So, Ya Got Fired…Part 2: Feedback and Insight

In our first installment, I broached the topic of firing. We started at the beginning and discussed our ground-rules for avoiding unnecessary negative emotional responses, and used that to discuss an approach to managing the initial emotions that come with getting fired. We left off with three steps to begin the process:

• Feel the Feelings – Seek support, reach out to your people.
• Avoid Hasty Action – Let time, space, and distance help you regain perspective.
• Perform an Honest Self-Assessment – When you’re emotionally ready, assess where you are and where you want to be.

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Our Next Hard Truth: 

Humans typically don’t know what they don’t know about themselves.

This hard truth has a corollary, usually attributed to Mark Twain, which paraphrased is: it’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, it’s things you are certain of that just ain’t so.

All respect to the extraordinary wit of Samuel Langhorne Clemens; when it comes to knowing thyself, both what you don’t know, and the self-deceptions you are convinced are really true are capable of causing a great deal of difficulty.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from getting fired, was the value of insight. Everyone touts feedback, and let’s face it, getting fired is a very straightforward bit of feedback in the form of action. So is getting promoted, rewarded or passed over for the same. Feedback is very important, but its importance lies in whether or not it leads to insight, and ultimately to action.

That word…it means things. In-sight…looking in and actually seeing. Insight is about getting an accurate vision of one’s self. Feedback comes from without. Sometimes it’s high-quality signal, and sometimes it’s low quality noise. Feedback can be debated, negated, discussed, clarified, explained and justified….all because it is dependent on one thing we can never know to be truth: another person’s point of view.

Don’t misunderstand: Feedback is crucial for self-development and improvement. Any of our metaphorical ships sail much better with high quality feedback. Feedback is necessary, but not sufficient. Feedback is necessary because it has one thing that we can never truly have: an outside perspective on ourselves. Feedback is not sufficient, because as the Captain of my own ship, I have to determine what my position, direction and speed is, and make a decision to hold or adjust course. Feedback put to use requires insight…

Don’t believe me? Go seek honest, anonymous feedback from your sphere of interaction. Don’t leave anyone out. Ask your leaders, peers, and subordinates. I’ll wait…

Did everyone agree 100% perfectly on everything about you? Was there no conflicting, disagreeing, incongruent opinion within all of it? That’s what I thought: even the highest quality feedback is still only one perspective/ one snapshot in time/one opinion. To put them all together, and get a better idea of your true self one must apply insight to make sense of all of it, and more importantly, to come up with a plan to move forward in response to it.

Here’s a takeaway worth grabbing now, because it applies whether you’re getting fired, or promoted and rewarded. You still need to process all that feedback, use it as a first step (not the endgame) of gaining some true insight, and then make a plan to move forward. If you just stop at the feedback level (e.g. I got fired) it only allows certain conclusions. If I got fired, it must be because

• It’s my fault:
  • I’m a bad person 
  • I’m terrible at my job 
• It’s not my fault:
  • My boss is an idiot
  • I got set up and railroaded

Stopping here would be stunting, and lose the chance for any valuable gains from the experience. Please note: I am not suggesting either of two very common approaches to people who get fired. 

• That’s complete bullshit! You are the best, there’s no way you shoulda got fired, total injustice!
• Getting fired is really a gift, you’ll make the best of it. You’ll eventually be thanking the folks that did this. 

I lived this, and heard both of those from many people, quite a great many of whom I respect (and still do). Can’t abide either of these extremes in approach though, and largely for their disregard for the same trait: responsibility. To be sure, there were people who gave me honest, balanced, forthright feedback during this horrendous period in my life. Those folks are easy to have in your life. Remember, this post is about managing hard truths, so first the purveyors of extreme…

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That’s complete bullshit! You are the best, there’s no way you shoulda got fired, total injustice!

This first approach absolves you of any responsibility whatsoever and suggests that it is a reasonable occurrence that perfect, beatific, mistake-less angels get canned for no reason.

This angle creates a fallacy by taking the “I support you” to an extreme. 

Why did I get fired? I made a mistake. Some mistakes have consequences. Don’t get excitable, my mistake was nothing illegal, violent or so egregious I can’t talk about it. I lost my temper with subordinates who had crossed lines one too many times…privately, but quite loudly, and unprofessionally. I was fully aware that when I did it, it wasn’t the right thing, and might have consequences. I lacked the self-control (for a variety of reasons, stay tuned) to choose not to. 

The incidents of me losing my temper were, to many, justified. Subordinates of mine were dishonest, and others were willfully insubordinate, and in doing so may have endangered persons for whom I held responsibility. Folks chose sides during the investigation and its aftermath, and many were very supportive. Some were attempting to be so supportive that they denied the reality of my actions: I was unprofessional despite serving in a leadership position that required role modeling the character strength of equanimity. 

The problem with the approach of “bruh, total injustice…bummer” is that it invalidates all the feedback of people who were wronged, disagreed with me, or executed the firing. They would all have to be insane, or part of some evil conspiracy if I subscribed to this perspective. If I go this route, all of this feedback is invalidated before I get the chance to assess and evaluate it… without assessment (think simply of a precise and accurate measurement) and evaluation (think assigning meaning/value to that measurement) of that feedback it provides me no opportunity to create context about my self, and no insight as to my true position/direction/speed. I discount all of that feedback without taking advantage of the opportunity to build my insight. It does not require deep and prolonged reflection to come to the (correct) conclusion that blindly taking the point of view of the “support bros” is sheer folly. 

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Getting fired is really a gift, you’ll make the best of it. You’ll eventually be thanking the folks that did this.

Bullshit.

Sorry, not sorry. This is another fallacy, created again by taking things too far. In this case the extreme taken is in the principle to always make forward progress in your life (a principle in which I wholeheartedly believe). It is my solemn responsibility to make the most of my talents, gifts and abilities. If I value my life (and I do) and the principles upon which I live it (I do), then it is incumbent upon me to do my very best, whatsoever may come. But rest assured, I will not be thanking the folks responsible.

Just like I had supporters, I most certainly had detractors. Not only the persons I directly aggrieved, but others who, like my supporters, participated by choosing sides.

This second approach also removes the opportunity for honest evaluation by exaggerating or flattening the narrative. It casts the subject—you, me, whoever—as irredeemable. If the first extreme pretends we’re flawless saints, this one assumes we’re unforgivable monsters.

It creates a fallacy by framing every mistake as evidence of permanent character flaw, and every criticism as infallible truth. It leaves no space for learning, only condemnation. That’s not feedback—it’s sentencing.

To my detractors, losing one’s temper and responding in anger in a professional setting is never justified. There was an investigation. People gave statements, people took sides. I was portrayed as a “toxic leader” by some, with one sided statements and portrayals leaving out any mention of positive actions I had taken before, during or after. These portrayals are just as one sided and caricatured as the “support bros”.

Thanking others for creating unfair situations, acting in malice, submitting one sided portrayals that aren’t accurate pictures of the whole person, situation or context is frankly dishonest. To not recognize these actions for what they are (and the light they cast upon the “who” taking those actions) risks another opportunity to put feedback to good use. Not only did my detractors have many fair points about me in their feedback, but constructive feedback can be hard to come by. However, the manner in which their constructive feedback was offered, not in a spirit to help/develop/foster my growth, but to justify my firing and branding of my previously sterling reputation as “TOXIC” tells me a lot about them.

These were work colleagues, and although I got fired from my position, I still worked in the same organization…to blindly thank folks who in my opinion, stretched and left incomplete the truth in order to assist my getting fired, foregoes an opportunity to protect myself from them in the future. Knowing who is giving you feedback (and why they might be) is crucial—especially if you want to chart a course using more than just noisy radar. That’s how you steer your ships wisely, not just reactively. to assessing (again think “measurement”) and evaluating (assign meaning to that measurement) the feedback in order to create better insight for guiding your ships. In this case, relationship is a key aspect of my life about which I received feedback. Many of these, unbeknownst to me, were in fact bad relationships. These were some of my mentors at the time. They apparently held grudges for seemingly innocuous occurrences 10-15 years earlier, and felt that they had given me piles of feedback that I had ignored: thus they were justified in “taking me down”.

To ignore the relationship feedback wrapped up in the personal feedback of their statements, and continue to honor these folks with the imprimatur of “mentor”, “leader” and “friend” is to do great harm to the sacred meaning of those terms.

I refuse.

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Feedback is not the same as insight

The reality, facts, details, appeals, denials, re-appeals are irrelevant to our discussion. The fact remained, at the end of it all, I was fired.

Interesting and telling was that throughout the incident, the aftermath, the investigation, my suspension and my eventual removal from the leadership position…folks were giving me feedback. They still do to this day. Anything from “serves ya right, this was a long time coming”, to just recently someone saying to me that I didn’t get fired “because you were toxic, its cuz other people were a-holes”.

Often feedback isn’t entirely clear, accurate in reflection of reality, delivered with good intention or abundant. An honest self-assessment has to deal with inadequacies of feedback, and get you an honest appraisal of your current self. Better feedback can help you put all the feedback into proper context and perspective.

Often feedback isn’t entirely clear, accurate in reflection of reality, delivered with good intention or abundant. An honest self-assessment has to deal with inadequacies of feedback, and get you an honest appraisal of your current self. Better feedback can help you put all the feedback into proper context and perspective.

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Strategies for complete self-assessment:

1. Get help from a mentor. Whether it’s them helping sort and interpret the feedback, or giving you their feedback, or going to others to elicit and anonymously put together things that maybe folks aren’t comfortable telling you, a mentor/trusted advisor can be invaluable.
2. Don’t forget to cover all of the following in your reflection
   • Strengths What actions/behaviors do you do well? What traits/behaviors are you proud of and want to keep?
   • Weaknesses What actions/behaviors do you not do well? What do you wish to stop doing?
   • Values What is important to you? Why do you do the things you do? Why do your choices matter?
   • Character Strengths – Try an assessment tool for this (see link to VIA Strengths in resources). There are 24 defined character strengths in the positive psychology research literature. Each of us (thru nature, nurture or both) tends to favor some over others. We feel natural in the use of these “signature strengths”, and in fact energized when employing them. Additionally, we tend to underuse some traits, and even overuse still others. Strengths can be important (and oft overlooked) underlying drivers of your strong and weak behaviors/choices. Getting a handle on them is key for making a plan to move forward. 

In our final installment, we’ll explore how to turn that self-insight into real momentum: mapping your course across the bridge to action with clarity, intention, and motivation.