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Losing a manager is always stressful. We’ve spent the last eighteen months building a relationship with our current leader, proving our worth, but now they’re off. Naturally, we worry what kind of person will replace them.

For we’ve all been here before, lamenting the loss of a mentor for a manager who couldn’t care less. Or, worse than that, a competent manager for one who broke everything.

What kind of continuity will we see, we wonder, fearful that we will have to start all over again from square one, proving that we’re deserving of our position?

Some of us have outlasted our entire senior leadership and executive many times over, but that’s no guarantee of anything. Mostly, we’re at the mercy of people whose primary motivation is forwarding their own careers.

Just now, the future is completely unknown to us. We have no idea what kind of person will take their place — if anyone at all for the foreseeable future. We hope for the competent and kind, but the floor is open.

Will it be a bright new dawn for us? Does it herald new opportunities? Could it enable us to finally achieve our own ambitions? Or do we stand at the cusp of our own demise, soon to be sent packing back into ourselves?

With each new manager, it’s as if we’re being interviewed all over again. How we fare in the process depends as much on their personality as ours. Who’s to know if we will be a champion in six months’ time, or an idiot again, discarded?

We pray for some kind of continuity, petitioning our departing manager to file our positive appraisal in their handover notes for the next in line to study. Let’s just hope we left enough of a mark to ensure this is the moment we swim free and not just sink like a stone, back into the abyss.