I’ve finally submitted my ‘Life after redundancy’ article (it will appear on the jobs.ac.uk website/Career Development soon). Here’s an addition to it.

After a few interviews, I realised that the most interesting and useful question I asked was ‘What is your advice to anyone in this situation?’ I saw that, as people’s experiences and how they dealt with it were all very different, the best thing I could do was to show the differences and pass on the advice, more or less unmediated by a unified ’message’. 

Here is a piece of advice given by one of my interviewees. It was counter-intuitive, unconventional and – unedited - inappropriate for the article. I edited and buffed  it up for that. 

What he said was ‘DO take it personally’. I wasn’t expecting it from him as, years after his own two experiences with redundancy, he was still angry about the way he was let go the first time (but not the second).

I couldn’t use it as he had said it for two reasons:

1. Redundancy can be awful and is often arbitrary. People suffer. Any suggestion that  it’s the fault of those people is way out of order. I didn’t want to write anything that would compound the misery or offend anyone who has been made redundant through absolutely no fault of their own.
2. It needed explanation, reflection and preamble – too long-winded for an article,  but something I can do here

So ‘Do take it personally’. What did he mean? I was expecting ‘Don’t take it personally’ – which Iwould have endorsed. I did a cartoon-like double take  and had to ask him to repeat and explain it .

He said (I paraphrase, with his permission): ‘It’s too easy to feel like a victim of circumstance and to be sorry for yourself. The events surrounding my redundancy were badly handled, but the fact that it was me and not other people around me was definitely of my own making. I didn’t toe the line, join in with team hugs or work through lunch unless there was a pressing deadline (which I would always meet). I delivered value for money for the company, ran my department smoothly, got on well with my team, was good with clients and thought that was enough. But in-house, I refused to play the office politics game. I wasn’t  compliant or diplomatic. No – worse than that - I actively enjoyed the fights I had about my attitude.

The company was struggling and I was a high earner. That was one reason. Why me and not another high earner? The responsibility lies with me and my attitude. I needed to “take it personally”.

Filed under: Career Coaching, Coaching, Life Coaching by Melanie