Importance of Knowing how to Resign Gracefully
It is always important to know how to resign gracefully, whatever the job or circumstances. When a person makes the decision to resign from a professional job, there could be any number of reasons, both positive and negative. In the happiest circumstances, the person will have secured a role with another employer, hopefully offering both a promotion and increased remuneration. Sometimes, of course, the reasons behind a resignation are less positive. People might resign on an issue of principle, or because they can see they are likely to be fired in the near future and want to dodge the bullet for reasons of pride and of avoiding embarrassing questions in future job interviews.
Whatever the reason, the resignation should be carried out gracefully and with discretion. A private meeting with the person's line manager, where the reasons for leaving are expressed as diplomatically as possible, followed by a short letter to formalise the resignation (emails are increasingly taking the place of traditional resignation letters, but follow your employer's accepted best practice guidelines on this question), respecting any requests made by the employer to keep quiet about the resignation until such a time as the future of the person's role can be decided and a formal announcement can be made to staff, and then working a notice period with the minimum of drama.
The importance of knowing how to resign gracefully lies in the fact that the moment of resignation is usually a time when a person's emotions are running high, for whatever reason. It is at these flashpoints that professional behaviour is more crucial than ever. Behaving unprofessionally, or resigning without grace and dignity can damage a person's reputation with everyone in that company, even people wholly unconnected with the reasons behind the resignation. And in these days of online social networking, that damage to a person's professional reputation can be toxic for their future career prospects, with news of any outbursts or tantrums spreading across the internet in a matter of moments.
When someone makes the decision to resign from a job, the unpleasant but very natural instinct can arise to settle a few scores by telling a few colleagues exactly what a person thinks of them. It should go without saying that this is incredibly counter-productive for a professional person. Anyone with an ounce of human empathy already has a pretty good idea of what most of their colleagues think of them and the only effect is that the person clearing the air comes over a bitter, resentful bully. If any kind of conflict erupts in the middle of the office, it's an uncomfortable truth that colleagues will always side with the person who is not about to leave the company, in the interest of future working relations.
Many professions are very small worlds, and resigning gracefully is crucial for any professional who wants to be well-respected in their field, as unprofessional behaviour, even at this stressful time, can quickly poison even the most impressive resume.
