Picture this: It's your last board meeting as Executive Director. You've led this organization through a capital campaign, an executive transition before yours, a pandemic, and more than a few impossible budget cycles. You know your StrengthsFinder results by heart. Maybe you've done the Enneagram work. Maybe you've gone deep on Human Design. And still, when someone asks how you're doing with the transition, you don't quite have the words.

I’m here to let you know that this isn’t a failure of self-knowledge, but it IS a gap in your toolkit. The assessments most of us have taken were designed to describe how we show up: our strengths, our coping patterns, our energy type. They are genuinely valuable and useful, so I’m not about to critique them because I love a good personality test and assessment. What I do believe is that none of these were built to help you understand how you leave.

This matters because how we leave is shaped by every departure that came before it—the goodbyes we didn't get to say, the thoughtful transitions that were co-opted, the roles we outgrew but couldn't let go of, the exits we made too fast and the ones we delayed too long.

Assessments like Human Design, Enneagram, and Clifton StrengthsFinders may be seen as woo, but we believe they offer something real: language for your strengths, your patterns, and your wiring.
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You are not just a collection of traits that exist in forward motion, you also have a history of endings: departures that shaped you, transitions that cost you something, goodbyes that didn't land the way you needed them to.
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Leaving Well™️ is a framework that asks not just WHO you are, but how you got here, what you're carrying from every role you've ever left, and what it would mean to close this next role with intention.
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As an example:
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Your Clifton StrengthsFinder Achiever theme means you feel the need to produce something every day. But what happens when the most important thing you can do is stop?
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Close the chapter.
Transfer the knowledge.
Rest.
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CliftonStrengths tells you what you do best. However, it doesn't tell you what happens to those same strengths when you're winding down, handing off, or stepping back.
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Spoiler: your strengths and traits intensify during seasons of transition, which is not always the gift you think it is.

Another example? If you're a Type 2 leading a nonprofit, you've probably built the organization around your ability to meet needs.

Which means leaving it requires answering a question most Helpers never ask: Who am I when I'm no longer needed in that way?

Every Enneagram type has a departure pattern:

• The 1 leaves with an exhaustive handoff list.
• The 8 leaves with opinions about what happens next. [raises hand over here]
• The 9 technically leaves—but keeps the door open just enough to make it hard for anyone else to walk through it.

The Enneagram gets you close to that story, and Leaving Well asks you to read it out loud and fully step into your humanity.

From the Human Design standpoint, as a 3/5 Manifestor, my instinct when I'm ready to leave is to simply... go. No lengthy explanation or a drawn-out process. Just move. But … I've learned that moving without informing creates more resistance than the departure itself.

Every Human Design type has a different relationship with endings.

• Generators feel the friction in their body when they leave before something's run its course.
• Projectors may carry bitterness out the door if they were never truly seen in the role.
• Reflectors need more time than anyone around them thinks is reasonable — and they're right to take it.

Human Design tells you how your energy works. Leaving Well asks what happens to that energy when you're in the middle of a goodbye.

We wrote a translation guide just for you, applying our Leaving Well™️ lens to the tools you may already trust, so you can get more out of what you already know about yourself, and find the language for the part that’s been missing:

Want to chat about this with us, and weigh in? Head over to our Instagram or LinkedIn posts and let's chat in the comments (or hit reply to this email). We'd love to hear your take!

-Naomi

Gravel Road, Chattahoochee Hills, GA 30213
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