With career progression deemed often dependent on maintaining and cultivating professional relationships, the advice many hear is “never burn your bridges”. However, there are circumstances where throwing stones at the bridge behind might not be as detrimental as generally believed.
Renowned for the popular wisdom that preserving professional relationships can provide future opportunities, many professionals do sometimes feel compelled to burn bridges either out of disdain for a person or frustration with the workplace situation. Contrary to what is usually advised, there are occasions when burning bridges might not impact career progression as much, and may even, in some instances, bolster individuals’ professional stature.
One such instance occurs when individuals due for retirement are on the receiving end of the bridge-burning exercise. If persons who might take offense to, for instance, the comments or actions of a departing lawyer, are key decision-makers in their retirement phase, they might not wield much influence on the ex-employee’s future career aspirations or serve as references for long. The potentially departing professional, in this case, could use the opportunity to voice out dissatisfaction with management or hand over tasks to the successor less effectively, with little to no negative consequences.
A case in point is an individual, known earlier on in my career, who quit under circumstances similar to these and went on to build a successful legal career. It didn’t appear that the bridge-burning had a significant negative impact on his career trajectory. Some colleagues held him in higher esteem as he left on his terms and freely voiced concerns about the firm’s professional setting. Consequently, he might have inadvertently improved his reputation amongst contemporaries destined for more extended stints in law than the soon-to-retire managers.
Another viable scenario to burn bridges occurs when the target ‘bridge’ is notoriously unpopular or holds a ‘jerk’ reputation socially within the local legal communities—this unpopularity could stem from poor treatment of employees or even adversaries in legal matters. Hence, scorning such an individual on one’s way out could have minimal impact on their legal career. If the scorned individual were to give a negative review, the community, already knowledgeable of the individual’s reputation, might likely discount the review. Ironically, a bad review from such persons might even be seen positively.
As an example, an individual once worked in a firm with a particularly contemptuous lawyer. After a heated argument, he quit in search of greener pastures, landing on his feet with little fallout. The legal community’s general dislike for the ‘jerk’ lawyer likely resulted in them disregarding any negative comments about the departing lawyer.
Although safer to not to burn bridges to maximize future opportunities, in particular cases, doing so may not always harm your career, the above scenarios discuss. But taking this approach requires an understanding of the dynamics and knowing when to play the card.
For a closer look at these scenarios, read the original work by Jordan Rothman, a partner at The Rothman Law Firm.
See the complete article here.