WEW 9 - How To Deal With Shame, Recruit Your Friends, And Weather Lay-Offs

I'm sure you have heard about all the layoffs within the technology sector. My heart goes out to those affected. I'm among them, and it's definitely been a point of growth in my life over the last couple months. During a future post I'll take time to write about what an executive search is like, and how I’ve grown during it.

Layoffs

Layoffs happen. They can be needed for economic or strategic reasons and I've taken my turn at both sides of the table. When you cut high performers from the workforce though you are also severing relationships and motivations that they have fostered within the company.

Take for example a strong performing project manager that's been with the organization for 5 years. They are loved by colleagues and by all accounts have done a great job. There is most certainly a contingency of your employees that have thought of leaving before and maybe even stayed because of that person. They may not quite be a “friend” but they are a part of what makes work worth coming-in for. Let them go and they aren’t going to be the only employee upset at you.

When you cut a large section of a company or a team, morale takes a deep cut and you are going to see long tail attrition and immediate morale implications. The message that those who are left being “in it together” seldom lands well. Those who “surviver” are really thinking: “Am I next?”

How do you handle this? Well if there aren't any more hardships in the future, it's by those employees getting plenty of 1-on-1 time with their managers so they know that there is a future for them. But this has to be genuine.

If more hardships are to come and you see more cuts down the road, you can't lie, because when you make a those cuts later those lies will be remembered and turnover will be catastrophic.

It's a delicate balance and really takes trained managers and personal conversations to pull those not laid-off through the chaos. The only way through is to be genuine bonds, it will take charisma and empathy more than strategy.

Non-solicits

Somehow my network has been a buzz about non-competes. It could be the current FTC proposal or the great algorithm guiding us. Its probably both. But what is on my mind is a whole other part of employee contracts, non-solicitation clauses.

Non-solicitation clauses prevent what is more commonly referred to as poaching, taking talent with you from a previous employer. By talent I mean other people.

With everyone getting laid-off those that land in new position quickly are going to want to bring their friends and value-adding colleagues along. This isn't an issue for others that were also let go but what about those that are still employed.

Its a big deal for officers or leaders of a company. Imagine a CFO beloved by their team being laid off. She quickly lands her next role and they are hiring, big time. She needs to fill the new roles open at her new organization. The people who will work the best with her are undoubtedly those that were part of the highly successful team she just built. But she can't hire the people from her previous job for another year due to the non-solicit clause from your previous employers contract.

Most of these terms do fortunately only last for a year after the end of your employer-employee relationship but they have a big impact. What legal teams get wrong is that its not about stealing people when a previous employee recruits someone. It's about the people who would leave the original company anyways, working for someone they already built a relationship with.

In management we know that people don't quit companies, they quit bosses. But what if that boss was laid-off? If the relationship was positive this can be just as jarring for that person as starting a new job. This new job, with a new boss is often one they never wanted. Preventing their departure can lead to even more drastic decreases in morale, dispassionate work, and gasp “quiet quitting.” You don’t want someone working for you that doesn’t want to work for you.

My advice? Remove the clause all together. Build a company people want to stay at and hire people who care deeply about being a part of it. Let people work for whoever they want and if an old manager can convince them to leave, let them go. You will be stronger for it.

Shame.

Brené Brown is a shame researcher. In her book Daring Greatly she retells the account of man laid-off six months ago, who has told his father, but not his wife.

I started reading this as a recommendation from the artificial intelligences that I now work so closely with. It was a recommendation in regards to my goals. Brown’s book covers so many of the varied aspects I’m trying to grow in. It talks about how people deal with, react to and avoid shame. I wasn’t expecting this going into the book, but the lessons around that are applicable to work, marriage, children and so much more.

Whether you have lost your job or have had to lay off others, or if you are the last one left in the "office" and wondering why you are there, shame can be a part of the experience during a downturn.

You shouldn’t feel shame from being let go in a round of lay-offs. Daring Greatly talks about the ways culture in the U.S. shapes men and women to react to shame and moments of failure differently, and this book has already lead to conversations between me and my loved ones that have led to real growth.

Even if you don’t have shame in your personal vocabulary (if you really feel that way, you may actually just be masking it with another emotion), I promise that others do. During times where people are made to feel “less than” themselves, Daring Greatly gives you a glimpse into how they may be feeling and how you can approach them to help.

I recommend adding it to your list: https://amzn.to/3WFQWAz

Wrapping Up

This is my most sombre newsletter in the series so far, but we find the world of tech feeling very different than it has in the last decade. I’ve been the one to make cold, by-the-numbers decisions myself and its a reality companies will continue to deal with. even when the golden age of startups comes around again there will still be failures and down-sizings. We have to remember that the people we let go, or ourselves when we are, are still people. We all carry our own feelings, emotions, talents and thoughts, and the weight of the connections to others that we work with.