HealthyGamerGG - I Was Just Laid Off...

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

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If you look at people's self-esteem after firing, what we discover is the way in which people were fired actually determines their self-esteem. So it's not like self-esteem is constant. It's how your company treats you on the way out that actually determines your self-esteem. All right. So next up, what I want to talk to you all about is layoffs. So layoffs are something that have become increasingly important. And specifically what I'd love to do today is share a little bit about how to manage being laid off. So the biggest problem that I see with most layoffs is that when people get laid off,

they tend to feel like they're at fault, right? So the biggest issue is that when I get laid off, like how do you feel? You feel like you are a failure, right? Because you got laid off. And then kind of this interesting thing can happen where we're sort of blaming ourselves for being laid off, even though on some level we may know that the reason we're getting laid off really has nothing to do with us. There are large-scale macroscopic economic forces, right?

so inflation is at an all-time high. We see that, like, you know, there are contractions of value in terms of Amazon and Twitter and stuff like that. A bunch of people are doing layoffs right now. And we sort of know that there are these macro economic changes. But when we actually get laid off, there's a ton of uncertainty, and we sort of feel like we're to blame. And even if you kind of say, if your friends say, oh, it's not your fault, like, you know,

the economy is bad. But then, like, what do you do in your mind for a second, right? When someone sort of feeds you that copium and sometimes we feed our stuff, this copium, especially with all this anti-work stuff that's going on, as we kind of like, we'll say like, oh, it's not our fault. It's because, you know, there's macroscopic economic things. My boss is an idiot. The company's in trouble. And so I'm getting laid off. It has nothing to do with me. It all has to do with like corporate malfeasance. But even if you tell yourself that, or if someone else tells you that, in the back of your mind, there's still this like little

question, right? Which is, well, why did I get laid off instead of, somebody else getting laid off. And so if you look at someone that, let's say, the so-and-so company lays off 20% of its workers, and if you're part of that 20%, even if you kind of realize, well, it's like the company sort of screwed up and they have to lay people off, even if you sort of realize that, you still are kind of thinking in the back of your mind. And if people say, oh, yeah, it's like corporations and people are behaving stupidly and it's like, it's not your fault. But in the back of your mind is like, why wasn't I part of the 80% that was kept, right? What made it so that I'm in the 20% that got laid off? And so there's a lot of

data that shows that when people get laid off, they feel like it's their fault. And what I'd love to do today is share with you all a couple of thoughts about, first of all, why do companies lay off people? Secondly, what does the science about layoffs and self-esteem tell us? And thirdly, what are some things that you can do to kind of bounce back if you've been laid off? So, first thing we're going to talk about are corporations. So oftentimes, what we struggle to understand as employees is that corporations are operating within what I would call a constructed reality. This actually isn't my term. It's a term that someone very close to me kind of explained to me after they were laid off, but they sort of said, like, it took them some time to realize that their bosses and management

were operating in a constructed reality. And what does that mean? It means that they're operating in a reality that is a little bit divorced from what's actually going on. So I'll give you all a couple of examples of this. So let's just think through how long does it take or how long is the time between a company realizing that they are in financial trouble and actually laying people off. Usually it's like quite a short time span, right? So if we look at if you're being hired by a company, you may have like something like a 90 day trial or 60 day trial. And in a 60 or 90 day trial in the hiring process, people are really trying to assess what your value is. Right. So you work with a particular team and then the team is like working with you, you work with this person, work with

this person, you have a direct report. And they take some time to sort of figure out, okay, where do you fit in, where do you bring value? Do we want to keep you? Do we not want to keep you? So they really get to know you as a person over that amount of time and then make an accurate judgment based on your work product, personality, your team dynamics, all that kind of stuff, about whether to keep you or not keep you. When people get laid off, is that how it works? Do they sit down and spend 60 to 90 days really paying attention to someone and how they fit in what value they bring to the table, whether they're like a good fit or bad fit? Absolutely not. Right? Some decision gets made very, very high up. And then someone comes to HR, the finance

department or whatever. Like HR is sitting with like the CEO and the finance department. And the finance department, some guy who's crunching numbers in Excel is like, yeah, we need to lay off 20% of our workforce. Otherwise, we'll go under. And the CEO is like, okay, fine. So like HR, we need to lay off 20% of our workforce. And so then HR sits down. They're like, okay, so like here's how we're going to do some kind of analysis. So they don't actually sit down and like think about what value every employee brings to the table. They're running some kind of numbers, right? They're Excel spreadsheets. They're weird like corporate assessments, which are very like standardized. They use some kind of rubric to decide who we're going to keep and who we're going to acts. And then that stuff kind of gets

passed down. And this is where politics enters, where if your boss really likes you, maybe they can advocate for you a lot. But even if they advocate for you, it's not like they necessarily can keep you. So if your boss gets told from, you know, the order gets passed down, you need to cut 20% of your workforce, then your boss is like, well, crack. Like everyone on my team is fantastic. That's why they're there. But that's not actually how it works, right? We don't actually look at value generation.

What most companies do when they're thinking about layoffs is look at costs. And this is the big problem is you have to understand that value and cost are two different things. Value is the yield that you get from a particular investment. But when it comes to layoffs, they're not. necessarily looking at the value, or they may be looking at the value in sort of a massive, scalable worksheet kind of way. But usually what they're looking at is the cost. The cost has to be reduced, so something has to be cut, no matter how valuable you actually are. So the first thing to understand is that when it comes to layoffs, they're not actually

assessing your value in a very thorough or fair way. There's usually an order from on high that then gets churned through some kind of like financial apparatus, and then there's like some kind like processed McNugget that comes out the other side, right? It's not an actual assessment of your value as a person. And they're operating within these kinds of ways. And then a portion of people end up getting laid off. When you get laid off, you feel like this is a very personal decision that someone has gone through and looked at all of your performance reviews and sort of compare them to everybody else's performance reviews. And they've done 360 degree assessments of talking to your boss and talking to your coworkers. And they went through a deep process to figure out who we should keep

and who we shouldn't. It's not how it happens. In fact, the opposite of how it happens, right? Because they don't have the resources for that kind of thing. They need to start cutting salaries like yesterday. So it's a very quick process. It's based on a constructed reality. And they usually choose to ask some arbitrary percentage of people. The second thing that we're going to dive into is a little bit about research. So this is where when someone gets laid off, oftentimes it's a huge blow to your self-esteem, right? Because you're assuming that the reason that you got laid off is because they're actually doing a very in-depth measurement of your quality as an employee, and they're choosing to ax you as opposed to someone else. They're placing a value judgment on this other person.

We're saying, we love this child more than we love you. And so then what happens is there's a negative impact to your self-esteem. You feel hurt. You feel worthless. You're like, oh my God, I'm never going to find a job. I'm not worth a whole lot. And then you really struggle. Science shows that after getting laid off, people will basically do one of two things. They'll engage in healthy coping strategies or strategic coping. mechanisms, or what they'll do is engage in escaping coping mechanisms. So one is where you kind of like, you know, you work on your resume, you start networking, you kind of like, I'm going to take this negativity and I'm going to put in a bunch of effort. And even if I feel bad about myself, if I work

really hard at my resume or networking, I can overcome my fundamental deficiency through effort. This is what's called a strategic coping mechanism. It's also interesting because it's not necessarily that they're deficient to begin with, but that's neither here nor there. Other people, what they'll do is kind of retreat from the situation. They'll engage in escaping coping mechanisms where I don't want to look at my resume because I feel worthless. I don't want to network because if I network, I don't bring anything to the table. I have no inherent values. There's no point in networking.

These are the kinds of thoughts that we tell ourselves. And how do we engage with those thoughts by running far, far, far away from them? If I think about networking, then I'm going to have to confront how I bring nothing to the table. So instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go play video games. maybe I'll drink, maybe I'll get high, maybe I'll do whatever. I'm going to watch Netflix. I'm going to eat ice cream by the tub, like whatever it is. I'm going to engage in an escaping coping mechanism.

Well, this is what's really interesting. Some people when they get fired don't suffer from low self-esteem. If you actually look at this research, a lot of people who get fired, and you may have seen people like this or maybe you're like this, where there's actually data that shows that some people are like, okay, even though I got fired, I recognize that these are factors outside of my control. I recognize that me getting fired has nothing to do with my inherent value or what I bring to the table at the company or as a human being. And they're able to bounce back more quickly.

Now, this is what's so fascinating about this research is out of all the research that I looked at. There was one thing that really stuck out to me, which is that we assume that the self-esteem exists prior to the firing. Right? We assume that if I have self-esteem and I get fired, that's what allows me to bounce back. And we assume that if I get fired and I have low self-esteem, then it's hard for me to bounce back. So this is what's really interesting. If you look at people's self-esteem after firing, what we discover is the way in which people were fired actually determines their self-esteem.

So it's not like self-esteem is constant. It's how your company treats you on the way out that actually determines your self-esteem. So this is what's really interesting. When a company sits down and talks to someone and lets them go in a person, personalized way and sort of says, like if your boss tells you, hey, you know, you've done a really good job at the company, you bring a ton of value, we're sorry we have to let you go. There are economic forces outside of our control that have nothing to do with you. Unfortunately, we have to release 20% of our staff. You're in the business development, or let's say you're in the research and

development part of our company. And since we've got to cut back on something, we're cutting back on R&D because we've got to focus on our core business as opposed to expanding into a new area, which is where your job is. That's why we're letting you go. So the more reasons and explanation and the warmer the termination process by your employers, the less your self-esteem will be impacted. And this is what's really important is that we view our self-esteem, or more importantly, we view our value as being independent of the communication from our employer, right? We don't really think that the way my boss talks to me determines my self-esteem. But the research actually shows that that's exactly the case. And so now what I'm going to do is share with you all something really

interesting. Let's do a quick thought experiment. Okay. So if my company is kind of a crapshoot, if they're highly disorganized and if they have no idea what's going on, what do you think their termination process is going to be like? Do you think it'll be what I described just now where someone comes down and sits down with you, explains to you what's going on, explains to you why they let go. If the company is highly disorganized, what kind of termination do you think you're going to receive? You're going to receive like hey, sorry, pack your stuff. We've got to let

20% of people go. You're going to get an email from your boss that has no explanation. And then you're shocked, you're shell shocked. You walk into work on Monday morning. You get an email at 10.15 minutes before you have a client meeting that says you're let go. You're like, pack your bags. Security will escort you out within the next hour. And how do you imagine people feel when they get that?

Oh my God, what did I do? What's going on? What's the explanation here? They feel terrible. Their self-esteem tanks. And the big irony is that the more incompetent your company is, the more likely your self-esteem is low because they're not appropriately communicating with you. So paradoxically, even if you're very, very valuable at a company, but if your company is disorganized, you're going to walk away from that interaction feeling like you're at fault.

So this is the wild thing that I realized after like looking at 30 papers on coping strategies and consequences of being laid off and stuff like that, is that actually, if your self-esteem is super low, that actually implies that it's, like, more likely that the company is actually screwing up as opposed to you screwing up, which is mind-blowing, right? This is actually what the data suggests.

So now the question kind of becomes, okay, so if I'm getting laid off, like, how should I manage that? The first thing that you should do is think about these two things, right? So recognize that the pressures on the company are somewhat independent of the value that you bring to the table. Now, if you've been fired based on substantive feedback, that's a whole different ballgame. But that's usually not company-wide layoffs, right? That's like, if you get some kind of performance review where they put you on probation and then six months later, they're like, we need you to do A, B, you see.

If you don't do A, B, or C, and then you get fired, then that's on you. It's not necessarily on the company. You get me, get what I'm saying. But what I'm talking about is like a little bit different, which is like if you get laid off with a batch of people. And even then, you may be thinking, well, okay, like, why did I get laid off in my? my colleague didn't because I'm worth less than they are. Well, that's not necessarily true. So just understand that. The second thing that you should do if your self-esteem is in the pits is ask yourself, what was the nature in which I got fired? How was that communicated to me? Did people sort of

like have me like a warm send-off or was it like cold and heartless? Did they provide reasoning and understanding and did they kind of explain to me what my value was? Or was it like this kind of disorganized heartless process? And then what you've got to realize is if it's a heartless process, If the answer that question is yes, then you've got to realize that's on them that's not actually on you. Does that make sense? So you've got to really understand that even though you may feel like crap, it's their lack of communication that actually makes you feel like crap as opposed to you being crap. And that's why you didn't deserve communication. That's not how it works. So the manner of the firing determines self-esteem. And so if you weren't let go in sort of like a warm, organized, information positive kind of way, even if they said, hey, we need to let you go because you're, you're not. You're not going. And so if you weren't let go in sort of like a warm, you're not pulling your weight in the ABC category. Interestingly enough, those people have better self-esteem because they recognize where they need to improve and they can actually bounce back from that easier.

So the first thing is to recognize points one and two. The third thing that you should really do is spend some time grieving. So this is where, I know it's kind of weird, but I worked with one patient who once told me that I got fired 10 years ago and that was actually way more traumatic to me than my divorce, which I was shocked to hear,

but as we kind of talked about it, you know, being let go from your job can absolutely be traumatic. And sometimes what you've really got to do is the best word is actually grieve. So if we talk about how do human beings cope with loss, the word that we use for that is grief, right? So we kind of want to go through the stages of grief, which may be like denial and anger and bargaining and finally acceptance and stuff like that.

Those are the Cuebler-Ross stages of grief. But the key thing here is to just give yourself a little bit of time to like recuperate. Don't dive right into finding a new job. Don't, you know, pick up, wake up the next day, pick up a phone and call 15 recruiters. don't polish up your resume the next day. Give yourself a little bit of time. Why is that? Well, it's because if you start panicking and calling recruiters,

they're going to pick that up, right? So they're going to pick up your emotional unhappiness and things like that, and it can actually kind of set you off on the wrong foot. So you want to give yourself somewhere between, I would say, one week and one month to kind of like grieve this loss depending on your financial situation. And then the next thing that you probably want to do is talk to someone. So this is where we want you to be in a sound emotional state,

whenever you re-approach the job. And so some of that is just going to be some amount of emotional decompression. So you can talk to a family member, you can talk to a colleague, you can seek professional help, you can talk to a coach. They're actually really good at helping with this kind of stuff. So there's a lot of like, you know, like Harvard Business Review and publications like that will frequently talk about how to cope with layoffs. And I've noticed that the most common authors for those kinds of articles are actually coaches.

So you spend some time just sort of decompressing your emotions that you can sort of get a clear head. And then the last thing that you should do is die back in, right? So at the end of the day, recognize that if we sort of list the first couple of things, that part of the reason that you were let go were forces outside of your control, that the blow to your self-esteem may not actually determine your value, that there's a difference between the way that you feel about yourself and what your actual value is, and the way that you feel about yourself depends on the manner in which you were fired. So then once you kind of recognize that, start to really think about, okay, what is the value that I bring to the table? What were the things that I could have done

better? What were the things that I'm actually really proud of at work? Right? So what were the things that I really did well? Because chances are you did something there if you were let go kind of in a group of layoffs. There's a reason you hadn't been fired yet, right? You were there for a while. Maybe you were there for a year or two years, 10 years, 15 years. I've heard all these stories. And if you're there for 15 years, you're bringing some kind of value. So as you start to think about that, sort of zero in on that a little bit. Start to really think about how you do bring value to the table. And maybe you were in the R&D department. And why did you let go? Why did they let you go? It's because they don't have money for R&D anymore. That doesn't affect your value as a human being.

That just means they couldn't afford the value that you bring. Right. So those are two very different things. And once you kind of zero in on that, this is what we've sort of known from recovering from trauma. You should weave that into a narrative. And so the biggest problem with low self-esteem and getting fired is we turn that into a narrative of negativity. The reason that's the reason that's, the reason that's I got fired is because I am worthless. You've got to reshape that narrative based on the value that you bring to the table and the appropriate external factors. I bring this value to the table and the reason that I got fired is because my company could no longer afford to invest in R&D. So what I'm looking for from future companies and what I'm curious about on your company

is that are you guys interested in growing? Are you guys interested in R&D? If so, I'm the right fit for you. And so as we reconstruct that narrative, as we lean into our own value, what science tells us is that our self-esteem will grow. And people who are able to construct that positive narrative, this also comes from research from the post-traumatic growth tradition or that section of research. As we're able to reinvent, not reinvent, but really shape that narrative in kind of a value-driven and positive way, it actually manifests in all kinds of different ways. It improves the way that our resume looks. It improves the way that we interact with people. It improves our networking. It improves our interviewing. And it even improves our chances of finding a good job. So I know that being laid off can be a very traumatic

experience, especially because when we get laid off, we feel like we're the ones at fault, right? There must be something wrong with me in order for me to be laid off. Then what kind of happens is when we start to feel these kinds of thoughts, we'll start to take some copium. We'll try to reassure ourselves by sort of thinking about, oh, this is corporate malfeasance, everyone up there is an idiot. we'll kind of blame them. But even as we blame them, there's this tiny little thought stuck in the back of our head, which is even if my boss is incompetent, why was I the person that got laid off as opposed to the four other people on my team that got to stay? So we sort of have to tackle that front and center. And we want to tackle that by first of all acknowledging that people have,

usually corporations have a constructed reality that has a lot of variables that don't actually have to do with our value. The second thing that we know from a lot of of research on layoffs is the manner in which you are laid off directly impacts your perception of your value. So if they didn't do a good job of laying you off, it's a cold, heartless email, then that doesn't actually mean you're worthless. That just means they're more disorganized. And this is what's really tragic about this, is the more disorganized the company is, the worst the self-esteem is of the employees. And the last thing to do is in terms of how to bounce back, give yourself some time to grieve, find someone to talk to, professional,

colleague, friend, family, coach, therapist. And the last thing is to really think about the value that you bring to the table and structure a narrative going forward that is based on that value. If you found this video helpful, check out Dr. Kay's guide. We've spent hundreds of hours writing and filming to help people understand their mind so that they can build the lives that they want. So check out the link in the description below.