Talking Smart/Strategically about Losing Jobs/Businesses

Layoffs, performance-firings and failing startups, boutiques and even big firms went mainstream in the early 1980s. Yet, Jan Hoffman reports in Sunday's THE NEW YORK TIMES, those canned, for whatever reason, still stumble when they "have to" talk about the ordeal. Or they avoid having to talk about the whole enchilada by hiding.  That's so behind the curve.  We now know how to talk smart/strategically after a loss so that it's soon enough a platform for our individual next big thing. After all we have about a quarter of a century of experience to build on and refine.

Okay, except for our significant others and those we're financially responsible for, no one else should have access to our emotional space on this.  Those who intrude with questions, comments, and faux encouragement and even stupid leads are the usual suspects who are naturally intrusive, mean, or full of fear it could happen to them.  The rules of the road for handling these menaces are:

• Realize you owe them nothing in terms of explanation about "what happened," how you feel, and what your future prospects are. 
• Reframe the conversation when they intrude to anything else such as the Wal-Mart that wants to move in or the little league coach you don't like.
• When the above doesn't work, provide rosy highlights of your present and future.  Honesty is over-rated.  When my business tanked, I told the all-too-gleeful, "My publisher is thrilled since I can now finally finish my book and I have to fly out to _______.  My college roommate is now a VIP at Microsoft and wants to find out how I can help her."  They scurry away fast.  That's not what they came to hear.

Next is what we tell ourselves.  No matter how much we might have contributed to our loss, all that is irrelevant for the future.  We can profit from those mistakes by analyzing them.  If we don't pummel ourselves with negative self-talk we won't be giving off bad vibes that will stand before us and our future.  In Silicon Valley, failures are perceived as necessary rites of passage.  That's because failure gets us focused as nothing else.  The lion's share of successful people were once screw-ups or got screwed over. So?  The past and present have no necessary correlation with the future.

Then there's what we tell our prospective future employers and possible clients.  This is no time for the blurt.  This is purely strategic discourse.  That means we rehearse it and keep overhauling or finetuning it as we receive feedback.  Early interviews are meant to be blown.  That's why we're supposed to grab any of those we can to practice. 

Right after each of those interviews we reverse-engineer every point of the process, from what we did to land that interview to the method of follow-up we used.  We discern what seemed to be effective and what wasn't.

Regarding strategic speech, the primary guideline is to be a smooth reframer.  That entails gliding the conversation to positive territory for yourself and positions of strength.  For instance, the interviewer asks, "Why were you laid off?"  You need to reformat that from pure information, some of which could appear negative, to positive input about you as a person and what you can offer this employer.

You might reply, "The company had reorganized my former department.  I assisted with that transition and continue to consult with them."  Or, "Consistently the earnings fell short of Wall Street's expectations.  Our department was untouched for a long time because of how I reorganized the work.  That cut expenses by 34 percent."  Any negative can be transformed into a positive.

The last piece is critical during discouraging or disappointing times.  And that's not to share this patch of darkness with others and especially yourself.  Articulating the blackness gives it solidity.  It also gives the usual suspects added incentive to torment us.  The reality is that we need to earn a living.  We will eventually find a way.  Usually we only need one job, not every job we apply for, and only a certain number of clients, not every prospect we call on. 

There's the possibility that we will have to talk with a professional.  That's worth every penny we pony up.  Frequently we can find therapists, coaches and other confidential healers on a sliding scale basis.  I invested in cognitive behavioral therapist [CBT] for five months.  Her whole focus was action, not feeling.  Even if the action proved to be a mistake it was a better choice than immersing the situation and myself in feelings.

A useful read during this time of change is any kind of Eastern Philosophy.  Buddhism, for instance, teaches that everything changes, the good passes, the bad passes.  So why sweat it.  The secret is to just keep moving, or as CBT conditions us, to take action.