Don’t squander the opportunity of a lay off

If you were just laid off, the most powerful thing you can do is to reach out to the CEO, and say one thing:

“Thank you.”

After all, they just set you free.

I know, this seems like satire or a twisted joke. It’s not.

I was fired once, have fired people and have been through numerous layoffs. I know how much it hurts from experience, and I have never cut anyone for cause or otherwise without excessively brooding over the decision. Beyond losing your livelihood, layoffs also bring additional pain because they are both surprising and not reflective of your performance. Leaving on someone else’s terms also fails to provide proper closure, and it can be hard to reconcile this internally.

Still, as much as it sucks, I firmly believe getting the axe in these situations is a blessing waiting to rear its head.

From my experience on both sides of these decisions, I have two thoughts on how to process the emotions and how to flip this negative experience into a positive opportunity.

First, remember this is the end of a chapter, not the book

The first thing we all deal with in these moments is shame.

“If only I had been smarter, more productive or just, more, I could have avoided this.”

It’s poppycock. I promise you, it is.

Layoffs are often performance agnostic, focused on some blind departmental formula vs. performance reviews. Even if your particular situation was semi-performance based, you should take comfort in knowing leadership likely made a series of bad decisions for months or possibly years prior to get to this moment. Laying people off is often indicative of failures in leadership*. So whatever rationale they come up with on your final day, just know, this is less about you than them.

In fact, the most important thing to realize is this is not where your story ends. This moment may headline a chapter, but is not the final name of the book.

I went on an emotional rollercoaster when I was fired (which was for cause—quite a bit different in some ways, but similar all the same in that it ends with you packing your crap up in a box). Whether fired or laid off, you're going to go through many stages of grief—anger, fear, panic, etc. I made a mistake that I encourage anyone laid off to do your best to avoid: I carried all of this baggage with me for a while.

I was living with imposter syndrome. I felt I needed more time on my résumé to make a meaningful next step in my career. I felt I had a black hole on my résumé now. I was angry and spiteful. My spite still embarrasses me nearly a decade later.

You have to push through all of that, and part of being able to do so is realizing only you can take control of this story.

Your next chapter starts today

At some point in my emotional stew, I realized I was free from my employer. Heck, I realized I had been trying to leave anyways—I had come to hate this job. That old boss only had as much hold over me as I let them.

It was time to take control of my journey.

When you’re working for someone else, getting poor feedback, seeing little opportunity for growth and generally working under a weak leader, it all compounds and leaves you feeling hopeless and exhausted. However, I’ve both seen this for myself, and seen it in others, that these moments can feel like quicksand—the more you try to escape, the more it seems like you’re stuck. I felt like that, but freshly fired I had no more deadlines, tasks or meetings.

Suddenly my résumé looked like a blank canvas. This was a chance to completely reinvent myself. I was free to become whatever I wanted.

I realize that not everyone who gets laid off hated their jobs. Honestly though? It doesn’t matter if you loved your job or had a voodoo doll of your boss hidden in your desk for lunchtime acupuncture sessions—that job is dead to you. It’s time to focus on you, and you have the freedom to start over.

Another thing to remember, is that even had you not been cut in a round of layoffs, the job wasn’t going to ever be the same again. Companies that go through layoffs have a rough road ahead, typically seeing top talent leaving, morale draining and leadership’s bad decisions compounding more quickly.

No matter where you are on the emotional spectrum here, take a moment to love yourself. There is no shame in taking a few mental health days—or weeks—then start thinking about what's next. Decide the direction you want to go and get after it. Most of all, think of what's next as an opportunity. The worst thing you can do is wallow in grief's emotional spectrum.

You’re not alone in this, either. Oprah was fired from her job as a news anchor because she was deemed "unfit for television news." Walt Disney was fired from one of his first jobs for a lack of creativity. Steven Spielberg sold the Pixar team because he had zero faith in their future in animation. Most of the greatest stories in business start with moments like the one you’re living in right now. And of course, to this list of these great business leaders, you can add the Silicon Holler Founding Father.+

The difference in the stories that became books, or at the very least, became memorable, is some people realize that getting fired or laid off is a short term situation, if not an outright opportunity. They understand that today is the smallest of ticks in their life's timeline, and that one is judged on the culmination of the body of work.

What happened to you is not who you are.

What's past is prologue.

How to seize the opportunity when fired or laid off:

1) Take some time to process

Taking a mental health day or seven is totally fine but make it productive and disconnected. Get outside, go hike or whatever. Do not go virtual, though. Sitting on Twitter, reading troll commentary about your company is not going to help you get through this.

2) Take some time to choose a path

You will never—and I mean ever—more free to choose to chase a dream than right now. If you just got fired as an accountant, but have always wanted to chase your passion for being a baker, today is the day to drop in to five bakeries to see if they could use help (possibly an extreme example, but that’s also the point). Find what you want to do, run my recon process, and get focused.

3) Immediately get back on schedule

When I was fired, my now-cofounder Zack, having just been laid off a few months prior, told me the best thing he did was to maintain a schedule. That mean waking up at my normal time, sitting down at the computer and getting to work on whatever was next. I did this, and it really helped. I landed a job 10 days later.

You made it this far. Why not share it?

What I’m reading: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

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* This is not to say that all leaders who go through layoffs are bad leaders. As we saw with COVID, the world can have a say in the market that you simply can’t prepare for. Many leaders who did layoffs in COVID made hard decisions that saved their companies.

+ My god I hope you all get my sense of humor. It’s drier than a popcorn fart at times.