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Firings
Is a recent firing weighing on you? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. They talk through what to do when...
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Is a recent firing weighing on you? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Susan David, a psychologist, lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the author of Emotional Agility. They talk through what to do when your coworker has been wrongfully fired, your company has massive layoffs, or you’ve been fired.
Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Send in your questions about workplace dilemmas by emailing Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:
HBR: The Right Way to Be Fired by Maryanne Peabody and Larry Stybel — “It’s natural to want to believe that the company for which you work so hard cares about you. But allowing yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security sets you up for shock and disappointment when you are fired or laid off.”
First Round Review: How to Lead and Rally a Company Through a Layoff — “A layoff shouldn’t be a surprise to leaders, nor to its people. It’s not something that happens to a company. It’s an act by its leadership when no other routes can be pursued. In other words, when a layoff is your way forward, you should implicitly be telling people that you’ve exhausted every other route.”
HBR: Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Andrew J. Ward — “No one can truly define success and failure for us—only we can define that for ourselves. No one can take away our dignity unless we surrender it. No one can take away our hope and pride unless we relinquish them. No one can steal our creativity, imagination, and skills unless we stop thinking. No one can stop us from rebounding unless we give up.”
HBR: After Layoffs, Help Survivors Be More Effective by Anthony J. Nyberg and Charlie O. Trevor — “If your firm has downsized recently, you’re now managing a bunch of survivors—the lucky ones who didn’t get laid off. But good fortune doesn’t make for good performance—at least not in this situation. Chances are, you’re presiding over a heightened level of employee dysfunction, even if you don’t see it yet.”
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be. The truth is that we don’t have to let the tension, conflicts and misunderstandings get us down. We can do something about them.
DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions about workplace dilemmas, and with the help of experts and insights from academic research, we help you move forward.
ALISON BEARD: Joining us now to talk about the fallout from firings is Susan David. She’s a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. Susan, thanks so much for being on the show.
DAVID: Thanks for inviting me.
ALISON BEARD: Susan, have you ever been fired?
DAVID: I’ve never been fired, but I have left a job under circumstances in which I realized that either I left the job, or I probably was going to be fired. And it was probably the most down experience in my career, and also the most toxic experience in my career.
DAN MCGINN: As a psychologist, what do you think about when someone is fired in terms of the emotional impact of that?
DAVID: Firing is never easy for people, and there are a whole range of emotions that come up for any person, regardless of the context. And I think the most important thing is to process the emotional experience in a way that allows it to become an opportunity and a catalyst for some level of growth.
ALISON BEARD: All right, well, we’ve got a lot of firings to get through today, so let’s go to our first question. Dear HBR: a new colleague in my small department, I’ll call her Ann, got abruptly and unfairly dismissed. My colleagues and I are really struggling with what to do about it. Here’s what happened. Ann’s supervisor was a woman I’ll call Ethel. Ethel’s been at the company for more than a decade, but she’d never supervised anyone before or been trained to. She also spends a lot of her week correcting her own mistakes. She complains constantly to everyone about everything, from work, to her family, none of whom she gets along with. Ann was really easy to get along with. Ethel still gave her a tough time. She even shared things with us that Ann had told her in confidence. After less than a year on our team, Ann was randomly fired by the higher-ups. Supposedly, Ethel and her boss didn’t know this was going to happen. Many people, except Ethel, of course, were very distraught by this chain of events. Those of us who are close with Ann had lunch with her after she’d been dismissed. She said HR told her she didn’t get along with the group and had job performance issues, both untrue. She asked for specific examples, and they sited mistakes Ethel had made. For those of us left behind, morale is very low. It seems like lies were made up to fire Ann. I’ve heard about this recently happening with another colleague as well. It’s led to a culture of just put your head down and work. And Ethel is still complaining about Ann to anyone who will listen. How do we avoid her black hole of misery without seeming like we’re being bad teammates? What can we do about any of this?
DAVID: Well, firstly, I think that the experience is not an unusual one. And what you’ve got is, you’ve got someone who has been fired, and the people who are left behind have questions that are unanswered. They have a very strong sense of injustice and inequity that’s happened here. And they are starting to group together in a way that creates us and them. This group of people is what I called hooked.
DAN MCGINN: What do you mean by hooked? What are they fixating on here?
DAVID: Well, it seems like what is happening here is, there’s discussions that are going on quite likely, about what’s happened to Ann, how terrible Ethel is, why things are unfair. Now, that’s not to say that they shouldn’t have those discussions. But there’s very interesting research looking at how people deal with difficult situations, and one of the things that’s been found is that very often people will do one of two things. One thing is where one pushes the emotions aside, so when one says things like, oh, well, whatever’s happened, happened. I’m just going to get on with it. The other is what we call brooding. Brooding is where an individual or a group of individuals, co-brooding, get together and basically ruminate, dwell on, go over the situation, the unfairness of it, why things haven’t been effective. And what that can often lead to is being so consumed by the story that you’re not actually bringing the best of yourself to the situation.
ALISON BEARD: Well, I think they really need more information. Right? So I agree that they’re getting stuck on this one story. But I think they actually need to find out whether this organization had, made one bad decision, or made the right decision regarding Ann based on something they have no idea about. Or whether they are indeed working for a bad company. You know, it’s clearly not talking amongst themselves.
DAVID: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: You know, as you say, Susan. So what is it? Is it going to their immediate boss?
DAN MCGINN: I think in these kind of situations, realistically, you’re not going to get 100% satisfactory answers. You know, HR departments will say that’s a personnel matter. We’re not going to discuss it. These are complicated HR/legal issues. And there’s never great transparency around them.
ALISON BEARD: But Susan, do you think that there’s a path forward where they can talk to a leader in the company, the HR department, and get more information about this particular story to help them get unstuck from the ruminating?
DAVID: I think that there is a path forward, but my sense of where they’re at is that they are so stuck in the emotion that they aren’t actually even necessarily looking for a path forward. What’s more helpful is coming from the space of, what’s really happened here? Curiosity, courage, who do we want to be in the situation? What kind of team do we want to be? And I don’t feel that they’re in that space yet. I think that the first thing that actually needs to happen in order to move forward from unhooking is less about what do we do, and much more about, how do we feel?
ALISON BEARD: But I think these people should choose to be the employees that stand up against injustice if they take that to the higher-ups, basically provide feedback on the fact that they think something wrong has happened here. I think that’s the path to go to elicit this change.
DAVID: Having it out with your boss, where you are stuck in the difficult emotion, is unlikely to get a good outcome. Emotions are data. They are not directives. So I agree, I think that you, in this kind of situation finding out what has happened in getting answers is critical, but my question always is, what is the starting point? Is the starting point where you’re coming from the place of anger, or is your starting point where you’re coming from the place of wisdom and curiosity?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, no, I wouldn’t advise them to march into the boss’s office, say, you need to hire Ann back and fire Ethel. I definitely don’t think that should happen. I think they should go, absolutely listen to what they hear, offer their perspective and their perception, because that’s important, too, whether they are right or wrong about the situation, and then see how the boss or bosses react.
DAVID: So this that you’re describing is I think one of the most difficult things for all of us as human beings, which is the movement from a place of, my story is fact, into the place of emotional agility and curiosity. And you know, we know from the research that there are very practical steps that people can take in order to make that transition. The first is about showing up to the emotion, is about saying, this is what I’m feeling. The second is about asking yourself things like, you know, is what you’re calling just anger or just unfair, is that really what it is? Or is it disappointment? Is it a sense of injustice? Is it a send of overwhelm? Like, what is the emotion really telling you? Then trying to say, what is the value, what is it when I go and I speak to the manager? What is it that I’m trying to get out of that conversation? Is it that you just want validation that I’m right? Or is it that I want to come to a true sense of understanding and forward movement?
ALISON BEARD: I think they should be looking for information.
DAVID: Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: About how the company really wants to operate. And if the company wants to continue operating the way they seem to have been, then that’s information that they can then use —
DAVID: To make decisions about —
ALISON BEARD: Exactly.
DAN MCGINN: I come off sounding like the cynic on this question. I think that —
ALISON BEARD: That never happens. [LAUGHTER]
DAN MCGINN: Well, this will be the rare exception. This is kind of situation where it sounds like people want closure, and I’m not sure they’re going to get it in this situation. The company isn’t going to put all their cards on the table and say, here is exactly why we fired Ann. They’re going to either need to decide that they can get over it, or they’re going to need to find a different plan for their work life.
ALISON BEARD: Hm. We haven’t talked about Ethel at all. What do you all think about whether they should engage with Ethel?
DAN MCGINN: I mean, it sounds like she’s really terrible at her job. I mean, one of the most interesting facts in the letter is that Ethel and Ethel’s boss say that they didn’t know that Ann was about to be fired. I’ve never heard of a company where someone gets fired, and the boss and the boss’s boss are caught unaware by it.
ALISON BEARD: Right, and to me that’s another sign that there’s a lot of duplicity going on. It just seems like a really shady workplace.
DAVID: There’s a lot in this letter that just doesn’t hang together when it comes to the organization. Agreed. It just doesn’t all gel. I think that there is kind of demonization in a way that happens towards Ethel. You know, it’s very black and white. You know, it’s very non-nuanced. We’ve got a goodie and we’ve got a baddie. And we’ve got the person who’s a wonderful team player, and we’ve got the person who is a terrible team player. And we’ve got the person who’s wonderful at their job, and we’ve got the person who makes lots of mistakes. And not to suggest that it is impossible that this is the reality, I think that there is a lot of non-nuanced thinking.
DAN MCGINN: One other thing I thought might help in this, and I say this having watched a couple of friends get fired or laid off in a way that I thought was unfair, is direct some of this energy towards supporting and trying to help the friend regain employment, and it sounds like she was not in a very good situation here working for Ethel, and her next job will probably be better, so if our writer can help facilitate, it would be great.
ALISON BEARD: And then maybe Ann can bring her and the team over to work at this much nicer organization. [LAUGHTER]
DAVID: I think that’s a really powerful observation. When I mentioned earlier that I feel like they are hooked as a team, I think that part of that being hooked is being so inward facing, and so focused on what is going wrong, that there’s less of a capacity to actually engage with the world around them. And one of the things that they need to engage with is Ann, even in the context of what has gone wrong. Who do we want to be a team? How do we want to interact with one another? And how can we be supportive of Ann?
ALISON BEARD: Well, I think, I mean, to Susan’s point about acknowledging the emotion, I do think that first lunch does have to be a venting session. You have to let Ann complain and rage and cry and do all of that. But then I think the next lunch is when you start talking about, OK, great. Who do you want to be, as you say, Susan? What are your values? What organization do you want to work for next, and how can we help? And if you need a reference, we’ll be happy to give you one.
DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what are we telling her?
ALISON BEARD: So we think that our letter writer and her friends at the company need to unhook themselves from the emotions they’re feeling now. Absolutely it’s natural to feel disappointed and angry that the injustice that they perceive has happened, but they also need to understand that situations aren’t entirely black and white. Next, they need to decide what they really want to stand for, and if they believe that they want to be crusaders for justice and equity, then perhaps they should approach the manager, not as crusaders, but really to find out perspective. How did this all happen? Why did it happen? And then they use the response to gauge whether the company is a place that reflects their values. The other thing is, they can help Ann. They can redirect everything that they feel into giving her good references, putting her in touch with people who will get her the next job, which might be better than the one she’s just lost.
DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I’m about to start a new job, and I’m having a hard time staying positive because my last job ended horribly. I was fired. My boss told me I didn’t perform well enough during my probationary period. He called it a business decision. I felt it was more of a personality clash. Whatever the cause, it’s damaged my confidence. During the months I spent there, everyone gossiped and whispered behind each other’s back. I felt harshly criticized for every piece of work I did. I expect to be supported and encouraged at work. Instead, I experienced exactly the opposite every single day. I have five years of experience at other jobs, and I have succeeded in the past. However, this was the second time I’ve been fired. It’s starting to feel like a trend. How can I start my new position with positivity? How can I believe that I can be successful again?
DAVID: I feel a sense of empathy. It’s tough, and the feeling of rejection and not knowing what’s happened, this is a tough situation to be in.
ALISON BEARD: The good news is, he has a new job. So we’re set there. Is there anything that he needs to do to sort of bring closure to the last situation so that he is in a more positive mindset?
DAVID: Well, before even focusing on positivity, one of the things that really stands out for me is that he knew that he wasn’t performing in a way that met expectations, and yet he kept pushing forward with the work, rather than trying to understand what had happened. And now what I’m starting to see is that he wants to again push forward with positivity, without understanding what has happened. And so, the first thing that I would say is, slow down. This is not about trying to be positive. It’s more about trying to understand, because if you understand, then you can approach your next position with a greater level of insight and growth.
DAN MCGINN: That’s a great observation, the idea that you’re separating out the actual performance with the emotions around the performance, the idea that if you struck out in your last time at bat, you need to go to the plate the next time around feeling good and positive and confident, but you also better know why you struck out and know not to do that again.
ALISON BEARD: That was my take, too. You know, my first thought was that he thinks it’s a personality clash. You do suspect that actually it was a lack of skills. If that’s the case, he really needs to find it out before he starts the new one.
DAVID: Yes, in the previous question I mentioned how often when people have difficult emotional experiences, they might brood, which is what we saw in the last example, or they might bottle, and bottling is where you just push aside. I’m unhappy in my job, but at least I’ve got a job, so I’m just going to continue. And what I think we’re seeing in this situation is this person is getting a whole lot of emotional feedback from the environment, and they are essentially saying, I’m not going to focus on it. I just want to get on with my job, and I want to do the best job I can, but actually, those emotions and that feedback from the environment is critical. It helps us to calibrate. It helps us to shape ourselves. It helps us to understand what skills we lack and how to move forward. And so this is essential to slow down.
ALISON BEARD: I feel like it’s, he’s actually in touch with his emotions. He knows that he’s feeling sad and lacking confidence in all that. I feel like he’s not in touch with the information, the actual facts of this situation. And so I want to figure out a way for him to get those facts.
DAVID: I don’t think that this is someone who’s super in touch with his emotions. I think this is someone who’s saying, I had a really tough situation, and I feel bad about it. But how can I be positive? It’s like, after the fact. During the situation what you’ve got, is you’ve got someone who hasn’t really been able to be connected with. There’s all of this factual data in the environment, but also emotional data in the environment that I’m just ignoring. And I think it’s both. I think he’s been ignoring both.
ALISON BEARD: Any time something bad happens at work, firing is the most extreme example, you need to go back over it in your own mind. You need to talk to people about it. And you need to say, OK, what are the two to three lessons that I want to draw from this experience? So I think his next step is to find some of the colleagues that weren’t whispering behind his back, or the ones who were but seem nice and friendly otherwise, and just ask them out for lunch or a coffee, and ask them questions about what he did right and what he did wrong.
DAVID: I think that’s right. And I what that takes is, it takes a huge amount of emotional courage. So I think that’s critical. I think having those conversations is going to essential. I think a very important psychological aspect of this is self-compassion. When anyone has been let go, regardless of the situation, it can so inevitably feel like you’ve done something wrong. You’ve messed up. And I think what becomes really important is, when you go into these conversations with these colleagues, is to recognize in your heart that you did the best you could with who you were with the information that you had available to you. It’s not just about finding out what I did wrong, but recognizing that even with the information of what I might have done wrong, I am still going to be kind to myself.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, that reminds me of a study on CEOs which would seem totally irrelevant, by Jeffery Sonnenfeld at Yale. But he found that the CEOs who were very publicly fired and shamed, the ones who didn’t bounce back were the ones who really had a tendency to blame themselves and sort of dwell on the past instead of looking to the future.
DAVID: There’s been some really fascinating research done around this topic, for instance, by James Pennebaker. You know, Janes Pennebaker did this fascinating research looking at individuals who were laid off from work, and what James Pennebaker finds in this research is that individuals who write about this emotionally evocative experience 20 minutes a day for three days, six months later are rehired quicker than individuals who just try to move forward without focusing or processing the emotions. And I think, you know, for an individual who’s young and whose work experience is fairly limited, but whose work experience has been checkered, this is all the more motivation. So this is about a process. It’s about a career, and this is just one building block in the career, as opposed to the entire career.
DAN MCGINN: It’s interesting. We’ve been very focused on the backward-looking piece of this because that’s where the learning is going to come from. But my mind turns much more to the new job and how to try to put a structure in place. So I think his first day, he should sit down with his boss and say, listen, especially for these early days, I’d love frequent feedback. You know, could we spend 15 minutes a week just talking about how it’s going? I’d love you to be super direct with me. If I’m doing something wrong, tell me soon, tell me often, tell me really directly. You know, invite that negative feedback so that if the boss isn’t adept or inclined to give it, that there’s an open avenue for it to come, though. I think that’s one of the ways that he can try to maximize this, his odds of success and early win to the next job.
ALISON BEARD: Susan, what do you think that he should be thinking about as he walks in on his first day?
DAVID: I think that he should have very clear in his mind, again, what his values are. When we approach something from a sense of have to, I have to be positive, and I have to, have to, have to, it actually creates a level of stress and anxiety and resistance. If instead you really connect with the value of growth, the value of learning, the value of collaboration, and you’re keeping that front and center, becomes what I call a want to goal. I want to learn, and therefore I want to connect with my new boss about how I can learn better. Just having a sense of values front of mind, rather than trying to force positivity, I think will fundamentally change his experience.
ALISON BEARD: Great. So Dan, what are we telling this guy who’s on his way to a new job?
DAN MCGINN: Well, first, we are sorry for what he’s been through. Getting fired is never easy. We commend him on having very quickly landed in what sounds like a great new job. We think he may be a little bit too focused on positivity and confidence, and that he needs to be sure that he’s paying as much or more attention to the underlying performance issues to really understand what went wrong in the last job. Number one, we think he should go back to the firing and do the detective work. You know, maybe have a conversation with the boss or some other people who were in a good spot to observe him, to understand better what went wrong there. And we think he should show self-compassion, try to learn but don’t beat himself up about what happened there. In the new job, he should try to set up mechanisms for frequent and candid feedback, so that he’s going to have a very clear sense on a very frequent basis of whether he’s up to snuff or not. And we think he needs to be in a learning mindset, not pressuring himself to perform from the first day, not trying to put a false confidence or false positivity on it, but instead to be open to learning and to work with the new boss to get off to the right start.
ALISON BEARD: All right, now for our last question. Dear HBR: I’m a 27-year-old woman working as a senior marketing analyst at a Brazilian e-commerce company. I was hired a year and a half ago, and I’ve been promoted twice. Due to internal and external factors, the company’s growth has stalled. My team has also been through a lot. First, my manager left for another company. So I started reporting directly to our marketing director, a very difficult person. A few months later, that direct was fired. Then the company founder, who had been overseeing the marketing area, handed the role off to another partner. I did finally get a new manager, and he was quite competent, but then the company announced they needed to cut 40% of staff. My new manager was one of those people. I was retained, but I’m having trouble trying to figure out what to do. The three founders and the major investor made a speech on Friday. They said, oh, we made a lot of mistakes trying to estimate the company’s growth, and we realized our financial goals were unrealistic. That struck me as almost stupid. We’ve been telling them that for more than six months. It seems like they were in complete denial, or somehow thought we were just complaining and being lazy. They continue to hire new people, new tools, and branding agencies, even though we weren’t hitting our targets. I believe in the business and our market. I’m not sure I believe in our leaders, though. If the company bounces back, perhaps I’ll get another promotion. They already expect me to guide and inspire more junior employees. Short-term, I have my eye on the supervisor role. Medium-term, I’d like to be a manager. On the other hand, some of my colleagues have gone to work for companies like Facebook, Uber, and McKinsey. They earn more money and have more powerful roles. I believe I have the education and skills to make a similar move. So what do you think I should do?
DAVID: Well, I think this individual is in a great situation. She’s in an organization that, while the organization might not be doing that well, she is believed in. She’s been promoted twice. And they’ve kept her while they’ve fired other people. So I think that she is asking exactly the kinds of questions she should be asking. Am I in the right organization? And what should I be doing as my next steps? And she’s asking these questions in a way that is timely, so that she can really be strategic about how she moves forward.
DAN MCGINN: Isn’t there a case to be made that she thinks her bosses are stupid, and by their own admission, they don’t really know what they’re doing? I worry about the sheer competence of the leadership team here, and I wonder how long she’s going to be able to continue at a place where she thinks her bosses are idiots.
ALISON BEARD: I completely agree with you, Dan. When I was doing the research for this, I started looking at phases like sinking ship. And I also thought of some advice that Jeff Bussgang, a prominent VC and one of our authors gives. When he is looking at companies the first thing that he considers is not the market, but the team. Can the founders’ articulated vision that inspires you and others, and are they of high integrity? And would you want to work for them at this company or another one? And I think in this case, the answer is clearly no. She doesn’t have confidence in the leadership team.
DAN MCGINN: But that doesn’t mean she needs to leave tomorrow. Right?
DAVID: That’s my point. I think you’re getting the impression that I think she should stay. Really what I’m saying is I think she has choice. She could either stay in this organization. It might not be the best advice. Or she could look elsewhere. But she’s really in a prime position of assessing her options.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, there are some positives you can see there. You know, one is sort of quickly ramping up her skill sets, because obviously she’s going to have a lot of responsibility when 40% of her colleagues have been fired. Another one is, as she notes, sort of quickly moving up to a management position, which at Uber or Facebook or McKinsey would almost certainly not happen to her. And so maybe she does keep working, and trying to right the ship gets her at a different level before she makes the jump to one of those better organizations.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, it’s like a battlefield promotion.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]
DAN MCGINN: I’ve been through a similar experience, at the job before I came to HBR, the company got into some financial trouble and started laying people off, and as a result of the layoffs, I got promoted and stayed for about another year doing that new job, because it was a great opportunity. I would learn a lot. I knew the whole time I was not going to be there for very long because I’d lost faith in the people that ran the company. I didn’t think the business model was solid anymore.
DAVID: To me, this is a classic example of the question of, when do you grit, and when do you quit? So much of what we are surrounded by in our cultural narrative is the idea that you just keep going, that when opportunities are coming your way, you should just stick it out. You just stay with the company, that you just put your head to the grindstone and get on with it, and opportunities may come into fruition. But there’s a difference between being stubborn versus stupid. You know, we can keep going and going and going at something that ultimately, as may happen in this situation, has no good outcome. So the kinds of questions that I would be encouraging this person to ask herself, and that we should all be asking when we are faced with a grit versus quit decision, is firstly, what are the real chances of success in this context? Number two, is the role that I’m in or the role that I might have in the short term, is it truly drawing on my strengths, my skills, and where I want to be going? And number three, does this opportunity represent something that is valued congruent to me. So I think these are very personal questions that we can all ask of ourselves and that those answers will enable her to get a sense of, is it now that I leave? Is it three months? Is it a year? Or do I stick it out for the long term, until potentially the ship sinks?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I mean, I think she absolutely needs to start working her network, even if she’s staying in the company for a long time. She should start reaching out to people now having informal coffees, lunches.
DAN MCGINN: One of the advantages of having 40% of your colleagues laid off is that they’re all going to be working somewhere else soon. So her network just expanded exponentially.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, absolutely. So if she wants that job at Facebook or Uber or McKinsey, how should she go about getting it?
DAVID: That may well be a great opportunity. But what’s also essential, because she’s now in a transition point where she’s thinking about her next steps, is also thinking about what kind of company do I want to be in? And it’s not necessarily about power or about brand name. You know, swim in your own lane. Know what your values are. Know what career you want. Know who you want to be. And don’t necessarily make the litmus about what other people are doing. This is a time for her to focus on her needs and to use those other people as data points, but not to endlessly compare.
ALISON BEARD: That’s a, I think I would stick with my initial take that she should explore opportunities elsewhere. What do you all think?
DAVID: So for this grit versus quit decision, really, I think that this is probably a quit. But in the meantime, she may want to grit a little bit, specifically because it connects with an opportunity or some kind of future growth for her that may be of value.
DAN MCGINN: So Alison, with all this talk of sinking ships, would you like to sing us out with the theme from Titanic? Or would you just like to sum up?
ALISON BEARD: I can’t even think of the song right now.
DAN MCGINN: My Heart Will Go On.
ALISON BEARD: Oh, yeah. No, I can’t do that one. Yeah, so I think first we really want to commend her for asking these questions. She’s deciding whether to grit or quit. And that’s absolutely the thing to be focused on right now. The continued layoffs and her frustration with the founder is certainly a red flag that she needs to take into consideration. So right now she needs to step back and ask herself what does she want out of work for the short term? And if that’s expanding her skill set, moving up to leadership roles earlier than she might otherwise, maybe it’s worth the risk of staying with this company for a little bit longer. At the same time, if she thinks that she’d rather work for a more stable company with better structure, then maybe it’s time to start thinking about moving on. Regardless of what she does, she should start reaching out to her network and just prime herself for the opportunities that might come her way.
DAN MCGINN: Susan, thanks for being here.
DAVID: Thank you for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure.
DAN MCGINN: That’s Susan David. She’s a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is dearhbr@hbr.org. On our next show, we’ll be talking about poor communicators. To get that episode automatically, please subscribe.
ALISON BEARD: And if you liked the show, please give us a five-star review.
DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.