Give yourself 15 minutes to do a free writing exercise on why you were terminated. Stick to the free writing guidelines introduced earlier: write quickly; do not pause to reread or correct; stop when the budgeted time is up. What you produce is for you alone to see, so be frank. You may find that 15 minutes is not enough time to say all you want to say about why you were terminated. If so, block out two or three more periods of 15 minutes each and continue writing your termination story.
The true stories behind terminations are often very complex. They may start many years before the actual termination and involve mutual, growing dissatisfaction. Or they may start with a recent and discrete event like a merger or funding cut. If your whole division or company was essentially shut down, you may have a fairly simple, brief story to tell. But if some people around you were kept and some were let go, your story must be more complex because it must account for why you received a pink slip when others did not.
At some point, you may reach the conclusion that you will never really know why you were fired. In many cases, people have to live with the reality that they will never be able to assemble a satisfying (to themselves) explanation of why they were terminated. If you feel basically mystified, consider getting in touch with your former boss and with former co workers you respect to solicit their input. Your purpose is not to dispute the wisdom or fairness of the decision to let you go, but to gather information and insight that will help you decide about your future.
At the same time, you may be creating allies helpful during your search for another job. Some superiors prove to be quite helpful when asked for feedback and vocational advice. Others leave the country for two weeks after firings to avoid dealing with any possible consequences of their decisions or actions. If your former boss is willing to talk and you are willing to listen, discussing the reasons for your termination and soliciting advice may be one of the best steps you can take toward finding another job.
Agnes, after much soul searching, took a deep breath one day and called her former boss to ask why he had fired her. She knew he had been required by his superiors to make staff cuts, but she felt uncertain about why she had been among the terminated. She had worked for the company eight years, but she had been promoted to the position from which she had been fired less than a year before. Her new position had involved supervising and coaching other engineers. Although she had supervised clerical and technical personnel in the past, she had never before managed a staff of professionals. She thought she had been doing a reasonably good job despite her anxieties about the new management role, but termination left her uncertain. Perhaps, she thought, her former boss could help her evaluate her experience as a manager of professionals, which would be useful in deciding her next career move. He did, and it was.
He told her she was a terrific engineer and a good team member but a rather inconsistent manager. She tended to delegate work then hover over her subordinates, ready to rescue them from errors or false starts. Her praise for their work was extravagant, while her criticism seemed unclear and laced with anger, as if she had been hurt personally whenever they failed to meet her expectations, which seemed to be rather often. "Agnes, I think you have the markings of a good project manager," her boss confided. "And, if the company wasn't going through such a hard time," he continued, "I'd have sent you off for a bunch of training workshops and gotten you working with a more seasoned project manager for a while.
But I had to make cuts, and you were under performing as a project manager, so I felt I had to let you go." He volunteered to provide a good recommendation, the phrasing of which they discussed and agreed upon, and he spent another half hour talking with her about her career options.
Agnes was almost ecstatic after the meeting. She came away from it with her confidence in her ability restored and with a sense of having several appealing career options from which to choose. Her superior's frank but tactful criticism of her management performance left her feeling that she could go on in project management and succeed, if she got more training in management skills or secured a position in which she could get help developing them. What really stuck in her mind, however, was the statement, "You're a terrific engineer." She loved solving engineering problems. All of her personal bests had involved solving engineering and design problems. She found working as part of a team of engineer intellectually satisfying and downright fun.
She hated managing other engineers, however. She got little satisfaction from dealing with interpersonal problems and felt deprived of the satisfaction she had formerly derived from hands on involvement with engineering problems. She had taken a management position, she concluded, only because it was the logical next step in the career ladder for engineers at her former company. She decided to stick with what she loved and to seek an engineering job in a company that provided parallel career paths for management professionals and engineering professionals so that she could continue moving upward without moving out of the realm she truly enjoyed.
Not all stories have such nice endings, of course. Many bosses refuse to meet with terminated employees. Some who agree to meetings wind up being accusatory and hostile, which is understandable from a psychological point of view but nonetheless painful for their targets. Hurting someone by firing him or her is easier emotionally if the terminator can convince him or herself that the injury was deserved or that the person receiving it was "bad." Quite a few terminators simply develop a boiler plate explanation and reject any requests to elaborate or to discuss the matter on a more personal level.
If you had a good relationship with your boss, feel reasonably resilient emotionally, and are able to discuss your termination without displaying hostility even if greeted with coldness, anger, or stonewalling try to arrange a meeting after termination. In the meeting, seek feedback on your performance, discuss what you would like to say to potential employers about the reasons for your termination, ask for vocational advice, and request names of other people who might help you get information about openings elsewhere. If you don't feel comfortable with the idea of discussing your termination dispassionately with your terminator, don't do it and don't worry. Just get on with yourself exploration and develop a termination statement on your own.
