How to Grow from Being Diminished

Whether you’re let go or don’t receive the promotion you’ve hoped for, you can take a number of steps to make sure this is a productive passage in your professional life. First and foremost, recognize that this passage, like all the others, happens to the vast majority of leaders if they work long enough; in fact, it generally happens more than once. Beyond this general recognition, do the following:

• Refuse to allow the event to define you. We’ve offered this advice about the “significant failure” and “bad boss” passages, but it’s especially relevant here. When we coach leaders who have been fired, we emphasize to them that they are more than the sum of their work roles and responsibilities. They are community leaders, parents, spouses, marathon runners, sailors, siblings, children, grandparents, and many other identities. Keep a sense of perspective about all aspects of yourself, refusing to globalize and “catastrophize” a single negative event.

• Understand why it happened. What you learn from this experience depends on the effort you put into grasping the learning the experience provides. You need to be brutally frank with yourself, which is something that senior leaders are discouraged from doing. If you made a significant mistake that directly caused you to be fired or overlooked, admit this mistake and probe the missing ingredients: Is the skill set at your executive level shifting or growing? Is this experience part of a pattern in your career—failure to execute, inability to think strategically, unwillingness to build a team, or some other common executive misstep? Do you recognize the conditions? Be aware that you may be in denial about a given event or blaming others; don’t settle for the easy explanation. Ask yourself and others what really transpired to cause you to be fired or ignored for a key position. Work hard to gather the right data, and then analyze them rigorously. It is painful, but it is what great leaders do in this passage.

• Use your support network. This passage is particularly brutal, and going through it alone makes it worse. Tremendous anxiety surrounds being let go or passed over, and it requires “processing” or conversation to come to terms with events. Professional coaches, career counselors, and colleagues may be able to help you discern the causes and potential positive outcomes of this adverse event. Their empathy, advice, and confrontation will serve you well in the difficult moments when you’ll be tempted to act out. As much as you may want to quit after being passed over or to rage against the unfairness of the company or leadership, or worse, become cynical and silently vindictive, you have to get yourself into a less reactive posture before making any career decision. The right support network and professional coaching can prevent you from making a decision you’ll regret.

• Develop a “what next” strategy. One of the things leaders learn in this passage is that resiliency involves both attitude and action. Therefore, moving beyond an analysis of what you might have done or what you might do requires creating a plan based on an analysis of your options. If you were passed over, how does the new boss really look? Can he grow you or teach you? Is there another position in the company that you might have a chance of obtaining? Is it really best if you start looking elsewhere?

Sometimes, being passed over or fired is a wakeup call, and the action required needs to be significant. If you were fired, what do you need to do to get and keep another significant leadership role? Will your derailment potential follow you? That is, are you knowingly or unknowingly carrying personality factors that impede your effectiveness under stress? What type of company or job will provide you with the type of meaningful work you’ve been searching for and dovetail with your talents and interests? Create a plan and take action to avoid becoming stuck in a no-growth leadership stage. In working with leaders, we find that this “teachable moment,” even though it’s painful, yields tremendous leadership development experience, increasing empathy, self-insight, and forward momentum when well managed. Most leaders who move through this passage cite it as key to their later effectiveness. “It called the question” or “It made me confront myself” are leadership growth moments that cannot be replicated in any leadership development program.

Finally, take your time. Action-oriented executives are often so desperate to take action after losing a job or being passed over that they take the wrong action—wrong, not just in the sense of ending up with a bad or boring new job but because it cuts short the period of reflection and contemplation that leads to real growth. Our standard advice to high-performing leaders caught in this passage is “take your time, if you can.” Many fully engaged, hard-working executives long for a sabbatical or opportunity to reflect and regroup. When it comes, because they have chosen it or because of excessive anxiety, they want to end it and get back to work. A leadership career is a series of assignments and events, and the period between them, if available, is not only precious but vital for self-renewal. When you accept the first job that comes along and immediately plunge into the time and energy demands of the new role, you deprive yourself of an opportunity to take stock of yourself. It takes a powerful event to force you to contemplate who you are as a person and as a leader. Contemplating this issue is what allows you to change behaviors and renew yourself.