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00:02 Susan Kaye: If you don't let it heal, you won't get better.
00:08 Paola Granati: Welcome to this episode of the World of Work podcast, the WoW. I'm Paola Granati, and today we will talk about how to best manage transitions together with Susan Kaye. And as you just heard her say, healing is an important part of that process. It's an important part in order to be able to move on to something new. Before we kick this off, a brief introduction of today's speaker.
00:32 PG: Susan Kaye is a senior HR professional with extensive experience in all areas of the HR function, having worked both in a large Fortune 500 corporation, as well as a boutique, outplacement firm, she really has this unique combination of very strong career coaching and counseling skills together with an in-depth understanding of the strategic value of people in organizations as well as of HR.
01:00 PG: A dual British-Swiss national, she has lived and worked in the UK, Mexico, Switzerland and the US, and has traveled the world for both business and pleasure. I started this conversation by asking Susan to help us better understand what we typically mean by transitions in the world of work.
01:19 SK: First of all, transition means we're going from one state to another, so we're going through a change process, and, that change generally is... If we're talking in the employment area, is from an old job to a new job. Now that can be a transition and a change that's taking place voluntarily; it can be a choice, a personal choice, it can be an internal change within a company, and then you're transitioning from one particular situation in one company to another situation in that same company.
01:57 SK: It can be a transition from one company to another, again, as a choice, but very often when we're using the terminology in the career counseling arena, we're most often talking of transitions that are taking place in situations where employers have made the decision for a whole variety of reasons that that person's job is no longer necessary, and that that person needs to leave the organization. And then we talk about a career transition process. And it's in that case, a transition process that has a starting point which is not voluntary or at least, not decided generally by the individual it concerns. So it's a change from one state to another, but that's basically provoked by a decision that the individual it concerns doesn't control.
02:56 PG: Yeah, even if individuals may know that something's coming, it always does come as a...
03:02 SK: As a shock. And I've... Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And by... When... When it's not a personal decision, I.e., the individual saying, "Well, I want to move into another job, into another role, I am taking this decision," when that decision is taken by someone else, fundamentally, the individual's environment is rocked and completely turned upside down. And even in situations, one you've just mentioned, people could be assumed to have expected that it was going to happen, because maybe the economy is down, maybe the firm is not doing well, maybe their boss doesn't like them; there are 15,000 reasons why this could happen, it doesn't stop the fact that it is always a shock.
03:50 SK: Even when people expect it, that shock will have different impacts, depending on whether it's actually a relief, because there are situations when the individual comes out of it, saying, "Finally, it's done, now I know where I am, even if I don't really know where I'm going but I know what the situation is." But there are lots of situations where it's not a relief. It's a shock, it's... It's... It's a total catastrophe, their world is falling down around them and they need to be able... The individual needs to be able to manage that.
04:30 SK: And the reality is, that the first most frequent reaction is going to be shock, which can put people in a total non-reaction mode, where they look as if they haven't really heard what you've said to them, and then that is going to... They're going to move from there, and they're gonna move in different ways, depending on their personality and depending on their history and what they've already lived through. Some people are going to move very quickly into an angry zone, some others are going to try and shrug it off and move into a zone where they say, "Oh, I'm fine." Others are going to be in total denial, they're going to be trying to negotiate their way back in. So, there are... And all of these different reactions can be simultaneous, they're practically simultaneous for some people, everything's happening at the same time.
05:28 SK: So that's why it is such a complicated time to deal with because... Because people are reacting and don't feel in control anymore. And so, the key message that needs to be able to go through, to people in that stage is first of all, it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be upset. It's... It's okay to want to vent about a decision that one wasn't consulted about, and that one just fundamentally disagrees with. It's okay to have that, but it's not okay to spend the next six months complaining about what happened and adopting the approach of a victim that has no control. In the moment, when you're informed, you have no power and you couldn't be in control, but as time passes, you will move on if you can accept that it's not the situation that was forced upon you that dictates how you should react to it. You are still your own person, and you have tools and means, and abilities and skills, and competencies that you can... Your resources you can use to stand back up on your two feet. But you need to accept it's going to take a little bit of time.
07:07 PG: And it's going to take time, but not too much time. That's also what you were saying. It's like, there's a moment of grief. Let's put it this way. There's a moment where, allow yourself that moment of anger or frustration or... Before you get to the acceptance. But you need to make sure that you move on to a next state that allows you to look at it with a resourceful perspective, because, ultimately, I think people tend to underestimate the fact that this negativity, because these are emotions, anger or whether it's anger, whether it's frustration, whether... I would also imagine, yes, grief are emotions that are part of who we are as humans, of course. They tend to drag us down. They're not necessarily boosters of forward-thinking and even of looking into, "Oh, okay. What other options can I have?"
08:14 SK: Yes, absolutely. But if I can come back to the notion of time, this will... When people ask me, "How long is it going to take for me to feel better about all this?" There is no one answer. Because everyone is unique and people are going to react differently. But there's a comparison that's a useful comparison. When you are told from one day to the next, that your job is over, that your career is over in that company and that you're gonna have to get back on the market, and maybe you haven't done that in 20, 30 years, or maybe you've never done it, then it's extremely scary. What you're in fact, facing is a similar situation to what you face when you're riding on your bicycle and you slide off the road and you break your leg. You break your leg, it hurts, you go to a doctor, you get potentially an operation or a cast or whatever it is you need.
