The Local Hire Quits

Why Our Best Regional Hire Leaves Sooner Than We Think

We hired well. It took them the best part of a year to find their feet — and then, just as they got good, they resigned. The exit interview said "a better opportunity," so it went in the file under money. It usually wasn't money.

This episode is about the person every international team has: the one who ends up as the bridge between head office and the local team. They're the one we ring before a difficult call. The one who explains each side to the other and quietly sorts out the misunderstandings, usually before we've noticed there was anything to sort out. None of it is in their job description, and none of it is in their review.

We look at the two forces that push that person out, neither of which gets measured anywhere. First, the second, unwritten job they're doing — what researchers call cultural brokerage — where the only reward for being good at the bridge is more bridging. Second, the small signals that tell someone they belong: asked first, copied in, credited by name, hearing the news when everyone else does. Those signals rarely reach the person furthest from head office, and nobody withholds them on purpose. Put the two together and the person carrying the most is the person feeling the least secure. Then a recruiter calls, and the pitch isn't more money — it's someone finally giving the work a name.

Then four things we can do about it this week, none of which costs anything: name the bridge work and count it, share the load, fix the belonging signals on purpose, and check in early and regularly rather than finding out in the exit interview.

The people most worth keeping are the least likely to complain.

IN THIS EPISODE
(0:00) We hired well — and four months after they got good, they resigned
(1:00) Today's problem
(1:15) The person who became the bridge between head office and the region
(3:30) What it really costs us when they leave
(5:00) Reason one: the second job nobody wrote down
(8:00) Reason two: the belonging signals that don't reach them
(10:30) Why the two combine — and why the recruiter's pitch works
(12:00) Move one: name the bridge work, and count it
(13:15) Move two: share the load
(14:30) Move three: fix the belonging signals on purpose
(15:45) Move four: check in early and regularly
(17:00) THE ONE THING
(17:45) Work with Brendan

WORK WITH BRENDAN
If this is a live issue for your team right now, that's exactly the kind of thing I work through one-to-one with leaders — advisory, coaching and workshops. You can find out more about the work I do at brendanthomasquinn.com, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

If you don't want to miss the next episode, hit subscribe wherever you're listening.

MUSIC
Music by Denis Pavlov / DPmusic via Pixabay

SOURCES
Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Bantam.
Molinsky, A. (2013). Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures Without Losing Yourself in the Process. Harvard Business Review Press.
Jang, S. (2017). Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams. Organization Science, 28(6), 993–1009.

Source article: brendanthomasquinn.com/retaining-international-hires-multicultural-teams/

Cultural Friction is hosted by Brendan Thomas Quinn who works with leaders and teams navigating cultural friction within teams that work together or are dispersed around the world — as an advisor, coach, and workshop facilitator, and as Adjunct Lecturer on an International Business Masters programme teaching Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Friction brings that same real-world, research-backed approach to your ears in 20 minutes.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

We've hired a new candidate and they've done really, really well. And that's the bit that kind of hurts because we needed somebody who knew the local market properly, somebody who's actually from that market. We found them a really good, strong candidate. They did an amazing interview and everybody was in agreement. Let's get them on board. And then was that kind of year that we'd budgeted for the onboarding, the learning systems, learning who's who, and learning which meetings matter and which ones we could skip. All of that's kind of super normal for a new hire. We were really super patient because we knew that the return on investment that would come. And then somewhere around months nine or ten or eleven, things changed. They stopped asking us how things worked and they started telling us how things worked. They became that person who would say why a campaign would work in one market, and they could tell us why it wouldn't work. That person became super important to our team, and they could make the difficult calls between two different offices, and they would come out totally fine. Four months after that, they resigned. The exit interview said that they had a better opportunity. So it goes in the file under well, it was a money issue. Somebody paid them more money, there's nothing that we could have done. Today I want to suggest it usually isn't the money, and that the two real reasons why they left have been sitting in front of us for about a year. 20 minutes or thereabouts, one real problem, and what we can actually do about it. Today, one of best regional hire leaves just as they're starting to get good, and the two things nobody is aware of that pushes them out, and four things we can do about it this week. Let's go. We're based out of Barcelona, so we've taken some time to enjoy the uh the Spanish culture and to recharge those uh batteries and come back now for this uh last half of the year feeling fully refreshed, fully recharged and ready for the for the challenges that this last part of the year is going to bring for us, which we're really looking forward to. We've got a lot of work with uh new clients, uh coaching advisory, and and also we've got quite a few workshops lined up now for the rest of this year. So it's um it's looking like it's gonna be a great end to uh this year. Anyway, so let's get into let's get into this. Um once again, great to have you. So let's let's talk about this person because I think that we might all kind of recognize this person in our teams, um, especially if our teams are dispersed, we have regional offices, we have head offices. So this is the person that we we've started copying in on things that we don't really strictly need to copy them in on. The person that we would ring before a difficult call just to ask how it was likely to go and if there's anything we needed to know to prepare ourselves so that we could have that call really well. And when head office wanted to know why the numbers looked a bit odd in the region, they're the person who could explain it in a way that both the regional office and the head office can understand. And when someone at head office said that something did not go down well with the local team, yep, this is the person who quietly sorts it all out and makes sure that everything runs smoothly. None of this is in their job description, but all of this is real work for them. So let's have a quick look at what one hour of their week might look like. There's a call between head office and the local team. The two sides they're not arguing, but they're not understanding each other. It's clear that things aren't quite going the way that they should do. Head office comes off that call thinking that we've got a plan agreed, the local team comes off that call and they're thinking that there's a serious problem here with the plan. So it's two different ideas about how that meeting went. So our hire, our key person, is the one that fixes that. So at some point during that call, they're the person who says, Can I just check what we mean by approved here? After the meeting, they send a couple of emails to make sure everyone understands the outcomes of the meeting. 20 minutes of their day. It doesn't get logged anywhere, but it's real work, stepping in to help others to make sure that the team's working well and that the team's where it needs to be, and reducing the potential for misunderstanding. We've all got a word for this person, and that person typically gets called a bridge. The bridge between two different sides, between two different working cultures, between two different offices. So, what happens to someone who turns out to being really good at being a bridge? What happens? They tend to get more of it. They get pulled into more calls, more meetings, because those calls and meetings, they go much better when they're there. There's more of, could you just have a word with them because I don't really know what they want? And there's more of you're better placed to explain this than I am. And every one of those requests, yes, it's a compliment, you know, and it's difficult to spot it as being work. It doesn't look like it's being a burden, it doesn't look like we're just loading stuff onto uh to this person, but we are because we're wrapping it up with compliments and showing signs of appreciation. But the reward for being a good bridge is only ever more bridging, and nobody really counts this as work, except of course, if you're unless you're the person that's actually acting as the bridge. So, what does it cost us when they leave? Because often this doesn't get counted properly and it's not fully understood. Replacing a mid-level hire in an international team is commonly put at several months of their salary. Once we add up the recruitment, onboarding, productivity that we don't get while somebody else is finding their feet. We also lose all of that context, that year of context whilst they were with us, knowing how things actually work here, who to ring, what's been tried before, what doesn't work. That doesn't transfer over in a handover document, or it very rarely does. We lose those local relationships because those relationships were with them personally and not with us, because we kept asking them to deal with these things. And we lose the bridge work itself because now nobody's doing it, and all of those small misunderstandings that used to get sought out quietly, 20 minutes at a time, they're now coming to us instead, and we have no idea how to deal with them. If that happens twice in the same team, we've stopped managing staff turnover, and we're actually really living with it. Uh, the team is running below full strength permanently, and we're paying all the time, in time and in money to constantly rebuild the team. And the thing that makes this so difficult is that none of it looks like a problem while it's happening. There's there's no conflict, there's no complaints. Right up until the moment of resignation, it looks like our best hire is having a really great year. So, why does this happen? Why does this person quit? And I think that there's two key reasons. And the first reason is that they're doing a second job. So there's a name for this work, and researchers call it cultural brokerage. It's that person who translates between two sides, explains each one to the other, and keeps things running when they don't naturally understand each other. Um, Su Yun Yang studied it in multicultural teams and found what most of us would expect. Teams that have a good broker, a bridge, uh tend to perform better. Um, the work is valuable and it genuinely improves the output. What I see in practice is what that work does to the person that's doing it. The first thing is that it's tiring in a way that doesn't look tiring. Every time they speak to head office, they have to adjust how direct they are, how much they soften, how much background they add. All of these uh kind of cultural um elements are at play, and that's work for somebody. Then they turn to the local team and then they have to adjust again, but in the opposite direction. Andy Malinsky calls this global dexterity, and and his point is that it's a skill that anyone can learn, but it's never free, it costs something each time. Our hire is paying that cost in both directions every day as a permanent part of the job. The second part of this first reason is that none of it's recognized. If you look at their last review, they may say that they've helped a few people in the team, but the actual amount of work that they're actually doing is quite significant. It's not just a little bit of help, they're doing a large chunk of work that can't be assessed and it can't be rewarded. If they ask themselves what they're building here, the honest answer is that they're building a reputation for being helpful. The third thing in this kind of first reason, um, it's even more difficult. They're typically not able to raise this problem with us. It's not often that you hear someone say that they want to do less of the work or less of being a bridge. It kind of sounds ungrateful, it sounds like complaining about being useful. It might even sound like they don't want to work with the other side, which is the last thing they want us to think. So they say nothing and they carry on doing it. Now, the second reason why they leave is the small signals that tell them they belong don't reach them. So this comes from um a guy called Dan Coyle. He writes about belonging cues, and these are small signals that tell a person that they're on the inside of a group, and they're smaller than we think, actually. These cues are just lots of little things. Things like being asked first rather than told afterwards, being copied in as a matter of course, being credited by name when your idea gets used, hearing the informal news at the same time as everyone else does instead of getting the tidy version later on in the week. On their own, these cues are really small, but together they answer this question that every new person is quietly asking themselves, and that is am I part of this team or am I just attached to it? And if you think about regional offices and head offices, if you think about teams dispersed around the world, then it's really easy to feel that you're just attached to another team as opposed to being you know an intrinsic part of that team. So it's obviously uh these these kind of belonging cues are super important. And think about how informal news actually travels in your office. Someone stops someone else in the corridor, a decision gets half made, a mood shifts, a project quietly stops being a priority. If you're in the same building, you pick up on all of that without even noticing it. It's just kind of there happening in the background, but you have it as part of your knowledge. If you're four time zones away, you get the announcement two weeks later. So the new hire, this kind of this bridge person, this key person in our team is always finding out late, always finding out formally, and always after the decision was mostly made somewhere that they weren't. And credit works the same way. Our hire gives us their view of a local market and we pass that up. Someone repeats it in a bigger meeting, and by the by the time it's been told the third time, it kind of becomes just a team view, and nobody remembers where that view and where that knowledge came from. The person who said it first watched their contribution just become anonymous. Now, if you put those two things together, those two reasons together, that's a combination that can cause real damage. The person doing all of this extra bridging work is also the person getting the fewest signals that they belong here in this team. And those two things feed into each other. The better they get, the more bridging they do. The more bridging they do, the more they sit between the two groups instead of feeling like they're actually on the inside, and not just feeling, but that they actually are on the inside of at least one of these groups. So they end up doing most of the work and feeling the least secure. And from where we're sitting, we can't see either of these things because from where we're sitting, they look like a star performer having a great year, and then a recruiter calls, and the pitch isn't more money, the pitch is come and do the job you're already doing, except we'll give it a proper title, and you'll be at the center of things instead of being the last to hear. That's not a better offer financially. That's somebody finally getting the work that they're doing, it has a name, and it's properly being rewarded. And one last point the people most worth keeping are the least likely to tell us any of this. They're capable, they're tolerant, they're good at absorbing problems without making a fuss. Those are exactly the qualities that mean the first we hear about this is at the resignation stage. Being quiet is not the same as being happy. So, what can we do about this? How can we what can we do to prevent this great person who's doing some really great work from leaving our team? Um, I think there's four things that we can do, and I think they are these. So, number one is to name the bridge work and count it. So at the moment, this work is invisible, and if we don't write it down, we can't reward it. The person just keeps absorbing it until they've had enough. So we make it visible, we write it into the job, we put a line in their objectives that plainly says what it is. Keeping the working relationship between head office and the region running, bringing the local market view into decisions before they're taken. Whatever it looks like in our team, we write that down. Then we talk about it in the review out loud as work, not as a personality trait, not as a favor, not as a bolt-on that they're doing. That's super generous of them, thank you very much, but actually as part of their job and their work. There's a big difference between you're great with the regional team, they love you, and you kept that account together this quarter by managing two sets of expectations, and that's why the number held. The first is a compliment, the second is a real job. And once it's written down, other things become possible. It can be given proper time, it can be traded off against something else when they're overloaded, it can be part of the case for their promotion, it stops being a favor and becomes work, which is exactly what it has been all along. The second thing, share the load. If one person is the only bridge in our team, that's an issue when they take holidays, when they get ill, or when they leave. So we spread it deliberately, we rotate who runs the joint calls, we pair people from the two sides on real pieces of work, not on a buddy scheme. And when something needs explaining across the divide, we don't automatically send the person who's best at it. Sometimes we send the person who needs to get better at it, and we let our best person sit in and support rather than do it all themselves. Now, this needs training. You know, people don't become bridges by accident, they are skills, especially understanding different cultures, being prepared, and that requires training. It also means that it's going to be a bit slower for a few weeks, and we should expect that. Um but what we'll get at the end is that we'll have three or four people who can do this work reasonably well instead of one person doing it brilliantly but totally alone. For our best hire, this isn't losing status, it's actually probably going to be a relief. We've just told them the thing they've been carrying is real enough that the whole team needs to be able to do it. And our third reason, or sorry, our third, our third solution, or something that we can do, fix the belonging signals on purpose. We can't wait for these to happen naturally because leaving them to happen naturally is what got us up to here, what led to our person resigning and quitting. So we do them deliberately. It feels a bit forced for a while, and then it starts to become just how things run here. So we ask the person furthest from head office first, not last. If they're the one dialing in, we bring them in before everyone in the room has already said what they think. Otherwise, they're not contributing to the decision, they're kind of reacting to the one that's already been made, and that just defeats the whole point. We credit people by name in front of the people who matter. That came from Anna. It's her read of the local market, and we make sure the informal news reaches them. If something got half-decided in a corridor, we write it down and we send it to everyone that afternoon. It's a small habit and it does something quite big. It stops us from having an inner group who know things and an outer group who get told things. And finally, our fourth thing that we can do is to check in early and regularly with the person that's acting as a bridge. The exec interview is it's the right conversation, but it's at completely the wrong time, and is usually run by uh somebody who uh new hire probably met at onboarding and hasn't really had a conversation with until now as they're walking back out of the door. So that conversation tends to wrap itself up with uh, well, they got a better opportunity, and that's what goes in the file. And so we just believe that they've just ended up getting more money, and so they've left us because of that. And it's not true. So we need to have these conversations much earlier while while those conversations can actually have an impact and make a change. Um, and I think you know, if we're asking them how much of your week goes on smoothing things over between between you know, regional office, head office, between these two teams, between these different cultures, which part of this job would you like less of, and where do you want to be in 18 months? Um these kind of things happening much earlier on are going to highlight to us that this person's doing a lot of work, a lot of bridging work. Um, and you know, if their answer is, oh no, don't worry, it's fine, honestly, everything's okay, then we know that that's not true, and we need to check in with them again in a month's time and see where they're at with things because we need to make sure that they're being supported properly. Okay, so if there is one thing that I would like you to take away from this episode, it's this the two things that made this person valuable, carrying the load and quietly making the team work, are the same two things that made them kind of invisible to us. We don't see them. The better they get at it, the less of it it looks like work. So none of us notices that there's a problem and and that that problem needs a solution. So the person we'd least like to lose is the person that we're least likely to worry about right up until the morning that they tell us that they've had another opportunity. Keeping them is mostly a matter of noticing the work that they're doing earlier rather than later. If this is a live issue for your team right now, that's exactly the kind of thing I work through one-to-one with leaders, through advisory, through coaching, and through workshops. You can find out more about the work that I do by visiting brendanhomasquinn.com, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.