731: What to Do After a Layoff, with Scott Anthony Barlow

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
You’ve been laid off, or someone close to you is navigating that reality right now. A lot of the first things we think to do after a layoff are wrong. In this episode, what to avoid, and more importantly, where to begin anew. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 731. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:40]:
And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the situations that many of us find ourselves in at some point in our careers is being laid off. If that’s the situation you’re in right now, boy, I am so sorry that you’re in that situation. And I also hope that we can share a bit in this episode that will be helpful to you if you are in that situation, could be in the future, and also the people that you support. How can we do the best job possible at responding to a layoff when it happens to us or it happens to someone who’s close to us, either personally or professionally? I’m so glad today to welcome back to the show an expert and a dear friend who’s gonna help us to navigate this uncomfortable time just a little bit better. I’m so pleased to welcome back Scott Anthony Barlow. He is the CEO of Happen to Your Career and host of the Happen to Your Career podcast. His team and him are focused on helping people find the work they love.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:41]:
He’s also the author of the book, Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work. Scott, it is always a pleasure to talk to you. Welcome back.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:01:51]:
It is always a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me again.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:55]:
Oh, my gosh. A pleasure. I was thinking about our conversation, and I saw a video you did recently. And the line that stuck with me that you positioned right at the beginning of the video said, almost everything everyone tells you to do when you get laid off is wrong. And I think it’s because it is one of those things, one that’s often unexpected, but it’s such an emotional situation that happens to us. And it catches us off guard, doesn’t it?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:02:22]:
It is. It is. And you’re right. It is a very emotional time period. And interestingly enough, almost all of the advice out there is tactical.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:33]:
Yeah. And it’s one of the reasons- and we’ve got a bunch that I think we’re gonna talk about in this conversation. That’s what are some of the the better things to do as we navigate the emotion of this, of what do we know that works? What do you see that works with the folks you’ve supported for years and years of walking through situations like this? Before we even get there though, I think it might be helpful just to start with some of the things to avoid or if you find yourself going down this path, maybe to limit a bit because it is a very emotional situation. And one of the things that you’ve shared with me many times when we’ve talked about careers is just thinking about timing on this. And our tendency when we’re making a career shift, whether it’s one we’ve planned for or in a situation of layoff, it’s obviously not one we’ve often planned for is that oftentimes people think it’s going to go faster than it really does to really make a shift in a way that’s a positive shift. What is it that you see people tend to miss with estimating timing?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:03:35]:
I think so many people, once it happens, once a layoff happens or any kind of job loss for that matter, they anticipate that this is going to be a very short term transition. And regardless of the situation they’re coming from, whether they’re coming out of a c suite role and, you know, accustomed to earning, you know, half a million dollars a year or whether they are in a more entry level role. And it doesn’t seem to matter the situation. So many people underestimate and believe it’s going to be two months or three months for most people that are looking at what I’m gonna call an easier transition or a more straightforward transition, those might be ninety days at a bare minimum and instead closer to six months. However, once you are into, you know, high income earning type of situations or you’re looking for a very specific type of role or situation that doesn’t come along every day or even maybe has to be created at a certain organization, then, you know, we might be looking at a nine month or twelve month or eighteen month transition.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:56]:
Really does vary depending on situation, but it’s it’s often not two months.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:05:01]:
It’s often not forty five to sixty days as so many people anticipate.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:06]:
Yeah. And speaking of things that, like, when we get into emotion that tends to a lot of us start to do, especially in a situation that’s unexpected is we start updating the resume and applying for things and starting to do lots of networking. And I think a lot of times in the back of our minds, we know, like, okay, just, like, starting to update the resume and send out, you know, respond to applications isn’t necessarily the best thing to do. And yet we do tend to fall in that pattern when we get in a situation like this, don’t we?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:05:38]:
Yeah. And there’s a quote and I can’t totally remember how it goes, but I love the essence of it. And it usually gets attributed to Mark Twain. And it’s something along the lines of when you find yourself on the side of majority, it’s time to pause and reflect. And I I think that that’s true here. Anytime you find yourself doing what everybody else is telling you to do as it relates to job search, career change, moving from a layoff, whatever it is. Usually, it’s time to pause and reflect and most of the time, there’s a better way. So the Internet advice that’s out there all over the place and what friends tend to tell other friends is, you know, oh, you need to update your resume, or you need to start networking.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:06:25]:
Get networking, or make sure you tell everybody you’re looking. Go on on LinkedIn and make sure that you put the post out there and tell people that you’re looking. And what I find is that, yes, everybody has a story where that was effective for somebody but the majority of the time, all of those pieces of advice are incomplete at best and at worst, they actually are not gonna work in your situation. And the reality is every time we go through shifts in the economy, shifts in the labor force, you say, like, 2008, during COVID, 2020, and certainly now where, you know, stability is is shifting up and down and organizations are making changes pretty rapidly, then there are massive amounts of people who are applying. It is not unusual to have somebody who or I should say a position that is having a thousand, you know, 1,500 applicants or at best hundreds. And that wasn’t always the case. Part of that is now because technology has made it so easy to apply which means that you’re now competing, but also there are more people in general that are looking for a variety of different reasons. So if we put all of that information together, we have to be more targeted, we have to be more strategic, and we have to be more situation specific in order to be effective.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:07:53]:
Otherwise, no matter what role we’re coming out of, no matter what experience we have, we’re going to find it difficult to make the shift that we want to.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:01]:
And one of the things you and I talked about before this conversation, in addition to some of the targeted approaches, which we’ll talk about in a moment, is giving yourself some space to grieve. What have you found over time of, like, the grieving process and what’s helpful?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:08:18]:
Well, first of all, let’s acknowledge that psychologists call this invisible grief. And the reason for that is because often society doesn’t recognize it as a place where grieving can occur or should occur, but the reality is it’s a form of loss. And anytime there’s a form of loss, likely, there’s grieving that needs to go along with that. And I think this is also a situation where it looks different for everyone. And one of the things that we found is we might meet some people after they have been laid off or they’ve had a loss of a job, and it ranges all the way from, oh, I’m actually relieved that it happened. And that’s one side of it. All the way to others where they’re like, I cannot believe that this happened, and it’s a challenging transition. And I think that the important part here is that it is a type of loss so that we actually have to plan to deal with this.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:09:11]:
And what I found is that people who most effectively transition are those that have built grieving or dealing with the loss into the plan. So that is really subtle and it is also it’s something that makes a big impact later on as you’re looking because it’s gonna come up in one way or another. And again, it looks differently for everyone. But if we know it’s gonna come up, then we can actually plan for it. And now, here’s the the other side of it too. Vice versa, those people who build a plan and work this into the plan find it far easier to work through the loss that occurs when something is taken from you. In this case, you know, it’s it feels like it’s outside your control and it’s taken away.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:57]:
When you see someone who has leaned in on that, that has built it into the plan, maybe even subtly like you said, what does that look like?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:10:07]:
Well, I’ll just give you a couple of different examples here. So sometimes it can be super simple where you might use a chronological plan. And what I mean by that is let’s say that well, you know, I had a situation where I had a job loss and I got I lost my job in it was September. And so if let’s just say that that that happened, you know, September and my plan then becomes, okay. For the next two weeks, I’m going to do nothing. I’m just going to deal with the fact that I was attached to this job and it pretty much was my identity. And, you know, I’m going to reconcile with that, and I’m going to build in the next two weeks to not do anything. But then from there, I know that the week after that is where I’m going to start the work.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:10:59]:
And then the month after that, I’m going to move into contacting other people. In the month after that, I’m going to work on arranging interviews. In the month after that, I’m going to and and you can build out a plan that way. That’s one example where we have that chronology of here’s where we’re going to allow the space for grieving. Now the challenge with that, of course, is since it’s so different for person for person or by individual, then we don’t necessarily know exactly how long it’s going to take. So another way to be able to deal with that might be allowing buffer at the some of those beginning stages. Or, you know, for some people, like, we’ve worked with some people where they’re like, hey. I’m accustomed to earning this amount of money.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:11:44]:
I got this amount of severance, but that only leaves me seven months to make a transition. So that means that I need to be working on this now. And the way that those people might work through this is they might do some initial work to begin planting seeds so that they can begin a job transition. But then as soon as that’s done, maybe let’s say it’s four weeks into the process, then from there, they’re allowing themselves space to grieve. So it doesn’t have to be done one particular way. What’s the important part here is that we are creating a plan that is fitting your situation to allow the grieving to happen because we know it’s gonna come up. Otherwise, it’s gonna come up as sabotage accidentally later on in the process. So build the time in, build the space in, or build the buffer in, and then that will – even though it seems like it might be taking time away, it actually allows you to go faster later on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:46]:
Another key invitation you make to people is thinking about a layoff, especially. This didn’t happen to you. It happened for you. And thinking about that mindset. Now, obviously, that along with the grief part. Right? I don’t think any of us are suggesting that, like, we look at every layoff. We’re like, oh, this was the greatest thing that ever happened to us. Right? But there is something about at some point through the grieving process of coming to reframe how you’re thinking about things and tapping into the creative parts of your brain a little bit more.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:17]:
Tell me about that and why that why that thinking is so important.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:13:21]:
Well, I think there’s there’s a tendency to to say the mindset piece is a luxury. But what I see is those people who are making the most effective transitions after a layoff are those people that really embody that idea that you’re talking about that this happened for me. The reason that this happened was actually a a good thing. It was almost a gift, which I know it’s a it’s a really strange gift to think about it that way. However, it becomes obvious that it’s a necessity to think about it that way, and that’s part of what allows people to be successful is that shift in mindset, not it’s a nice to have on top of making a successful transition. What I find and we don’t have perfect data about this but just observationally, we’ve observed that those people who have this type of mindset as they’re transitioning and we’ve been working with them, the sooner they get to this mindset, the sooner that they’re able to shave months off their transition time. You and I have well, we’ve had a lot of conversations about this over the years, but most of them have happened jokingly in I don’t know. Whatever we happen to be talking about at the time.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:14:37]:
Like, I might say something like, I’m gonna choose to look at it this way. And the reality is there’s something really powerful about that. And both just from a mindset piece, but also a physiological piece too because this allows us to, this type of mindset change and this decision allows us to harness the creative parts of our brain which are more adept at problem solving which anytime we’re making this type of transition after a layoff, we’re absolutely going to need access to those creative parts of the brain. Otherwise, every single thing that doesn’t work out, maybe I go and I get turned down from several different final stage interviews. I could look at that as a potential negative that is world ending for me, or I can say now I’m that much closer. And now I’ve learned something from that, and I need to figure out how to maneuver past that in other future stage interviews. So it allows us to harness those pieces of our brain that are going to be most advantageous to us and going to do something for us versus putting up barriers.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:43]:
And I’m thinking of moving forward on that, process, there are some tactical things that you find are really is really helpful for people. We alluded to this a bit earlier, but one of the suggestions you make for the folks you work with is hyper focusing on your targeting and getting really clear on where you’re putting your time and your energy. What is that first of all? And then for folks who do that well, what do you see that works with that stat that tactic?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:16:12]:
Yeah. I think I think this is the thing to focus on. I mean, we’ve already talked about some of the psychological elements here. However, if there’s a thousand applications for something, like, think about just the statistical odds on that. And then let’s also think about that poor recruiter or HR admin person or, you know, whoever it is that have to sift through a thousand resumes. The reality is they’re probably not. And instead, that means that we have to become very, very creative and very, very effective in how we’re reaching other people that are in a position to help us or hire us. So in the form of job applications, what that means is that we have to make it an obvious yes within seconds for someone to glance at our application or glance at our resume and say, yep, this person checks all the boxes.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:17:13]:
Let’s move them on to the next step. So the challenge is that’s really actually difficult to do. And for anybody who’s had any any kind of experience into marketing, That’s a lot of what marketing is. This is almost marketing on a very personalized level, an individual level. Right. And the the challenge here is how do we make our resume or application immediately relevant to whoever’s looking at it? And the further challenge is, okay, we might actually have different parties that are looking at it. The hiring manager might care about something slightly different than what the recruiter might care about. Or, you know, the, you know, CEO of the organization might care about something slightly different than what, the coworker of.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:18:01]:
In any case, it’s going to be a challenge to target. So there’s some functional ways that we can think about this too. I’m just gonna give you one example of how we help people hyperfocus their targeting. This is a concept I invented because I was tired of honestly, I was tired of submitting all of these different resumes and everything like that. I’m like, there has to be a different way because I knew that tailoring your resume to the particular individual or organization or set of individuals is going to be more effective every time, and it’s gonna lead to a much, much higher success rate in terms of getting pulled to move to next stages for interviews rather than maybe getting maybe submitting 20 applications and getting one interview or hundred applications to get one or two interviews. It can take you to a I get seven out of 10 or eight out of 10 interviews for applications that I submit. So this concept is what I call the master resume, and it’s really simple. Just think about the master resume is every single time you go through this process to tailor a portion of your resume and create a new set of bullet points that fits a particular job description, then I add those bullet points to the master resume.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:19:18]:
Or every single time I generate a new way to phrase my accomplishments, or maybe I am, you know, I’m playing for different types of, let’s just say, HR positions. I spent a lot of time in HR leadership over the years. Maybe I’m applying for a HR director that is more of a generalist role, and then maybe I’m also applying for a talent acquisition director that is slightly different. Those roles need different types of experiences. And the people who are screening for those roles are looking for slightly different things. So on the master resume, I might have everything All on one resume. Now, the important part here is, I’m not gonna submit this resume to anyone. I’m not giving anybody access to my master resume.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:20:07]:
That’s not the purpose of it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:08]:
Right.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:20:09]:
The purpose is I have everything that I’ve ever written that’s good or even great on one document. And now, when it comes time to tailor, all I have to do is pull out my master resume, make a copy of it, and then I delete out all the pieces that are not relevant to this particular post. Oh. And all of a sudden, I’m left with this wonderfully, beautifully tailored resume that I have to make minimal adjustments with. So it saves me literally hours and hours and hours of work. And I think the real beauty is the more that you know, the longer you have that raster resume and the more tweaking you’re doing, it’s iterative. So it gets better and better and better over the years or, you know, over time. And then it takes so much less time to delete out things, delete what you don’t need rather than take the time and space to come up with something new every time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:05]:
I wish I had known you years ago. I had heard the good advice of, like, like, okay, tailor resume. And I think a lot of us have heard that advice, and yet I didn’t do it in some situations. And the entire reason I didn’t do it is just the amount of overhead and work in my brain of having to tailor a resume for every position. We write a resume. And it just never occurred to me, like, of course, there should be. Like, exactly describe a master resume. And, boy, what a thing to do even if you’re at a place where, like, hey.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:31]:
My role’s in a good place. Or, yeah, I’m not dealing with a layoff today, but six months from now, a year from now, who knows? I’m, like, starting just to create that master document. And then if and when you end up in the situation where you do need to position yourself well in whatever situation or transition, that you can pull that together pretty quickly. And what a neat way to do that. Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:21:53]:
And I think that another really interesting thing here too is so much of the market like, if you if you want to pay somebody to go and write your resume, then they might write you one or two different versions of it most of the time. And, unfortunately, even though I think that can be valuable in certain circumstances, I think for the most part, it’s a one or two time use situation because it’s not ever going to be tailored enough. You’re not gonna have one resume that’s perfectly tailored for every single situation. You’re always gonna have to modify it. So I think that, unfortunately, for many of the services that people guide you to out there, it’s it’s not a good buy because it’s an incomplete,, I guess, I’ll say document that you’re still gonna have to tailor every single time. And I I don’t know why nobody thinks about that, but I had never run into that concept until I just got frustrated and invented it twenty years ago.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:51]:
Yeah. It’s a great invitation for all of us to be doing regardless of, like, keeping that as an ongoing list. And speaking of strategies, one of the things I know you suggest is that you’re not just trying to lean in on one thing. You are doing some bringing a couple strategies together. One of the things you highlight is the importance of using the backdoor. And I’m wondering if you could say a bit about that and what that is and what’s important about it.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:23:15]:
Okay. Well, we’ve talked about applications. We’ve talked about resumes. And that’s what most people tend to think of when they think of job search. We also discussed how we might be competing against a thousand people, literally a thousand people. And and it’s crazy. Even in some executive positions where there’s only so many people that are qualified out there, we still might have hundreds of people applying. So it seems futile to have that be your main strategy and main source of how you’re going to make a transition.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:23:47]:
So instead, I tend to think about using the backdoor as not an effective approach for everyone, but I just wanna share it as an example for another way. So and and actually, here’s a situation that I run into all the time where people will say, hey. I’ve been with the same organization for eight years or thirteen years or eighteen years, and I’ve just it gotten all of my jobs or promotions through relationships, through people that I know. And then those same people will come to us and be like, I don’t know what I’m going to do because I’ve not ever had to I’ve not ever had to, like, go through a job application process, and I don’t really know anything about it. Mhmm. And what totally gets missed there is they those people have been successful. They have a pattern of success, a track record of success in building wonderful relationships with people and having those lead to opportunities that are sometimes even created for them. And so when I talk about the backdoor, often I’m talking about how do you engineer a situation in which you are the obvious person for a role, whether it’s an open role, an existing role, a future role that’s not actually published yet, or a role that gets created for you.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:25:00]:
And almost always, the way that that happens is through relationships and familiarity and trust building.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:08]:
And if you think about it from the perspective of the employer, like, if they’re going into the stack of resumes, that’s, like, sort of the the last preference. Right? It’s still, like, go through a stack of resumes of people I don’t know that I’ve sort found through Internet or wherever. Right? The first preference is, who do I already know? Who do I already know within the organization? But if I don’t know them within the organization, who do I know that’s adjacent to the organization? A supplier? A customer? The like, a lot of times we get into these situations in our lives where we make a transition, and we feel like, okay. I need to go start, as you said earlier, networking. And we totally forget about the network we already have. Like, all the people we’ve been working with that we know, I mean, especially in a layoff situation where it’s not about it’s not about that person’s performance, almost never. It’s about a larger situation, like, how much opportunity there is within those relationships of different between suppliers and adjacent organizations of in fact, I know someone in our academy right now who had a a supplier to the organization. Like, a great opportunity came up because she was great on her relationships and made this amazing career transition that she’d been thinking about for years of having an opportunity to do this because it was just a natural relationship that was that it went through a backdoor.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:26:23]:
Well, I think the really important part here is that whether it’s backdoor, whether it’s front door, choosing a strategy that is going to fit your situation is going to cut down on time and make it a more effective transition and likely a much more positive end result too. And, you know, with that example that I I just have, the person who’s gotten all of their all of their roles, all of their opportunities through relationships, and now they’re trying to make the shift just because the Internet says that they need to, you know, that that seems a little bit absurd when they already have that track record of success or vice versa. I know we’re only talking about two different strategies here, front door, back door. There’s many many more that we could discuss. However, if I am applying, that could be an appropriate situation for me if say, I am a I don’t know, HR manager or HR director that has tons of experience, tons of resume experience that is easily showable in an application format and that’s going to stand out. And if that’s the case, then it could be suitable for me to- and I’m wanting to get another HR director type role. That would be the key part there. Have the experience.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:27:37]:
It’s easily showable. It’s easy for me to make it relevant, and I am making the transition to the exact same thing. That’s where the front door could work, but many people aren’t interested in that. Many people are taking a layoff as an opportunity to reinvent themselves. After all, it’s a gift. Right?

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:56]:
Yeah. Right. One other thing I wanna ask you. When situations like this come up, either intentional or not, there’s often a thinking process a lot of us go through of, like, okay. When do I know I need to hire someone for help? Like, supporting, like like, your team or a career coach or the resume writer, that kind of thing. When someone’s trying to make that decision, you often encourage people to just think about it from a standpoint of math. What is it that’s helpful to frame, like, that decision on whether you make an investment or not?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:28:29]:
I tend to be fairly pragmatic. So I tend to lean on the mathmatical and logical side. So I think there is a case for choosing to hire someone because you don’t want to make the emotional investment or emotional labor that would be required of doing it on your own. So there’s certainly a case on that side too, but I I do tend to lean on the math. And if you think about it, let’s let’s just take a let’s just take all the emotion out of it. Let’s take all of the things that I tend to stand for, like, getting people better aligned in a better fit situation that they actually love. They love the organization. They stand behind the mission. All those things are really valuable.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:29:06]:
But let’s take that out for a moment. And let’s just say that we’re purely focused on, I came from a $240,000 a year situation which equates to about $20,000 a month. Let’s say that I get you know six months severance for that so I’m covered for six months but I also know that making a $240,000 a year change after a layoff that could actually take six to nine months on average for a lot of what we’ve seen. So that means that every month that I make that transition sooner is saving me $20,000 or it’s offsetting the loss of $20,000. Now, most services and support out there, not all, but most services and support tend to be $20,000 or far less. So it becomes a no brainer if I think that pain for expertise that’s going to cut down my time by at least one month, potentially more than one month, that sounds like a safe bet to me. Now is every set of expertise out there, you know, a wonderful bet? Does every single organization out there help with exactly what individuals who are laid off actually need? Oh, not necessarily. But if we’re just looking at that really simple math of is it worth $20,000 to me to make a transition sooner by at least one month? And is that likely to happen if I have expertise? Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:30:37]:
Yeah. That’s math I can stand behind all day.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:40]:
Yeah. Indeed. And there’s a salary component to this too as well because it’s it’s one thing to find another role, and maybe it’s a role you love and great. Like, you and your team are so intentional about that. There’s also the, like, hey. If I can get expertise and help and support of negotiating a better salary, boy, that makes such a big difference in the long run, doesn’t it?

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:30:59]:
It does. And you and I have talked about this over the years, but I love negotiation. It’s one of my favorite things. I do it for a hobby. Just, you know, in I’ve been going to Starbucks before in Target. I know that sounds absurd, but I do it just for fun sometimes just to see. Like, everything is a huge psychological experiment for me. It’s a game.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:31:18]:
That said, you know, even though I do different types of negotiation professionally, I always take a partner for those transitions, those decisions, those negotiations that are going to have a profound impact on my life, always. Because I know that I’m going to be emotionally connected to it. And if I’m emotionally connected to it, I’m not gonna be as good of a negotiator every single time. Mhmm. So it doesn’t matter what it is. I always take a partner. I always have an outside person for those types of negotiations. And and salary, I think, is a big one.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:31:52]:
Like, that’s a huge one for most people or, you know, arranging the relationship of the job is something else that can be negotiated. A really ranging the relationship with the company, presetting some of the boundaries that might come with it or negotiating the structure of a role or the opportunities that might come with development. All of those things are on the table for negotiation. And I tend to find that if I’m attached to an opportunity that I’m excited about, I’m not thinking clearly. So that’s where it’s absolutely useful to bring in a partner. And it it pays for itself in qualitative ways and certainly quantitative ways over and over again, almost every time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:34]:
Scott Anthony Barlow is the author of Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work. Scott, thank you so much for your friendship, but also all of the support you’ve given me in our community over the years. I so appreciate it.

Scott Anthony Barlow [00:32:48]:
Absolutely. Thank you, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:55]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is a past conversation with Scott, episode 424, craft a career to fit your strengths. Scott and I are both big believers in leaning in on our strengths, both in our work and in our careers. And yes, as human beings do in our personal relationships. The more we can be intentional about that, the more we play to our strengths, the more happy we’re gonna be, the more successful we’re gonna be in our roles. Episode four twenty four, a road map to start there. Also recommended episode 555, how to nail a job transition. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy was my guest on that episode, a talented executive who’s made many successful transitions in her career.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:38]:
We talked about that awkward middle part of you’ve decided to leave, you’ve announced you’re leaving, either you’re transitioning roles within the organization or maybe you’re moving to an entirely new organization. How do you handle that messy middle part of that two to three to four weeks when everyone knows you’re leaving, but you haven’t actually left? And what do you say? What do you do? What are the activities that are gonna be most helpful to you and the organization, both the organization you’re leaving and the one you’re going toward? Episode five fifty five is a road map for that. And then I’d also recommend episode 620. How to respond when you get triggered. Sally Helgesen was my guest on that episode, and we talked through the very uncomfortable situation that almost all of us have been in in an organization where someone’s triggering us. Someone said something or wronged us in some way. And it’s hurtful. It’s painful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:28]:
And how do we actually handle that situation? And one of the invitations Sally makes in that conversation is that sometimes it’s really helpful to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, whether they’re deserving of it or not. Not for them, but for you. That oftentimes, if we change our mindset and give that other person the benefit of the doubt, again, whether they’re deserving or not, whether it’s true or not, the mindset place that that gets us into can be so helpful for us going forward on how we respond and what are the next steps. And I think about what Scott said earlier of this didn’t happen to you. It happened for you. Whether that’s objectively true or not, whether it feels that way or not, the sooner we can make that transition in our minds as we go through the grieving process, especially after a layoff, boy, the more helpful it can be just for us and how we move forward, which is of course what we wanna do when we’re in a situation like this. Episode 620, I think is some great inspiration for that. All of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:27]:
And if you set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com, you’re gonna get access to a ton of benefits inside of the free membership, interview notes, book notes, all of our resources that’ll be helpful to you. And plus, a new resource that I’m adding this week to our website that may be helpful to you. You know, one of the things that I have been so fortunate to develop over these years is some amazing relationships with guest experts who’ve come on the show, personal and professional relationships that have opened up for me as a result of hosting coaching for leaders since 2011. It’s just been an extraordinary, extraordinary experience for me personally. And Scott is one of those examples. Scott and I actually talk almost every morning for five or ten minutes. We do a check-in call. We’re accountability buddies.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:13]:
We check-in on our what we’re planning to do for the day. The next day, we check-in. Like, how did it go? What are you planning to do today? It’s so helpful to say that out loud to someone. It’s one of many extraordinary examples of relationships I’ve been fortunate to be involved with. And on the other side, I get emails and messages from many in our listening audience regularly who say some version of, I know you’re focused on facilitating work with your members in the academy and your members as part of your program and hosting the podcast, but I’m looking for a career coach. I’m looking for an expert on storytelling. I’m looking for an executive coach. Who do you suggest I’d reach out to? I know, you know, folks, where do I begin? And I got to thinking about that recently, even though I’ve been doing a lot of that informally, that I should be much more intentional about that in our work of making those connections more effective and more intentionally.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:06]:
And so I’m beginning a very new expert partner program. We’re gonna starting to position the work of guest experts, folks that I have, had the privilege of getting to know oftentimes folks who’ve been on the show many times over the years as Scott has, and being able to be more intentional of helping our listeners and members who are looking for those experts to connect them with their work really well. Details are gonna be over at coachingforleaders.com/partners. And Scott and his team are gonna be one of those first expert partners. And if you heard something in our conversation today about working with an expert or him or his team that you think would be helpful, I’d encourage you to reach out to him by going to coachingforleaders.com/partners. Certainly, if you’re in the situation where you’re experiencing a layoff or maybe you know someone who is, and I’m so sorry if you’re in that situation. And Scott and his team may be helpful, especially if the conversation at the end was useful to you of thinking about when do you decide to hire someone. It’s a tough decision when you’re in a transition, and oftentimes, an expert can be really helpful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:10]:
But one of the other situations that Scott and his team often help people through is the feeling of being stagnant in their current roles. That often is the kind of folks that Scott and his team work with. They’re in a situation where they say, hey. This has been a really great role for me, and I’m glad to have had it, and I’ve gotten a ton out of it, and it’s helped me grow, but now it’s time for something else. And I’m not seeing a lot of opportunities to grow more in this role or maybe even in the organization, and that’s one of the most common types of situations Scott and his team support leaders with is, okay. I I know I probably do need to make a transition, and working with an expert will help me to do that. If that’s of interest to you, go over to coachingforleaders.com/partners. Information on Scott and also starting conversations with other best experts who will be part of our community is there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:02]:
Again, details at coachingforleaders.com/partners. Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Thank you as always for the privilege to support you, and I’ll see you back for our next conversation this coming Monday.