Becoming a better manager means getting ready for moments you hope never happen. One of them: a competitor tries to hire away one of your best people. Here's what happened when it happened to me, what I got right, what I got wrong, and what I'd do now.
The setup
Another company in our industry sent over a standard letter of intent to explore wholesale distribution and some white-label manufacturing together. Like most of these documents, it included a non-solicitation clause: neither side would try to hire away the other's employees. I signed it without a second thought.
What I didn't know was that the other company's owner had already taken a liking to one specific person on my team.
The part that went right
To my team member's credit, they came to me first. They told me plainly they'd received an offer from the very company whose letter of intent I'd just signed.
That's the result of years of trust, and it's the most important part of this story. If your people bring you the offer instead of just quietly leaving, you've already done something right.
Two kinds of advice, and a third option
My team member also had a non-compete on file with us, so I suddenly had two legal documents that should have protected me. My HR lead's advice was to let them go, since they were probably leaving either way. My co-founder's advice was to enforce the non-compete, because this person had access to information that mattered.
I did neither, at first. I talked to my team member and got the honest picture: it wasn't about the job, or about me. It was purely financial.
The phone call
Then I called the other company's owner myself. He tore into me, and accused me of standing in the way of my employee providing for their "family of four." Of leaving kids to starve if I didn't let them go.
My team member had one child, not three. A kid I'd met in our own office more than once. He'd invented a family to guilt me into backing off, and he'd done it to someone who actually knew the family in question.
A few years later, that same owner apologized. He told me what he'd done was sneaky, and that I'd been right about his intentions all along. I appreciated that.
What I did next
I went back to my team member and laid it all out, including what he'd said. I told them that if they wanted to go, I wouldn't come after them. I'd pursue the other company for breaking our agreement instead, and they were free to talk to him about that before deciding anything.
Then I matched his offer and beat it by a small margin. My team member stayed.
Why I don't count it as a win
I avoided a messy legal fight. But the whole episode cost me a business relationship and some of the trust that team member had in me, the same trust that made them come to me in the first place. They left a couple of years later to start a business of their own, one I believe is still doing well.
The part I can't get around: I hadn't been paying them a competitive rate to begin with. That pay gap is what made the guilt trip work as well as it did. I write about setting pay before you're forced to in How to Set Salary Ranges Before You Post a Job.
What I'd do now
- Thank the person for telling you. That honesty is worth protecting, whatever happens next.
- Find out the real reason before you react. Pay, growth, schedule, or something else.
- Don't lead with legal threats. Contracts are a last resort, not a retention strategy.
- Decide what the role is actually worth to you, not just what it takes to match.
- Fix the underlying gap for everyone in similar roles, not just the person with an offer.
- Be okay with letting them go. Sometimes the best outcome is a great reference and a good relationship.
For the full chapter this comes from, read If I Don't Ask, I Won't Get.
Follow me on Instagram: @darbycox
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