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Most energetic, visionary, creative, and opinionated professionals have one thing in common: they’ve likely been fired.
There are dozens of inspirational stories of the career setbacks of people like Abraham Lincoln, Oprah Winfrey, or Steve Jobs. My favorite is Walt Disney being told by the Kansas City Star that he lacked creativity.
These oft-told tales have at their core a clueless person or organization failing to see the brilliance of the folks to whom they are giving the boot. The protagonist finds vindication by earning billions of dollars or having a monument built in their name.
This is rarely the case though, and reasons for being let go vary in real life. Most HR people will tell you skills get you hired but personality gets you fired. A person failed to respond to coaching, misread the moment in the organization, or simply exhausted everyone around them.
But really good people can be fired, too. Politics can play a role, as sometimes people land on the right side of the right issue but the wrong side of the wrong person.
There may have occurred an appalling level of ineptitude, and a head must roll to appease an external audience—even if the person fired worked on the periphery. A senior person can cause a mess, then push blame onto a more-junior leader. The term CYA stays in the lexicon for a reason.
A talented person can simply be in a wrong role. The organization puts them in a position that is ill-suited to their skills, interests, and temperament.
I once heard a consultant say, “Unless you are prepared to leave an organization, you can never lead an organization.” I took this to mean if you don’t stand behind some kind of conviction, you’ll never have the courage to fully realize your ambitions, vision, and plans. An executive can be hired to make change in a company or nonprofit, then the organization decides it likes the status quo after all. The change agent is pushed out. A lot of good people lose jobs this way.
But the most common reason of all for losing a job? You are caught up in a downsizing, reorganization, or merger.
Here is what to do when asked to leave, told your upward career has no more up, cut for financial reasons, or assigned the dreaded “special projects” role.
1. Stay Calm
You’re standing in a hole, and you must not dig. Resist making a bad situation worse by tossing out empty threats of litigation. The firing manager already spoke to the corporate counsel, and she signed off. Plus, litigation is only successful in extreme cases and typically a waste of money and energy. Your court case can come up on a Google search, too.
Don’t create an emotional scene because it is undignified, will be the last thing you are remembered for, and will be regretted down the road. It may be hard to find the restraint, but these behaviors take you nowhere. If you had any self-awareness at all, you secretly knew this moment was coming anyway.
Think this through, as another obvious reason exists to keep your cool: you may need at least a neutral reference from these folks soon.
Take this shot to your chin, then shake your head to clear your mind a bit.
2. Find Your Leverage
You must keep your wits because now it’s time to negotiate. If you’re being offered three months’ severance pay, try to negotiate your way to six. Make sure you ask for the pro-rated bonus. Ask for accommodation if your stock options or retirement are close to vesting. Healthcare is critical, so you must nail down as much coverage as you can for as long as you can.
You may not think you have leverage here, but you do. The person firing you is not at all comfortable and wants to salve their own guilt by “seeing what they can do.” Use their shame to your advantage. You may not seal the deal in this initial conversation, but you have at least opened a path.
3. Reflect and Learn
Here, you must also ask for feedback on why things went wrong. Not in an argumentative or defensive way. The decision is not going to change. Nobody has ever unfired someone in the moments after they fired them. Again, you’re trying to maintain a dialogue and show a little professionalism.
This is important because soon you must reflect on what happened, and what you may have done to cause this predicament.
Think of being fired as breaking up with a spouse or significant other. As much as we like to tell ourselves it was entirely the other person’s fault, the reality is we shared some of the blame. When your powers of reason return, you’re going to have to take a critical look in the mirror so you don’t wind up here again.
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You will go through the steps of the grieving process when you lose your job unexpectedly. Anger is the one to watch out for, as it is the most corrosive emotion of all and will prevent you from moving on to other opportunities—and there will be countless other opportunities.
Though you won’t see it in the days or weeks following, your firing will not be the worst thing to ever happen to you. Go back to our heartwarming anecdotes; it may actually be a good thing. You may have been waiting for somebody to make up your mind for you, and you can now do a long-planned career reinvention.
At most, it will be a footnote in the story of your career.
Kevin Salcido was the vice president and chief human resources officer at Arizona State University.
Salcido has been a human resources leader for over thirty years. Early in his career, he had a senior personnel role with a major retail chain in Phoenix and spent time as the Southwest region HR manager for the Pepsi-Cola Company, a division of PepsiCo. Salcido then became the vice president of HR at Central Newspapers Inc.; a media and information company that operated seven daily newspapers include the Arizona Republic and the Indianapolis Star. Salcido was then senior director of labor and employee relations and leadership and workforce development at Arizona Public Service before joining ASU in 2007.
Salcido’s major areas of interest include employee and labor relations, organizational development, building performance-based cultures, creating inclusive work environments, and leadership coaching.
He is also the author of the book Your Afternoon Mentor. He holds a BS in Justice Studies and an MBA from Arizona State University.
Salcido’s nonprofessional interests include travel, hiking, rafting, golfing, and anything else outdoor-related. He is also a licensed private pilot. He lives in his native Phoenix with his wife, Toni.
