coaching relationship. Coaches don’t give you all the answers. They don’t take the steering wheel from your hands. But at critical moments, they ask the questions that help you see more clearly, align with your values, and move forward with purpose instead of regret.
Sometimes, the right coaching conversation keeps us from sending the resignation letter we’ll later wish we hadn’t.
If you found this story helpful, I invite you to subscribe to this blog series, share this post with someone who might need it, or reach out to me at Catalystic Leadership. Sometimes, the right conversation makes all the difference.
