I don't counter when employees leave—here's why

Imagine the entire industry analyzing your every move as you try to fulfill an open position.

That’s what just happened this week at the University of Kentucky. John Calipari quit his job at the helm of the school’s basketball team. This came just weeks after he did a media interview with his boss, where Calipari said he was committed to fixing the slumping program. 

The whole process was chaos, and all along the way I’ve looked at it from two different perspectives. 

The first is as a lifelong UK basketball fan. I’ve only lived through five coaching changes at UK, and two happened while I was in college. It’s always fun and stressful at the same time. 

The second was as a leader. Some of my long held beliefs have proven out in this process. And they’re worth a quick look today. 

Don’t worry, you don’t have to Kentucky basketball—or even sports—for this one. 

The backstory 

When John Calipari came to Kentucky, the school was suffering. Billy Gillispie had destroyed the program in just two years, and caused the school to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time in 17 years. I’ll never forgive him, either. I was a senior at Kentucky, and the most senior photographer at the student newspaper always covered the NCAA tournament. Well, my time came, and Kentucky was not going to the tournament. 

Calipari was a rockstar hire, who came in and immediately made an impact. He got the recruits, won a national title, and kept making Final Four runs. But his performance began to fizzle after his undefeated team lost in the Final Four in 2015. In 2019, he considered leaving for UCLA. To keep him from leaving, Kentucky offered him a lifetime contract with an insane buyout. 

Ever since Calipari landed the fat contract, his performance was in decline. They struggled to win an NCAA game, and in fact, were knocked out by a 14 or 15 seed in two of the last three years. Fans revolted this year after losing their first game.

Behind the scenes, Calipari became unbearable to work with. Over just a few years, he lost all of his core staff. I know people who were in this inner circle and left because Calipari became a gorilla to work with. Anyone who would tell him “no” or disagreed with him became an enemy. Calipari kept leadership away. He refused to change or take accountability. The mission (to win for his fans and school) was rewritten to fit his needs (usually justifying he was doing good work because he put a lot of kids in the NBA, despite not accomplishing the school’s goals of NCAA wins). 

When that kind of cultural and personnel shift happens, you’re left with “yes men.” And that’s no way to achieve success.

How this relates to you

Even if you don’t follow sports, it’s easy to see the friction here. You have a top employee who for the first part of his tour crushed it. But overtime, their performance slipped. Their colleagues became frustrated. And they failed to focus on the mission.

And this is where it probably sounds familiar to you:

• Rock star employee gets hired
• Has early success to point to: “Look at what I’ve done”
• Begins to have a few misses
• Colleagues and/or stakeholders get frustrated with underperformance
• Rock star pushes away anyone who causes friction for them
• Rock star attempts to leave, company counter offers for fear of losing high performer

That last bullet is where I object.

I am generally opposed to making counter offers to employees who want to leave for a few reasons. 

2 reasons I don’t counter offer

1) The employee has mentally left—keeping them physically doesn’t make sense

Think about it. If someone put themselves in a position to even have an offer for another role, there is a good chance they were either looking or highly receptive to finding work elsewhere. They had mentally crossed a bridge to someplace else. Those bridges are usually one way streets—it’s hard to get them back. Calipari stayed after a counter offer, and never again reached his potential. Your employees may not make $8.5M per year, but their performance drop off will be the same in this scenario.

2) Counter offers make a job about the paycheck

Jobs are always about the money, but it is one of many factors. Benefits, culture, and subject matter all contribute to job joy, for example. But when you counter offer, you are competing on one thing. No one ever counters with “hey, we’ll give you an extra week of vacation” or “we’ll improve our culture and make it more fun!” No, because the money is where the negotiations gravitate towards. Why is that? Because the person leaving has already accepted that they can live without those things—the benefits, culture and subject matter. So when you counter with just money, you are setting a temporary win. And it is finite. 

Make no mistake, that within a year, maybe two, that employee will still leave because they’ll realize the money didn’t fix the aspects of the job they were ready to leave anyways. Or, alternatively, they will expect hefty raises, because the cash is what you’ve both now put on a pedestal. It is the only validation they have left, because they’re past the joy they once had elsewhere.

You may not be paying millions to a coach, but I promise you, keeping these rules in mind will serve you well when dealing with this with employees. It is not universally true. I’ve had times when I wanted to counter but couldn’t, due to the salary demand. I had an employee leave once, and I couldn’t counter. 90 days later I re-hired them, because they did in fact miss the culture. These moments are rare, and most of my points around cash being king in the counter will prove out more often than not.

Disagree? Let ‘er rip in the comments.

Content idea for this week

What have you learned in these situations? Have you been through any testy counter offer situations? These stories and lessons make great social content. Tell your story and share your hard-earned wisdom with your audience. 

Who I’m listening to: Briscoe

What I’m reading: “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque

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