Are you experienced, doing your job well & delivering results, and still waiting for the lay-off to smack down? You’re not overreacting. You’re paying attention. In this fourth episode of the What Now series, I walk you through how to stop the default response to overwork and how to reduce the fear and step back into control.
I share how one client went from overworking, stressed to the max, and poorly leading her team due to lay-off fear to becoming a trusted leader, with personal and financial calm, who navigated the dreaded lay-off with inner power.
Specific I show you how to use the Build Your Brave Career Framework:
3. Accountability — decide who you’re becoming specifically in terms of lay-off anxiety.
You can be a woman in tech and enjoy your career. When you build the skill of bravery, you will stress less, work less, and then earn more. Check out the following resources designed to help you thrive in your career:
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Detailed Transcript
Welcome to this five part short series I am calling the What Now series. These five short episodes are designed to address the most common situations women like you are facing in your careers so that you can solve them now and build your brave career, a career where you stress less and you enjoy more.
Where you work less and create more impact and yes, a career where you earn more. Let’s go.
Welcome to the Build Your Brave Career Podcast, where we flip the script on the tired stereotype that women in and around the tech industry have to be stressed out, overworked and underpaid. I’m Nicole Trick Steinbeck, the International Bravery Coach and your host. Forget what you’ve been taught.
Bravery is not a personality trait available only to the brash bravery is a skill and you already have it, which is great because building the skill of bravery is the most powerful way to creating the career and life you really want as you build your brave. You will stress less, work less, and then earn more.
This podcast will help you do just that. Let’s dive in.
Part of me really hopes that today’s topic is of no interest to you, but all of me knows it probably is.
So let’s talk about it: the fear of layoffs.
So many, so many professionals are quietly carrying the fear of layoffs,. It’s not an overreaction. You’re not making it up. You are just feeling the logical awareness that layoffs are happening everywhere, in every continent, in every industry, and it’s rationally creating anxiety.
Anxiety that shows up as in “Am I next? Should I be looking? Am I safe here? Can I trust what they’re telling me? Can I count on anything?”
Because that fear, that anxiety, it doesn’t just sit in the background, right? It shapes your decisions, it drains your energy, it keeps you stuck.
Today we’re gonna answer the question: what now fear of layoffs? What do I do?
We’re not gonna do it with panic or overworking, and we’re not gonna pretend that everything’s fine.
We’re both grownups. We can be honest. Profitability doesn’t mean anything anymore. Operating margin doesn’t mean anything anymore. Your results and your impact also not
Let’s just normalize it. Let’s ground it. If you’re worried about layoffs, you are properly responding. You’re paying attention.
You’re listening to this. So you’re mid-level, you’re experienced. You’ve got the skills and the wisdom. You’re delivering results. You’re making a difference in a tangible way, and you know that your job is not safe. You are not secure, and that’s out of your control.
The issue becomes when, and this is what most people do, there’s a fear of a layoff, so they take on more. They say yes to everything. They overdeliver, they’re over available, and they’re just trying to become indispensable. It’s not a layoff protection strategy.
That’s an approach that creates career exhaustion. I have an earlier episode about that and then eventually burnout, and that reduces your visibility, your strategic thinking, your leadership presence, the very things that will grow your career with less anxiety.
If what people have been doing and you’re probably doing right now isn’t working, what do you do instead?
Because when fear is high, intelligence is low.
What do you wanna do instead? You wanna build the skill of bravery. You wanna utilize the build your Brave Career framework and the three parts: clarity, momentum, and accountability.
Because clarity is not in this case, ” I just wanna feel safe. I hope I don’t get laid off.”
That’s clear. But it’s not helping you.
Clarity sounds like this, ” if I stay, I want to experience two new clients. If I leave, I want to have three months off. If I get surprised, I want to respond in this way.”
Let me be very clear: clarity in the time of layoffs and the fear of layoffs includes the scenario you’re afraid of. If you avoid it, it controls you. If you define it, you lead it.
To get towards clarity, I’m gonna offer three questions for you. Number one: what do you actually want from your career in the next 12 months? Not what your company wants or can offer you. Not what your management wants or has in their control. What you want.
Question number two: if you were laid off tomorrow, what would you do in the first 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days? Not perfectly, just realistically. And yes, check out your finances. Okay. Especially if you are in the United States, your benefits.
And the third question, what am I tolerating right now because I am afraid of?. Whew.
I recently started working with a client, we’re gonna call her Rachel, that’s not her name. We started working together because she could not stop thinking, “is this gonna get me laid off?”
Rachel was struggling to pay attention in meetings, get through her to-do list, or even lead her very small team. At the time she had been with the same company for five years. She joined them during the COVID tech explosion and had watched how round after round, after round after round of layoffs in 20, 23, 24, and even 25, impacted the company.
She knew that layoffs didn’t reflect impact or skill or seniority or even importance of the product or the role. There was no true rhyme or reason beyond, quite frankly, greed.
She was constantly worried when she truly answered the three questions I just outlined for you, that was her turning point. She realized that she was holding onto a job desperately for reasons she did not believe in anymore. She was tolerating a workload and a behavior model that was truly unacceptable for her.
Now she had clarity, which was the first step, and for her, it only took those three questions and one coaching session. It was the beginning. Because when you have clarity, you go to the second part of the build your brave framework called momentum.
And this is where things can get a little bit weird, right?
A lot of people believe that momentum is taking on more work, meeting more people, accomplishing more, or updating their resume perfectly, applying to 50 jobs, networking constantly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That’s not momentum. That’s panic productivity.
Real momentum, effective momentum is feeling your feelings, allowing them, setting clear goals and then taking aligned action, doing and feeling towards that goal.
In Rachel’s case, it was choosing one conversation. Choosing one, yes, and choosing one. No per week. That’s it.
She still noticed the fear, the resistance, the discomfort, the curiosity, and yes, the hope. She didn’t rush in to change it or fix it , because none of those feelings hold back bravery.
Indeed, bravery is what brings you through those feelings. It was her willingness to move with it and every other emotion as she took her actions.
Specifically for Rachel, she had to face down her fear. She had to get clear with her finances. Once she truly knew where all of her money was and where all of it was going, she was able to decide what she really needed to do.
Thankfully in her case, she realized that she could exist without an income for a little over four months.
Was it a lot? No.
Was it enough for her to feel some ease? No.
But man, did she feel a lot more comfortable.
Rachel also realized that with some shifts she could financially thrive with up to 10% less income if a layoff was really gonna hit her.
So she made those changes. Quite frankly, she reduced her comfort spending. She allowed the feelings of embarrassment to come and go.
She finally, and I shouldn’t say finally, I should say quickly, got a financial buffer of, first it was eight months and then it was a year.
Throughout this whole time, she was gently but firmly pulling herself and her small team out of the expanded scope she’d agreed to during her layoff panic, and she focused on her and her team’s KPIs that her targets and making a difference.
She spent way more time supporting her team, getting to really know them and their goals. She spent more time networking and letting other people know she was interested. It was all very calm and quiet.
Through this all, we had a few months where it was a bit more intensive, we were just coaching together once a month with a light contact in between.
When the day came, when she was suddenly, and with almost no preparation, tasked with executing a very unnecessary layoff for her team, she instead bravely chose to lay herself off, peacefully and with conviction.
Why? Because during her coaching, during the momentum she created from her clarity, she had also been doing the work on her accountability, which is the third part of the Build Your Brave Career framework: accountability.
She decided who she was going to become.
Layoffs do not reveal company strategy. They don’t. They reveal identity, values and purpose. So does the marketing around the layoffs.
When it comes to layoffs, you really only have two options. Number one, you wait, you worry, you hope. You leave all the power over their and their hands.
Number two, you decide, you prepare, you lead. You assume the power that’s for you and you design your future.
Now listen, neither choice removes uncertainty, but only one builds your career.
Accountability sounds like ” I’m a woman who’s always on the job market. I’m a woman who knows her value. I’m a woman who prepares not panics.”
In the case of Rachel, “I am the woman who won’t execute an unnecessary layoff,” along with ” I am the woman who builds financial stability for myself with short and long-term choices” and lastly, ” I am a woman who builds a career with values, confidence, connection. Not with fear.”
So who are you becoming in this time of layoffs? Have you chosen? Are you following through?
The fear of layoffs is not the problem. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not. The problem is staying unclear and active, disconnected because of that fear.
The situation isn’t about job security, it’s about self-leadership, and maybe you need to build that while you’re building the skill of bravery.
If this episode is hitting home for you, You’ve been doing this by yourself, feeling the logical awareness that layoffs are happening everywhere, in every continent, in every industry, and it’s rationally creating anxiety.
If you are quietly carrying the fear of layoffs, but also the pull for something more.
If Rachel’s story is a story that sounds familiar or one that you want.
I invite you to take that next step: get support from a qualified person who’s been there and who has helped other people through there.
Working with me is not generic career advice. It’s not about work harder, work smarter, be more confident. You and I, we’ll be working together in one-on-one sessions, and we’re gonna get surgical about your career, your gaps, your opportunities, your strategy, your next moves.
You will be supported towards your clarity, your momentum, and your accountability. You don’t need to wait for certainty and you don’t need to wait to find out someone else’s answers.
Let’s get clear, take aligned action, and build your bravery. So lay off or not, you are in charge.
We will work together for three months.
The link to all the details are in the show notes. You can build your brave and your brave career, and I can help.
If the Build Your Brave Career Podcast is helping you flip the script in your own career, if it’s helping you reduce your stress, work smarter or create more income, please share this with a friend. Until next time, you are already brave. Now go build your brave.