Good Bye: Leading Change Better by Attending to Endings - Hardcover

by Lizzie Bentley Bowers (Author), Alison Lucas (Author)

Business Book Awards 2026 Shortlisted in Leadership category

Nobody likes to talk about endings. Here's why we need to.

Leaders spend a lot of time planning new initiatives. But what about the endings that go along with them? Most leaders are not taught how to manage themselves, let alone their teams and organization, through the messy, multifaceted discomfort of an ending. Making a team member redundant, merging two teams, cutting funding to a failed project: in all these situations we tend to focus on the new beginning, and rush past the ending that needs our care and attention. Dealing with endings well takes maturity and emotional intelligence. Leaders need to understand and process their own feelings before they can lead others through transition.

Why does this matter? Because poorly managed endings leave a scar on everyone involved. Discretionary energy and motivation are not so forthcoming. Change programmes don't get traction, resistance and cynicism take root. Change fails.

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers provide this missing piece of the change leadership puzzle: a way of leading yourself and others through change in a respectful, emotionally agile way. Because better endings mean better beginnings.

'Good Bye highlights a crucial yet often overlooked moment in leadership and organizational life, offering valuable tools and actionable guidance. It will undoubtedly benefit leaders seeking to handle moments of parting with clarity and care.' - Kirsty Devine, Head of US HR, Financial Times

'I am adding this title to my recommended reading list!' - Professor David Clutterbuck

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas, of Randolph Partnership Ltd, and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, of The Causeway Coaching Ltd, are professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, working at board and senior level across all sectors to equip leaders to thrive in a complex and uncertain world.

Back Jacket

Nobody likes to talk about endings. Here's why we need to.

Leaders spend a lot of time planning new initiatives. But what about the endings that go along with them? Most leaders are not taught how to manage themselves, let alone their teams and organization, through the messy, multifaceted discomfort of an ending. Making a team member redundant, merging two teams, cutting funding to a failed project: in all these situations we tend to focus on the new beginning, and rush past the ending that needs our care and attention. Dealing with endings well takes maturity and emotional intelligence. Leaders need to understand and process their own feelings before they can lead others through transition.

Why does this matter? Because poorly managed endings leave a scar on everyone involved. Discretionary energy and motivation are not so forthcoming. Change programmes don't get traction, resistance and cynicism take root. Change fails.

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers provide this missing piece of the change leadership puzzle: a way of leading yourself and others through change in a respectful, emotionally agile way. Because better endings mean better beginnings.

'Good Bye highlights a crucial yet often overlooked moment in leadership and organizational life, offering valuable tools and actionable guidance. It will undoubtedly benefit leaders seeking to handle moments of parting with clarity and care.' - Kirsty Devine, Head of US HR, Financial Times

'I am adding this title to my recommended reading list!' - Professor David Clutterbuck

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas, of Randolph Partnership Ltd, and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, of The Causeway Coaching Ltd, are professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, working at board and senior level across all sectors to equip leaders to thrive in a complex and uncertain world.

Author Biography

Alison Lucas is a professionally certified (ICF PCC) Executive Coach with two decades of experience working with leaders across all three sectors, and around the globe. Alison's first career began with 15 years of commercial leadership experience in FMCG and business consultancy. Alison blends her considerable commercial business background with her coaching and systemic experience to equip leaders to navigate change in their complex and uncertain world.

Lizzie Bentley Bowers is a PCC-level Executive Coach with a Masters in Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, who has been coaching leaders and teams for over 15 years, challenging them to unearth what is really going on and support them to see what else is possible and work out how to get there. Keen to make the most useful leadership thinking accessible and applicable to all leaders she is the founder of the leadership hub Towards Leadership, author of the Strengths Stacker journals, host of the Leadership Letters podcast and a regular contributor to Coaching Perspectives magazine.

Having observed as senior leaders in their previous careers, and subsequently as coaches, the impact of poorly managed endings reverberating through the systems they work in, Alison and Lizzie developed Endings for Beginnings, a methodology to help leaders stop avoiding and start attending to endings.