Team leader garners praise for motivating employee to quit after company fails to value his skills

Motivation is the key for employers to retain their employees in the organization. Employees generally get motivated when they find aspects like good compensation, recognition for their work and career growth prospects in the company. While many companies focus on these factors, some fail to provide that progressive work culture. Sharing one such incident from 2006, a team leader (u/mdlapla) posted on Reddit, "Manager asks me to motivate an employee into doing a job he doesn't like." The team leader strategically complies with the manager's words and people find it so relatable and approve of it.

The team leader was then working in a tech consulting company where they were in charge of two teams. Working for a banking client, their projects seemed to still be operating on low-end technology. The team leader spoke about a guy whom he referred to as Max Powers and said that he was so keen on working with upgraded technology. "I knew he was unmotivated because of this, and I was also pretty bummed about having to work with outdated technology, so we both started researching open-source tools to use in the company that was cutting edge and proposed some improvements to our manager," they wrote.

The manager then created a "task force" which was basically the team leader and Max and the duo had to focus on enhancements as well as the existing bank projects. During one of the meetings with the leadership about desired and undesired job rotation, the team leader brought up Max's example saying, "Having someone extremely focused on cutting-edge tech doing boring outdated stuff was probably the recipe for undesired rotation." The manager contradicted saying that since Max wasn't a motivated employee transitioning him to a different position would be a desired rotation. Despite trying to convince the manager that Max was a valuable asset to the team, the manager disagreed and said, "It's your fault, you have to motivate him better!"

"To me, Max leaving was totally a case of undesired rotation. It was a problem to my planning and, furthermore, it was losing someone whom I saw as one of the top assets available in the company," mentioned the team leader. So, they decided to maliciously comply with the manager's demand. "I motivated him to get out of the company. He wasn't going to be allowed to work on cutting-edge projects there," they wrote and added, "He found a new and exciting job in no time. He's a millionaire now. He got called by Google to interview with them but he rejected the offer. He could have been retired by age 38, but he kept on working because he still loves what he does."

On the other hand, the company found it difficult to replace the employee and the "task force" came to an end because a valuable asset was lost. "In my stint as a director/manager, I basically had to do that. One guy was fresh out of college and had pursued a master’s degree in his own time. But we were working on old mainframe systems. I straight out told him to find a position that fed his passion and interest. He did and I am glad," commented u/feyrath. "You did him a huge favor. Based on this story you are a good leader, I hope that you are working in that capacity," wrote u/9lobaldude. "I'm so glad that this went where I would have taken it, myself! The only correct response was to motivate him to leave the company. Kudos to you!" commented u/Blue_Veritas731.