Career Confidential: The Secret Life of A Boss About to Fire You

Hello and welcome to Becoming youg. I'm Shooketh. I'm Shooketh because Dustin, my co host today, as many of you know, Dustin Liu is my co host. When we do the Career Confidential version of the Becoming you podcast, we talk all about careers, the good, the bad and the ugly. Last time we did a Career Confidential, it's true. Somebody said your hair was too long and you look like a mop.

But look at me now with a fade. With a fade haircut for the new year.

You can get better with a mop. I'm sorry, we're back without a mop. I know. I tell you.

New year, new haircut, new topics.

Yes, new topics. Today we're talking on Career Confidential. And again, welcome to Becoming youg. If you're new to us, welcome. Especially welcome, welcome, welcome. But if you're here with us, regardless, no matter if you're old or new, welcome back to a Career Confidential, which we do sporadically. A version of Becoming youg where we talk about careers, everything careers, the good, the. The bad and the ugly. And today I think we're going into the bad and ugly area because we're talking about being fired. I mean, the reason why we're talking about it is because Dustin got back to work this week.

Absolutely.

And you. What happened? You got.

We were sitting at the table, we were having a hunky dory meeting.

Yeah.

And then I just kept getting texts. And first text came at 9:03. Read it, Dustin, I just got fired. Period.

Okay.

But so I'm like, oh, my goodness, I'm gonna call you later. I'm in. I'm in a team retreat. I'm Talking to Susie, 9:23, I get another text. Justin, I just logged on this morning and they told me they're firing me. WTF? And then 10:30am I got a text from a friend that said that they got laid off, too. So in a span of an hour and a half at the start of the new year, three people that I had talked to in the last two weeks got fired.

And so these are young people like you young people.

They're between the ages of 23 and 30.

Yep.

And now they're trying to figure out what comes next.

All right, all right. Well, we're going to go there. So today we're going to talk about getting. Getting fired. I have a lot of experience with this. First of all, I teach about this topic in my management class, but I've also been fired three times. First, I was fired quite publicly by the Harvard Business Review. Secondly, I was fired by my very own husband, Jack. And I'll tell that story about being what it feels like to get fired by your husband. Okay.

Was it done? Well?

Yes, he did it extremely well and I kind of knew it was coming, but he really fired me full out. Okay. And third, I got fired from a consulting gig that I took on at the beginning of my teaching. And it was sort of a parting of ways, but it was still, if I had to be honest. So I've been fired. I've definitely fired people, but I study this whole topic myself. And so what we're going to go over are a couple of things. We're going to talk about what's going on with the economy, how, you know if you're about to be fired, what you can do to try to stop yourself from being fired, which is good for anybody who is working right now, what to do in the moment of being fired and what to do once you've been fired. We're going to cover all that territory. Finally, I'm going to leave you with my very, very best piece of advice. If you've been fired. It's the same literal piece of advice I give to everybody who's ever been fired. So stand by for that at the end. Dustin, let's do it.

Well, I wanna just start off at the big picture. I mean, three people at the start of the new year. I mean, one, does this happen often at the start of the new year? And two, what's happening in the world right now, Susie, in your eyes, that might be causing this to happen?

Right. Okay. So I think it's a little unusual because usually people would be laid off right before the holidays because then, okay, get them out the door. I don't have to think about it. Hopefully they're having fun with their families or what. So I do think the timing is a little unusual, but it is not. If you go up to 20,000ft and you get macroeconomic about it, it is absolutely not unusual at all. We're at the highest level of layoffs and firings in the economy since the pandemic. So it's slightly lower than it was in 2020. Middle of the pandemic, as you recall. I mean, I myself very sadly had to lay off almost everybody at the company I was running in 2020. We were 55 people. The pandemic hit and we went down to 16. I still have incredible PTS to the people who would happen to. I cried as I did it. It's terrible, but it doesn't sound like anybody was crying when your friends were fired, from what I can tell. But we're at those levels right now. The statistics we have are through September and they show that about a million people were fired. So it's probably 1.234 million people were fired in 2025. And so there's a couple of reasons. One is employers are very nervous. There's all sorts of massive tectonic changes going on in different industries. And so companies letting people go as quickly as they can to try to lower risk. There's some sectors that are much more susceptible to this than others. Definitely technology, retail, but all sort of professional services as AI comes moving in. And organizations in general are very, very nervous about adding headcount because the visibility is misty, let's just put it that way. Some people are very bullish and some people are very bearish, but you're going to always cover your ass for downside risk when you're running a business. But there's another trend going on that is not macroeconom and it's more cultural and microeconomic and it's been reported widely. This is not my own research, which is that employers are laying off Gen zers at a record rate within months of being hired. Two different news outlets did some research on this and they found it to basically be result of culture mismatch. Okay. That the companies of this culture and what used to happen is, and the Gen Z employees have a different culture, different values, and the employers are now moving very quickly to let them go instead of trying to bring them along. Now, I have a couple different thoughts about this. I think this is, I'm going to guess this is somewhat of what happened with your friends. What's interesting is that employers now have more intent. They, they don't. They're not scared of laying off their Gen Z employees. They think, okay, the economy's good enough. I'm going to, I'm going to be able to backfill them. So that's one thing that's going on. And they're also realizing I can't change them. So I'm just going to cut my losses now. We at Becoming you Labs, as you well know, have done research on the cultural mismatch between what hiring managers want from their employees, which is of the values of achievement, work centri and scope. In other words, sort of a hunger for learning and stimulation. And in general, Gen Z's top values are not those at all, to put it mildly. They are eudaimonia, self care, personal pleasure, voice and non simi, which is helping people, which is great, but it's not what the employers are looking for. And if you put those two data sets together, there's a 2% overlap. So only 2%. Let's say that again.

So what does that mean?

It means that only 2% of Gen Z is presenting in the workplace with the values that most hiring managers, most companies are looking for. So you've got adjust. I mean, I don't want to be graphic about this, but you know, you, you have got a lot to. You kind of got a target on you because they already suspect you don't have their values. And now what's happening is if they see you don't have them, they're like, okay, out of here, out of here, let's go. We're going to keep looking for the 2%. So, so there's the macro to economic in that the economy is uncertain and companies are laying people off. And in a way they're laying them off. Now the research would show the statistics which are. They're laying them off in small bunches.

Yeah.

So this is caus of chronic anxiety. You know, it's not like, oh, I'm waiting for a big layoff. People are feeling like, oh, people are being laid off all around me all the time. And it's almost like there's landmines everywhere. So if you're feeling chronic anxiety at work and you're feeling like I could get fired, you are not alone. So what's going on are macro and microeconomic forces and on top of that, a cultural phenomena involving Gen Z.

Welcome to business school. Yeah, this is it. Business school with Susie Welch. I want to take a moment and maybe just really make the distinction. Even in my set of four now five friends, I actually just got another text.

Oh my God.

A few of them were.

I'm beginning to wonder about your friends.

Are they? Well, but I, I want to make this distinction because some people were laid off and some people were fired because of performance reasons. And what you just described is macroeconomic trends that might be causing industries to constrain, but also some of them really didn't.

Let's have a reality check here.

Yeah, okay, let's talk about it.

Because look, look, in every layoff. Yeah, okay. Some people stay and some people go to make you feel better. Calls it a layoff. But they, I have been in the room where it happens and the, you know, the big boss basically says we've got to lay off 20%. And I've seen the managers pick who's going and who's staying. So it's essentially a firing. Okay. Now, so they'll say, oh, it's part of a layoff, but you were chosen to go. All right? And it's performance related. Then in other situations, the person's calling and say, you're just not what we want. It's not a fit. It's not working out. You're not. And so they. And so they're. They're technically fired. You tell me the difference. It's a little bit of semantics, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's very, very rare. I'm sorry, Truth bomb. It's very, very rare that somebody is let go if there's not a tinge of performance. Okay. Sometimes. Look at Quadio. I knew I had to bring the head count down or we were going to die. We did not have enough money. All of our clients went away because our clients were colleges, and colleges closed. And so we. I had to let go. But 15 people remained. You got to believe they were the best performers. Okay?

Yeah.

So there's always going to. It's very rare that somebody who has top, top, top, top performance is let go.

And honestly, at the end of the day, you're left with the situation where you don't have a job. So I want to take a moment and just really recognize that the emotions.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

That people might feel are the same whether you're laid off or fired.

And you know what it feels like.

That you don't have a job. Yeah.

You know what it feels like? It feels like a death.

Feels like it has.

You've never been fired.

I have not yet been fired in my life. Yes.

I'm gonna go big here. But you're never gonna be fired because your performance is so high. But I've been fired, and I fired people. And I can tell you this. It's like a public death. It is. First of all, you're embarrassed. Okay. It's like, so you can't believe it's happening to you. Even if you think, oh, man, I wasn't really doing very well. It's very, very rare. I mean, I've heard of instances where people have gone, fired, and they've been like, okay, I get. Was coming. What's my deal? Okay. I've hear. Most of the time, it's like the closest thing to it having gone through it again myself. It's like somebody telling you they want a divorce. Okay. It's really agonizing. Your identity sort of collapses through. I recently had A conversation with one of my children who got fired. And I got a call in the middle of the day. Very unusual for this child who is now completely re employed. Thanks be to God. And he said. He told me, mom, I've been let go. And the pain, it's painful. The pain was so evident. My heart broke for him. Even though we'd been talking about the. The fact that he was going to get fired by this company for years. Okay. Because he was kind of missing here and missing there. And they were doing all this signaling, which we're gonna talk about how your company tells you before they tell you. The company does sort of usually signal to you the pain is real. You feel embarrassed, you feel shame, you feel anger, you feel fear beyond belief. Like, you got rent.

Especially today in this labor market.

How am I gonna get re. Employed? There's this. Every single bad emotion. And I do think the closest thing is a divorce I have in becoming you, where I actually spoke to a woman who ended up going through the becoming you process, who was fired on the same day that her husband told her that he wanted a divorce. And I was like, how did you keep going? And, you know, I was thinking to myself, the only thing worse was that if her landlord knocked on the door and said, you know, kicking you out, because, I mean, these are the big three things, right? And so it was brutal. It took her. It took her two years to get her feet back on the ground. And. And. But she's fine now. But I would say it's a terrible, terrible feeling. People live with it for a long time. It can change how you feel about work, change how you feel yourself. It can, you know, work for some people. You know, you've got friends there, or you. You trusted the boss or all these different things. So it's. It's. It's. It's truly. It's almost physical. And sometimes it is a physical reaction. Yeah.

I want to maybe take a step back and go back to something that you said, which is signals that you're about to be.

Yeah.

Because honestly, in this group of now five friends, two of them called me during the break, and they're like, dustin, I. I really am not liking my job. Or, hey, the vibes are a little bit off at work. So as someone who has been in a company where you are trying to signal to your employee, hey, performance, isn't there, like, what are some signs that you might be on a tightrope?

There's so many signs. I think there's actually five very distinct signs. And Thing I. I mean, I. The reason why I was saying to my son before he got laid off, you're going to be laid off is because I saw.

You kind of saw it.

I saw. Not kind of. I was like, I'm telling you right now. So. All right, so let's go over the five signs. All right, so the first sign is you're made in some. Just kind of surreptitious, morphous way to feel like a dead man walking. Okay.

Can you say more about that?

Dead man walking is what happens when somebody. I mean, the term comes from jails where a man is. A person is on death row and everybody knows he's gonna get it later. And when he walks down the, you know, the jail cell way, nobody makes eye contact with him, and people kind of look away because he's a dead man walking. And so this is what happen. You at work, people start making stop. People stop making eye contact with you. The boss doesn't call on you in meetings, you're sort of treated as a person who's there but not there. It's actually all really subtle physical cues, usually. Or in a meeting, like, you say something and then they just sort of refer to the thing that somebody else said right after you. And you're just meant to feel as if you end up feeling like you're a bit of a ghost. I mean, I think it's a pretty descriptive term, dead man walk. And that's what you feel like. And that that's the first way you feel it. And I bet your friends got something of that.

Like they sent the energies off.

That's right.

It doesn't feel like they're paying as much attention to me.

That's it. And it's a little bit with eye contact, like, think about you and me, like when we're like, laughing together.

Straight on. Yeah.

But when you're thinking, when you're a boss and you're about to let somebody go, you are like, you don't want to look them straight in the face. And you want. Look, you know what you want more than anything when you're a boss and you think somebody's going to go, you know what you want desperately?

What do you want?

You want them to quit, so you want them to. You want them to quit so badly so that you don't have to do the deed. You don't want to talk to them about severance. You don't want to have to hear them crying. You don't want to. You would. You want your problem to go Away so badly you desperately want them to quit and so go away. And so the way you do that, and it's not right. I'm not advocating for it. But you start. You do all sorts of things to make them distinct, to leave you want the. To. You want to make it so unpleasant for them in subtle ways that you could never actually, they could never put their finger on you for it. Make them so. And. And so, like you're. Those people's bosses were giving them bad vibes because they just wanted them to. So that's the number one thing. Subtle, amorphous. Like, just ask yourself, do I feel like a dead man or dead woman walking? If you do, that's a sign. So that's the number one sign.

Okay, getting a sense of cues. What's number two?

Yeah, all right. Things start getting put in, right? You have a meeting with your boss.

Like performance reviews or.

No, even more subtle than that. If you have a meeting with your boss and it doesn't go very well, it's awkward. A lot of stuff is not said, but you sort of get this weird feeling about it. Then later in the day, you get an email that says something like, dear Dustin, I just wanted to reiterate in our meeting that I asked you to do X and it was not delivered on time.

My stomach isn't in.

And I expressed my dissatisfaction with you in your. But things start getting put in writing.

So documentation starts happening.

They're documenting. They're documenting. And now, like, look, I want to say, make it very clear that a lot of people right now are hired at will, and you could fire without cause. That's how it is in most organizations these days. But if you're not in one of those organizations where there's a big apparatus or there's an employee union or whatever, you're going to start seeing things in writing more and more.

Got it.

Beware, be aware. And actually, if you start, if you actually get a performance review out of the blue and it comes in first, it's in, it's first, it's in person, and then it's documented in writing afterwards, and you're thinking, like, wait, why am I getting performance review? I've never gotten one of these before. Aren't we a little off schedule for performance review? Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

It's a sign.

It's a definite sign. Okay, that's the second sign for sure.

What's number three?

Okay, you look around and everyone has more work than you. Like you're not busy, but everyone's busy.

So your to do list starts getting a little bit lower. You maybe get removed off projects.

Right? You're removed off. You're not given new work. Okay. What they're doing is they're already taking your work and they're giving it up. They're giving it to other people. And they are. They're preparing for your not being there anymore. And so you are like, wait, where's my workflow? Like, oh, you know, the minute you start being taken off projects or not reassigned to projects and your workload starts shrinking and you notice like, oh, wait, and like, you're able to leave at 5 and everybody else, like, working till 7 or 8.

Something's off.

Something is off. They're taking away your work in preparation for your. Yes, exactly. That's the third one. That's one to watch out for. In some organizations, right before you're let go or to sort of give themselves the conversation to let you go. You're given some kind of test or assessment. Okay. It happens a lot at professional services firms that they'll give you sort of. They'll give everybody on the team the same assessment. Like, we just got this memo in. What would be your response? And you think, wait, why are we all writing our responses? And it's a test or an assessment, or in some organizations, you're given a tool like our very own, say, Career Traits Compass. So we have a tool called the Career Traits Compass, which is coming out in its final. It's been in beta for a long time, and it assesses where you are on the continuum from individual contributor to leader. Yeah, very accurate test. And some people are meant to be individual contributors, and organizations need and love them. And some people are meant to be leaders, and organizations can and love them. But this tool is very good for you, doing your own self assessment about where you are on the continuum. So you can find the right career path for yourself and explain yourself better to people. But if your organization, if your HR department calls you in and asks you to take a test like Strengths Finder or Career Traits Compass or any other kind of established assessment test, it's a sign they're gathering data. I mean, you could ask, why am I getting this? And they'll say something like, well, everybody's getting it. And you think, okay, what are they doing doing? They're putting together their reasoning again. Most organizations can fire at will now. So this is a little bit for organizations that are larger and take more steps to protect themselves. All right, there's a fifth sign. It's subtle and it's when you. It's. If you've ever had the thought, this is really. This is the grim reaper speaking to you. If you've ever thought, I'll never get fired. I'm untouchable. I'm indispensable. Because here's when you feel that way, the organization and your boss smell it off of you, and they hate it. They hate it. Organizations hate people who think that they're untouchable or. Because they. They.

What does that look like? When someone is untouchable or feels like they're untouchable?

There's somebody says something and they roll their eyes. Okay. Or they say no to certain pieces of work. Okay, look, you've got a. There's a really difficult client, and you say, make. And everyone hates having this client. And they go to the performer. You say, you got to deal with the Jones account. And they say, make, Dustin do it. I brought in X amount of dollars last. I've earned the right not to do that work. And you can be a very tippy top. We call these people. When I teach management, I call this particular type of employee the headache because they have very high performance, but they don't have the company's values. Most companies have the values of teamwork, of everything that you would expect all that good stuff. But if you think, okay, I'm a tip top, look, they can't. I'm too important. They cannot possibly live without me. They'll call your bluff on that one. A lot of the times that doesn't sound like that was going on with your friends, though.

It wasn't as much. But I will say that one of them did feel like they would never.

Fire them because it was a small team. Right.

And because she was there for a while and she understood the workflows. And I wonder if what you're describing actually did happen.

Yeah. She thought, look, this is perfect. She thought, they'll never fire me. It's a small team. They can't live without me. They smelled it.

They smelled it.

They smelled it. And you know what? If she was really good, she also was sort of had a different attitude, which was like, they can't live without me. That makes me want to try even harder because what a letdown it would be if I didn't do my right. Then it would be a totally different thing. But she definitely let off a very unfortunate, I'm guessing, odor of feeling indispensable. No can do.

Yeah. Susie, as someone who has been in the position where you've had to fire people.

Yeah.

How do you come to that conclusion? Like, at what point do you say this is no longer going to work out? Because I've seen you give people so many chances.

Yeah, I know it.

I mean, help me understand as a really experienced manager, like, when do you make the decision?

It usually comes down to money. No decent human being wants to fire anybody. They don't. And it's agonizing. And you usually give people way too long, but so it goes drip, drip, drip. And sometimes you know right away, like, oh man, they're just not doing the work and you let it go and you give them another chance because why? You hate the terrible conversation. And then you're looking at your budget and you're like, this person is making X amount of money and they're just not performing. And I want to replace them with somebody who's basically a producing asset. Okay. I mean, I'm sorry, this is business. Okay. And so that's a real problem. So this is actually the reason that I got fired. I'm sure they would object if they heard me describe it this way. I was working at a wonderful consulting firm when I first started teaching at nyu and many professors work in consulting firms. And they kind of had me as a senior advisor where I would come in and if they had a client who, who had a problem, that was my area of expertise. And they were paying me a princely sum because it's a consulting firm. But I was not. The clients liked me, but I was not selling new business. And I wasn't selling new business because it's not my area of expertise, it's not my forte. I don't come to it very. I just wasn't doing that. I was quite distracted by what I really loved, which was teaching at nyu. And it was kind of, look, we came to an agreement that I needed to go full time as a professor. This was several years ago. And so what happened was they called me in to renegotiate my contract and they gave me, look, we're going to renegotiate it because you're not a performing asset is basically what they said. And they made me an offer that was so low I couldn't say yes to it. So it was the equivalent of being let go. And I think we, we agreed to part ways as friends. And that's because I'm a grown up now. I mean, I think I could have had my feelings hurt or they could have been mad, but we all understood that business is an island and you see everyone again and we all wanted to be friends with each other, and we parted ways. Very. And I said to them, if you ever need me for anything, I'm happy to come back completely pro bono. And. Because I know I didn't perform as you would have wanted me to. And it's. But it didn't work out, and we. And we agreed to part ways. And so I think that this is a case. When you end up getting fired, it's because at the end of the day, you're not earning your keep, all right? I mean, it's a business. It's an economic relationship. You're not there to make anybody feel good. I mean, maybe you can make people feel good. You're not there just because you've got a delightful personality. At the end of the day, somebody is making, you know, there's a profit and loss statement, there's a P and L that some manager is watching, and you're on it. Yeah.

So let's say that we catch wind of one of these signs, one of these five signs. What do you do, Susie, if you're in a position where you're noticing vibes are off, right? Your boss starts taking you off projects, right? Things start getting put in writing, what would you do?

All right, so I think there's a couple of things that you can do, and frankly, I'm going to suggest you do these whether or not you've got these bad vibes going on, because they're just really good strategies for. For succeeding at work. So let's go over them. Here's a funny little trick for the number one thing you should do, okay? Because your boss has done it. So I'm going to suggest you do it. And that is go back to your jd. Go back to your original job description and grit your teeth. Get your courage up, and look and see if you're doing everything on it.

Get that highlighter out, right?

Because your boss, the person who's about to fire you, has said, this is what they've said 99% of the time. They're not doing anything on their JD. Okay? They're not doing. Look, we hired that person. Do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They're doing boom. Okay? That's what they're thinking.

Say that before. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, I've done this. This is what I just like.

Literally, you go back to the jd. Why did we hire you?

Right? Why did we hire you? Look at this. We hired you to do these 10 things. You're doing four and three of them. So. So, okay, And. And what happens is, you know, you're always hired with a JD that's much bigger than any normal job would be. Like, you know, every JD is like, boil the ocean. And you think, yeah, when I get there, I'll boil this, the little pond over here. But your boss, when they're making the case against you in their mind, is thinking about all the things that you agreed to do for that amount of money. So number one, go back to your jd. It's going to be a terrifying moment for most people. Look at what you're not doing and like, make a list of what you're not doing. And if you want to keep that job, I mean, I would like, I would literally create a document that says here, you know, hey, boss, I want to have kind of a check in with you because I was just recently revisiting my JD and I notice I'm doing four of the ten things we agreed to to. And I want to talk to you about my plan going forward to fill in those six. Your boss will immediately lay down on the floor, need oxygen, because nobody in the whole world has ever done that. But if you really want to keep your job because you like it and you see a future for yourself, that's.

What you should do.

Go do it.

You have to advocate for yourself.

Well, you. And, and then you got to perform.

And then you got to perform.

Okay? You gotta, you know, you gotta not.

Only just perform, right? You have to kind of over deliver.

Yeah, but that's my next point. But let's do this. I think the first thing you've got to do is get inside the head of your body, boss. Okay? And so if you go inside the head of the boss, the boss is looking at you. And they're not thinking, I love them. They're thinking, you know, if they're giving you bad vibes, they're seeing you with the most critical eyes. And you have to do this very hard thing is, why are they hating on me? Whenever I meet a guy or a woman who's just been broken up with and they're saying all the horrible things about the person who just broke up with them, I always have this one question to sort of turn the conversation on its head. I say, if I'm sitting here alone with them, the person who just broke up with, like, what would they say about you? There's always like, stop somebody in their tracks, right?

What a pleasure to have at a dinner party.

When I did do it, I've not been on very many dates since I've been widowed, right? I've not been on very many dates. But I, I was set up on one. Oh, please. Oh, top five nights of my life. Okay, it's. I'm not equipped. But anyway, this guy went on for like an hour of everything wrong with his ex wife. It was just completely horrible. I want to hear is none of my business. Long list of everything wrong with her. And I said to him, if she was sitting here, what would she say about why you got divorced? What would she say about you?

Speechless.

Speechless.

Speechless.

Okay. But you kind of got to do that. You've got to go into the head of your boss and say, what do they think is wrong with me? And this is, look, you have to be a real grown up to do this. You have to be really, you have to let go a lot of your ego, all of your ego in fact, to do it. I mean, he was not able to answer me. No surprise. Okay, but you really got to do that. So, so one way to do that is to go back to the jd because your boss is thinking about all the things they hired you for. You know what else they're thinking? They're thinking about what everybody else is. Think about the best performer at your company. Yeah. And say, okay, I'm probably not the best performer, but Elisa is. What does she do differently than me? And then slap yourself and tell the truth. Okay. You know, she's always in there very, very early. She's always coming up with new things to do. You know, all these other things. And don't hate Annelies. Find out, figure out what she's doing better than you. So compare yourself to everybody else and get over yourself. Compare yourself. Okay, that's number one. And number two, look at the jd. Okay, so then part of that is if they give you another chance after all of that, you've got to over deliver. You've got to surprise and delight them. Like actually doing. Look, the only place you get claps for doing exactly the assignment is school.

It's the only place.

Only place. What a lie. The school tells you what a lie. That doing the assignment is enough. School's lying to you. Everybody. I mean it tells you that. No, it's not. You've got a surprise. You got to over deliver. Yeah.

And you gotta be extra credit.

Yeah. I mean we all know I gave a final exam And I said seven of the 10 questions are required and the other three are extra credit. And I actually, I was stunned that some of my students didn't do that. Didn't do the extra credit.

Suzanne, I'm like a sucker for Extra credit.

Oh, my God, Please. I make up questions from the first grade.

Like, I'm like. I'm like, how do I get extra credit?

Right. Enneagram type threes unite. Here we go. I. So I would say that do the extra credit, but don't, like, suggest the extra credit and then do it. Okay. Invent the extra credit. I mean, this blows my mind. Like, here I was. Now, it wasn't a lot of my students. These are stern MBAs, by the way, so they're very, very ambitious and so forth. But there were actually students who did just seven questions. I mean, and then there were other people who wrote, like, long essays on the extra three extra credit questions. If it had been me, I literally would have written extra credit questions number four and five and answered those as well. Because. Because I got a screw loose. Yes. Okay. But anyway, so over deliver, and that means make the job bigger and then deliver on it. So that's the second thing. If you want to keep your job. You may not want to, but if you want to. All right, so here's another thing you've got to do. It's going to feel very hard because the boss is making you feel like a dead man walking. You got to pull the boss aside, and you actually got to say, I love my job and I want to keep it.

Do you mean, like, metaphorically say that, or do you mean literally say, I love this job. I want to keep Suzy?

Yeah.

You mean literally say that.

I mean, I've asked employees during performance reviews, do you love this job and want to keep it? Because as a boss, I want to know if that's true or not. I want to know if they're looking. You and I have had this conversation many times.

Many times.

We have. Many times. I've, like, literally said to him, afraid of losing you, and what would it take for me to keep you? I might have had that conversation with you. So I think that your boss wants to know it, and your boss may just think, you know, they start treating you like you're a dead man walking. You. Most people kind of retreat, and they're like, whoa, I'm getting bad vibes. I'm going to kind of hold on, you know, until I have more information about this. You got to lean in and say, I want this job. And you could say, look, I'm. What would it take to. For me to get an A plus here? What am I missing? And it's. You have to be very grown up to have that conversation. No one's going to have it for you. All right? No, no cavalry is coming in to have that conversation for you. So if you want to keep your job after you're getting the five big signals, I'm telling you, you got to lean in. So that's another one. And. Okay, well, now we're going to get back to what I was talking about at the beginning, because a lot of times you get fired not for performance, but for values. And you're not demonstrating the organization's values. So I guess question number one is, what are my organization's values? Do I know them? Am I living them? So you go and you look and see, there's the tippy top employee. It's Issa. She's the organization's tippy top employee. What are her values? What is she demonstrating? And. And I'm telling you what it's going to be. It's going to be achievement. It's going to be work centrism. It's going to be client focus. It's going to be all sorts of stuff. And you, do you have those values? Are you demonstrating them? Because what's happening with the Gen Z firing we're hearing from this research that's been done is it's all about not fitting in, which is just code line, which we're saying, they're not demonstrating the values. They're not coming in early, they're not leaving late. They're not showing gerd, they're not showing ambitious. They're not loving the clients. They're not obsessed with the property products. These are all things that companies want you to demonstrate. And if you're blah and blase because you're thinking in the back of your mind, I'm never going to stay at this company because nobody stays anywhere anymore. Well, they're saying, okay, you may feel that, but you better not be showing it.

And Susie, sometimes, I mean, you've shared this in conversations in the management class. Sometimes there's nothing you can do. Can you just. What do you do if you hate the job? They don't like you, right? What happens then?

I mean, it's time for you to go. You gotta go. And, you know, not all jobs are forever. I mean, look, I'm thinking about my first big firing from Harvard Business Review, which I've discussed many times in this podcast. I mean, I got fired because I ran off with Jack Welch, which was a. I do it again tomorrow. I could have done things differently. And I should have, okay? Because it caused a bit of a mess and I learned a huge amount from it. It was A very irregular firing. And so it's not like other. It's. I mean, how often does somebody, you know, fall in love with somebody and then they're asked to step down, so forth. So it's not a regular firing. But. But when I was parted ways with this consulting firm, it was time for me to go. I mean, I was not doing what they wanted. I was not enjoying myself at all. And so it was time to go. And so we did part ways. So your question is.

My question is sometimes people just don't work out.

It's over.

It doesn't work out and it's over. Or maybe something's done and then there's no going back.

No, no, there's no going back. It didn't work out.

All right, So I want to maybe take a moment and focus on the moment that someone gets fired.

Yeah, yeah.

Someone gets the news. Susie, what's your advice on how they might approach that moment?

Okay. It happens. You're sitting there. You kind of know the minute before it happens because you get a note from HR or your boss, like, suddenly a time on Friday afternoon comes on your calendar. And so here's my advice about the moment of being fired. It is one of the hardest moments in your life. It is. You feel sick a lot of times. Now it happens on a computer now.

It used to happen logged on Zoom, and then you get a.

Now it's a moment where you have to do a lot of stuff that does not come naturally, which is that you have to be poised and you have to be your best self. And I am obsessed, like the rest of humanity with this viral video that's going around. I'm sure you've seen it. It's had something like 120 million views. And it was at a big school function. It happened in December. And there's a bunch of kids holding candles. And it's like a group of like 14, 15 year old kids. And there's a girl holding a candle and her hair catches fire. Her uncle to. And you see her, she smiles and she pats out the fire. Her hair is caught on fire. Okay. And she pats out the fire. And then everybody's like, are you okay? Are you kidding? She goes, I'm fine. I've watched it like 70,000 times. This all the one point, you know, 200,000 views.

You're a big guy.

I am responsible for many of them, but I. Because I think that this poise is what's required of us. Like, you know, you feel like your hair is caught on fire when you're being fired. Okay. I mean, she's literally been fired. Okay. And her head caught on fire. And she's, like, so poised in the moment. Yeah. She has this, like. Like, she puts it out unbothered. Right. And so she acknowledges it. I think the one thing I did right when I was being fired from hbr, I mean, I. I don't know how I did it in the moment, because every single negative emotion in the universe was, like, churning in me like a. Like a sea storm. But the one thing that I did that was right was I said, thank you for the opportunity to work at this great institution. And I literally called it a great institution as it was kicking me out the door. And I said something like, it's been an honor to work at this great institution. And later, I heard for many years afterwards that that quote, for me was repeated at the board meeting. Like, they said, well, we let her go. And somebody said, how was it? And somebody said, she said, it was an honor to work at this great institution. It held me in very good stead, because years later, when the head of the board said to me, susan, we made a huge mistake, and so forth and so on, I've got to end that. Look, I hold that very dear, that information. I think that part of it was that when I went out the door, I went out the door complimenting the organization and telling them what had been an honor. And so I suggest that you put out that you act like that girl whose head caught on fire, literally. Or you say something about, I appreciate my time here. I learned a lot, and I am grateful that I had a chance to work at the this, you know, great institution or this wonderful company or this company that I think is going to do really well. I think it behooves you to try to show as much dignity and poise in the moment as you can, because.

Business is a small island.

Yeah. It's an island. You will see everyone again. You may hate them.

Yeah.

And they may not be too fond of you. Okay. But they're not saying. A lot of times, they're not saying hateful things to you. So I think it's the time to do something that's very, very unnatural. So in the moment. Moment. That's what I suggest you do. Okay?

So, Susie, now that. Okay, we have these five people that have been fired that are in my life.

Right.

I want to ask you, like, what is your best advice for what to do now?

Here's what you're gonna want to do. You're gonna want to go get a job. Okay? You're gonna, like. You're gonna, like, start, like, spamming people all over LinkedIn. You're just gonna, like, hit all these buttons, boom, boom, boom, easy apply, right? And you're just gonna go completely. By the way, we've got job openings that becoming labs. Okay?

So plug it, Susie.

Check us out. Out. But you're going to start applying like crazy. And I'm going to say, stop that right now. Because here's the thing. You've got to get existential. Even if it's just for a little while before you get tactical, you have left a job you shouldn't go back to. All right? Immediately. What people do is they start applying for jobs just like the one they just left because they've got all those skills. They've got a resume that they think matches don't do that. There's a reason you got laid off, and it's because you were probably not a fit for that line of work. So you've got to get existential. What does it mean? Well, you know, Dustin, all roads lead back to becoming you. The methodology that we practice at becoming you labs in, I teach at NYU Stern School of Business and all around the world, you've got to figure out some stuff about yourself because, look, you're ready to have the new you.

Yeah.

You're ready to go on a new road. Okay. You know, you're just, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. I got fired from it. And then we start looking around, and you got to figure out how to get started in the next new you. Okay? That the past is the past. And then it's kind of overwhelming. It's like, do I go left? Do I go right? Do I go up? Do I go back? But the thing is, you got to go in another direction, just not the one you were in. How do you figure that out? Well, you've got to know some stuff about yourself that's really fundamental. This doesn't take forever, okay? This is not a stalling thing. This is actually going to help you go faster sooner. Okay? You've got to finally get a beat on what your values are. Like if your number one value is non sibi, which means wanting to help other people, don't go work in an organization or in a company or a line of work that's not about helping people if it's your number one value. Because not only if you figure out your values, you have to figure out how much you're willing to give up up of your values because you may have helping people as your number one value, but your second value is affluence money. And you got to figure out before you move forward what the trade off, how much you're willing to trade off for one of those two values. Okay? And so the number one thing is you've got to figure out your values. How do you do that? You do that with the values bridge which you can take. There's a free version, there's a paid version, you can get a version in my book or there's that. Look, other people have values tools you can use. Brene Brown has a whole list of values. Not the values that we use in Becoming youg, but you could look at her list, it's completely free. And so, but you got to understand what your values are so that you can find an organization that has similar values. That's number one. Start with yourself with your values. Then you got to get a bead, a very clear eyed picture of what your aptitudes are. Your intellectual what are you good at? Are you a generalist or a specialist? Are you a diagnostic problem solver or a process supporter? You've got to know how your brain works. Your organization probably told you, look, you're too abstract and we need somebody who's very tired. You're beginning to get an understanding of how your brain is wired, what you should be doing. Do you love details or are you a generalist? Or you know, you've got to know that. And the other thing you got to know about your aptitudes is how your personality is received. You may think you're a people person, but maybe you are not. You may think you're a really good executor, but maybe you are not. And you may think you're a big font of ideas, but maybe you're not. You've got to know with a steely eyed realism what you're actually good at. Not what your parents want you to be good at. You know, not necessarily where all the big jobs are, what you are actually good at and what you're not really good at. Okay, and then finally what interests you and the pro? Oh yeah, I know what interests me. Really. Is your aperture really open? Yeah, I mean I'll never forget. Look, if you're young and you've been fired, you can take so many more risks and big swings than you will later when you've got kids and a mortgage. When I was in business school there were seven guys. This was 1980. We were writing our exams by hand. Okay, seven guys, all men, after graduation went to a place called Silicon Valley. I was like, why? And I was told it's because they like to golf. And I was like, is there golf there? They went there because they heard that this thing was coming, the Internet. And you can do that when you're young. You can take it interest. Obviously technology interested them and so you can really, you know, you've got to open up your aperture about what's coming, what's out there, what might you be interested in? And sometimes we just lie to ourselves about what we're interested in. I mean, I always think about this woman who said, I don't know what to do. All I really want to do in life is dog rescue. What should I do with my life? And I thought, dog rescue. I mean, what the heck? If that's what you're really interested in, we have to let ourselves hear. So you have to get existential, get those three data sets figured out, then start thinking about what jobs you should apply for. You think it's going to take time to do that. But look, if you really, really want to do it, I'm, I mean, do becoming you, because that's what we do in becoming you. But I, you know, but I would say you can do that even without becoming you. Although I highly recommend it. All right, and then here's a piece of advice you're not gonna wanna get, which is it's time to hit the phones and the email and the texting, because that's how jobs are being gotten right now, is through conversations, you know, the old fashioned way. I don't like to use the word networking because I think it's with friends and it's like, you know, call everybody, you know, tell them what you're looking for, tell them the narrative of what you wanna do because you know your values and your aptitude and you're just don't be mamby Pamby about it and start to think about designing this future, the next step that might be right for you. There's going to be so much sweat and so much. It's not going to be easy. You know what? Getting the job is not going to happen with you sitting behind your computer hitting easy apply. It's just, it's not going to happen that way. You got to do the work.

Susie, before we finish the podcast, I have to ask about the story about you getting fired by your husband. Yeah, so you got fired by Jack. What happened?

Okay, so after Jack left ge, my husband ran General Electric and then he retired and somewhere along the way, he decided to start what is now a very, very successful company. Successful business is called the Jack Welch Management Institute. It's within Strayer University, and it's an online business school. It's huge. It's like the largest online business school in the world. But when we started it, it was just him and me, and he wanted me to write the curriculum. And he just had this idea that the way he did business could be taught at a business school. And it was really, really early days. I mean, now it's got. It's huge. But in those days, this was probably 2003, okay, so a long time ago. And. And he thought I was smart and capable person. So he hadn't. He made me head of marketing. I had never done any marketing before in my life, and he made me head of sales and marketing. He just thought this would be a cool thing for me to do. I understood the method. I knew, understood his way of. Of. Of running business. And this involved me doing things like calling up potential corporate clients and trying to get them interested in the program. And I want to say that no one has ever been worse at a job than I was at this job. I know I loved him, and I loved everything about what he was doing. This is aptitude. It's not. I. No experience in it. It. Nothing to. No connection to my aptitudes. None. And no connection what, how I am with my personality, anything now with my values. My values were sort of a match to it, possibly. But this was a true gigantic mismatch of aptitudes and interest because I just was not that interested in that kind of sales and marketing. So this was bumping along, and I just was unable to do, sell or market anything. It kind of went on. And every day he'd kind of look at me over dinner and he would sort of say, like, did you sell anything today? And I'd be like, well. And I was just an epic fail. And I was feeling a lot of despair because I didn't want to let him down. And one day he went golfing. This is the middle of summer, and I had a full day of epic fails with all the phone calls I was making, back in the days when people still made phone calls and he went golfing. And then I thought, well, he should be home by now. And about 15 minutes after that, he drove up the driveway and he got out of the car, and I was watching him through the window. When he got out of the car, he reached into the car and he took out a bouquet of Flowers and a bottle of wine. And I thought, he's coming to fire me.

You saw that and you thought.

I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew because he was displeased with me. And believe me, he was quite direct. So he comes up the stairs, and he's walking towards me with, like, for no reason whatsoever, you know, that was not my birthday, okay? And he was walking towards me with, like, some flowers and a bottle of wine. And he said, honey. And I said, are you firing me? And he said, I am. You're done. And I said, yay. And I hugged him. I was very relieved because I had other security. I had marriage security because he wasn't going to fire me from our wonderful, happy marriage. But I was so relieved. And he. And then what did he do? He immediately hired a true professional who stayed in the job for about 20 years and built this incredible organization. But he did fire me, and it was very brief, and. And we had a good laugh over it. But I. But I'll tell you something, Dustin. As he was walking towards the house and then up the steps with the flowers and the bottle of wine, and he was coming towards me, even though I was relieved, I still felt sick to my stomach. I felt like I've let him down. I've not succeeded. And that feeling, I'm about to get canned anyway. It was all good, but it happened. And then I got to tell all the kids and all of our friends with great glee. Jack fired me. Jack fired me. And he said to me, would you stop putting that. Putting it that way? And I said, but you fired me, didn't you, honey?

Yes. With flowers. I mean, I wish all firings look like that.

I know, I know.

Can't do it. Well, knowing that people who are listening to this podcast may be in this position where they, you know, were just fired, laid off. I mean, I'm curious. Any last pieces of wisdom?

Yeah, let's end with my. With my piece of advice that I promised to give. And I think I've said it before on this podcast, but I couldn't say it enough times in my life, which is that a lot of times, the day you are fired is the best day of your career. It doesn't feel that way. The irony is in the moment, it feels like I felt when Jack was coming up the stairs. Like, if you feel sick to your stomach, there's shame, there's humiliation, there's all sorts of feelings. But a firing forces you to figure out who you are and to start to build a life of design. And deliberation, which is what we're all about at becoming Ulab. So you hate the day you were fired, but a lot of times, the vast majority of times, you come to become very grateful for it. And I, I think it's very hard to say that on the day you've been fired. Like, someday I'm gonna be grateful for this, but I'm gonna urge you to do it. To say, like, it's a kick in the butt, but it's in the right direction. Okay. It's kicking you forward. And it's important to remember that that pain transforms. It transforms into something else. But more importantly than anything else, it transforms you.

Well, thank you, Susie, for all of this advice. I can't wait to send this podcast to my friends when it comes out. And if folks want to learn more about becoming you, where do they go?

It's impossible to miss out there. We're in your face every single moment. We got newsletters. We've got our website, susiewelch.com becoming youlabs.com, we're on LinkedIn, Instagram, everywhere. We've got intensive workshops. Please come to New York and come to our workshops. We've got every which way that we can be found. We will be found because we really, really believe that when you live your purpose, you are living your authentic and full life. And so we're all about getting purpose to the people coming you. I'm Susie Welch. Thanks so much for joining us.