Have you ever been fired? Or have you been afraid you were going to be fired? What was the problem and what happened?
DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE FIRED! I will say it again: DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE FIRED! Do whatever ever you need to keep that from happening.
1) If you are fired, it will follow you around for the rest of your career.
2) You will always be uncomfortable talking about what happened in a professional way.
3) It can be an emotional experience that undermines your confidence.
4) It might get in the way of receiving a job offer from another employer.
I met Cheryl when she was working retail sales. She was doing very well, but her heart was not in it. She wanted to get into the wine industry. I helped her get a sales job with a national distributor of wine and other liquor. She liked the job, but her boss was horrible. The problems with him escalated. But she was not fired because she was bringing in a lot of money.
We did some coaching periodically for a couple of years to try to improve the situation. She was single and supported herself, so she could not just resign. But she was always on the verge of being fired.
She recently got another job representing one good winery. Now she was doing the work she had wanted for a long time. She was able to control the situation so she could resign and not be fired. But it was touch-and-go for a period of time.
What did she do to avoid getting fired?
1) She made sure she was doing very well in sales. She did not want to have performance issues as a reason to fire her.
2) She wanted to try to work things out with her boss. It was hard.
3) She found others at the company with whom she could talk confidentially.
4) She “kept her eyes on the ball”, knowing that she liked the wine industry, but just in a different job.
5) She engaged a professional coach (me!) for an outside point of view and ongoing brainstorming on her situation.
So are you afraid that you might be fired? You can schedule a free consultation to find ways to make sure that does not happen.
