www.fastcompany.com: Losing your job isn’t something anyone wants, but the experience can make a person a better leader. Steve Jobs, Carly Fiorina, Mark Cuban, and Anna Wintour were all fired during their careers, for example, and each came back stronger.
Imergy Power Systems CEO Bill Watkins was just 21 when he was fired the first time. Working in the psychiatric ward of a Texas hospital during the early ‘70s, the head nurse told him to cut his hair; the hospital had a policy that male employees’ hair couldn’t be longer than the top of their ears. Watkins refused.
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Personally, I have long believed that 'failure' can be just as beneficial as success in so many different ways. Failure can be a reminded of how badly you really want to achieve something and can teach you many lessons that success never can. Losing a job is never easy but it can really teach you what kind of person you are and what really matters to you. The article explains that strong leaders have to believe in themselves and if you don't stand up for what you think is right, you won't be the kind of person/leader you want to be. I like the interesting point the article brings up about how the reasons for getting fired aren't always the accurate portrayal of what you intended but they illustrate the real way people interpreted you. This can be a good opportunity for you to rethink your actions and come up with an improved game plan for how you want to achieve your goals. Getting fired is not the best thing in the world, but it can be a great opportunity to learn and improve.
This is a very important thing for people to think about because people often see getting fired as a terrible thing. It can be a positive thing sometimes. When one door closes another opens. Sometimes you are just not right for a certain job and you may not see that while you are in the position, but after you leave it and look back on it you will realize you were fired for the best. You may be extremely skillful, but that does not mean you will mesh well with every company. Learning how to fail is also extremely important because dealing with rejection and failure can be very difficult. Dealing with rejection can be very hard after you have always been picked and the right person for the job. It is important that everyone experiences that in their lives. Eventually you will end up in the right place where you will be very successful.
I don't believe good things can come from being fired. I believe good things can come from how you handle yourself after a lost opportunity. All of the people described in this article are successful today because they didn't let their failure stop them from accomplishing their career goals. In fact, many of these people are probably the types of people who are strong willed, which explains why they have all been fired at least once in their lives. What Vanessa and Sam mentioned above is very true: failure is essential to learning. However, I don't think you necessarily have to get fired in order to fail and grow from it. I think there are so many different ways for someone to experience failure and rejection in their career, but I don't think firing is something people should strive for. Getting fired implies there is some sort of burnt bridge or cut ties, and no matter how much a person may learn and grow from getting fired, I don't think creating enemies in this business is the most dangerous thing you can do, and should be avoided at all costs.
Getting fired, just like any other failures/mistakes, may help people grow and learn. However, viewing getting fired as a good thing is easier said than done. Many times, it is hard for people to see the good in getting fired and they can sink into a negative emotional state and lose self-confidence. That being said, if one is able to react positively to such rather big setbacks like being fired, it's not impossible to turn this around to a good experience to learn from. I personally think this is rather rare and only applicable to individuals that are young and have a good financial/social background. Often times, people just can't afford to get fired. Ultimately, getting fired is something that companies view as a bad reflection of the individual, and it is better to have a job than get fired - there is a difference between setbacks as a teenager/student and as an adult; there are serious repercussions (such as a loss of connections/relationships/reputation).
I feel like the title of this article is a bit misleading. The article isn’t arguing that getting fired helps someone be a leader, as the title suggests. To me, it seems to be showing that some of the qualities that make someone a very good leader (sticking by principles, unwillingness to go with the rules simply because they are the rules) also are likely to get a person fired. Yes, it does bring up that Watkins learned something from being fired, but there are other ways he could’ve learned the same thing. I think this article could be nice for someone who has recently lost their job, as it points out that losing one’s job isn’t the end of the world. I do think one important thing about this article is to consider what is it worth losing one’s job over. There are times when someone can be fired for standing by their principles, and it is important to know which principles are worth standing by, no matter the cost. There is a lot to be said for be willing to knowingly give something up for what you believe in.
I think the most interesting point this article makes is its suggestion that when you are fighting for something you believe in you have to keep in mind what it is truly worth to you. Sometimes we end up in situations where the little details are things we believe will ultimately make the difference between a good product and a great one. Weather it is in theatre or anywhere learning where to bend and where to stand up for what you believe in is a very important skill. Sometimes standing up for what you believe is right will have negative consequences however. The goal this article sets out for us is to make sure that when we truly believe something needs to be said we’ll do it rather than hiding that idea behind our fears of being fired. Sometimes you will be right and sometimes you will be wrong but sometimes putting your job on the line over an idea is the only way to truly bring change.
I haven’t had a lot of experience in the working world so I haven’t be in the situation where I have been fired. I honestly don’t know how I would react in that scenario. Would I take the reason for my firing and learn from it for the future? I think that this article makes great points on why being fired isn’t the worst thing in the world if you take that moment to learn. Even standing up for yourself can be hard when your job is on the line because in today’s society you can’t survive without money and some way to take care of yourself. So would you stand up for what you believe in if you know you were loose your job because of it? Who can really say until they are put in that position but what I can say is that we can take what was written in this article and learn from our firings and become great somewhere else. There’s not just one path for our future but rather dozen and dozens of choices on where to go and what to do.
In the theater world, it seems to me that our methods of feedback are often much more subtle and ineffective. Due to the often shorter term nature of the work, people are not fired as often as they are just not hired again. Generally this is good thing for both parties as it avoids many headaches for the employer and the employee, but it is not as effective as a feedback tool. If someone is just “not asked back” they may leave thinking they did a fine job and that they were compatible with the work environment, where in reality, they may not have. I have never been fired from a job, and I have very seldom been given feedback on my overall job performance other than arbitrarily right or wrong minutia. It is hard to give advice about job attitude and performance to theater people often, as their job performance is tied closely with their self perception and ego.
Having never been fired myself I don’t know the emotional end of the process. I think I’m far too apt to either comply with a situation or remove myself from a situation I don’t like. I think getting fired is a total signal for a career change. One of my exes got fired from a props job, which was the final signal for him to stop taking props jobs. Granted the company he was working for has a history of being asses when they aren’t getting the results they want, but overall that was actually a good thing that happened. I think in the theatre industry it’s really hard to get fired because we see it as a burning bridge and we can’t afford to lose those connections. It’s also hard because the financial end of things is really tough. It’s one thing for a business man to say “it’s ok to get fired” but he probably has at least three months of income in savings, we don’t always.
I’ve never seen getting fired as a learning experience (thankfully in my short life I have never had to deal with that unpleasant experience) but it definitely makes sense that there is something to be gained from that sort of negative experience. I posted something about feedback on an article about mixing audio a little earlier, and I guess being fired would certainly be, although quite an unpleasant one, a form of feedback.
Obviously it isn’t the preferred method to build upon one’s flaws, but I’m definitely going to keep this in mind as I mover thorough my career. If I ever were fired, I definitely would want to look at the situation much more negatively, but there is little to be gained in not seeing the ordeal as a learning experience. If I am ever in the position of having just been fired, I definitely will take it to heart and see what I can change about myself because of it.
I've always held this sentiment close to heart: Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is definitely a scary realm to tread because first of all, why would anyone want to fail? It's not a good feeling but I do think you learn so much from failing. Of course I would love to get praised for the work I do but do I really grow more from praise or accurate and honest criticism? Failure can also prevent many people from doing what they desire-- the fear of not being able to live up to your own or other people's expectations. Freedoms truly come once you realize that the only way to get to freedoms is to not be afraid of failure.
This is a great way to look at a bad situation. The article also has realistic advice - stand up for what you believe in, but realize sometimes compromise is necessary. I'm a very strong headed person, when I believe something is right it's very hard to change my mind. But this past year I've been trying to deal with my own stubbornness in a positive way. Why do I believe that's right? Am I really willing to stake my reputation or my job on this? Being a stage manager and a designer really taught me how to do this well. I had to determine what the most important decisions in the production were, and which ones could be pushed aside in respect to time, budget, and do-I-really-even-care-this-much. I was never fired, but if I had not learned and decided to stubbornly quit whenever my ideas weren't met, I probably would have been!
We have all heard the phrase, 'what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger' and I am pretty sure we have all read something along the same lines at this article where the biggest failures in life can often bring about the best things, whether new opportunities or learning something about yourself. As much as I believe in staying true to yourself, there is a limit when it crosses into the work space. Watkins story was one where he found himself again after being fired, but for every story you hear like that, I want to know how many do not get another job soon, or fall apart even further. He could have just cut his hair. I think we glorify these situations too much sometimes, that we look beyond the same stupid argument that began it. I am glad he knows who he is, and if his hair defines that for him, good. But, what if he had a family at home, and did not get hired again after he was fired from this job, then how would the story go? The best solution would have been understanding that the rule was to cut his hair when he first accepted the job and end it there.
I think any sudden unexpected change can be critical to one's success and getting fired is a pretty big unexpected change. Of course, we only hear about the people who have come out ultimately better for having been fired, largely because "Self-Pitying Loser Becomes an Alcoholic as a Coping Mechanism to his Sad, Post-Fired existence" doesn't generate web hits.
I liked his point about perception being reality, and not getting hung up on "fairness." Life isn't fair, and if your choices are either to accept that and move forward or navel-gaze about all of the unfairness in your life and do absolutely nothing to make it better. As I've gotten a little bit older and weathered more storms of varying levels of ridiculous, I've gotten a little bit better at seeing disappointments as opportunities (though I'm still terrible at it). It's been really really hard to achieve this growth however, and I think that it's something that you can only get better at by experiencing it first hand, rather than from well laid-out articles with anecdotes from other people's lives.
I have never been fired, but I have not gotten plenty of jobs that I applied for, both in and out of the theater. While this is not the same devastation and having a steady income, and then not having one, the thought process you go through after is relatively similar. What was wrong with me? Could I have done something more? Was I not good enough? All of that goes though your head, and honestly, all that crap could kill you if you let it. You could totally pick yourself apart. But I think why getting fired, or not getting what you want, proves to be a good thing in the long run for successful people, is because people who do well are always searching for ways to improve, but sometimes we get into a rut and we need something to push us to continue to improve, to come back stringer, and smarter than we were before. So I do think that this article is right in saying that beg fired does help people, especially the ones that go on to be successful, because what I've found about success is that it doesn't come from the amount of bad things that happen to us, it's about how we react to them.
I guess I will always have an interesting view on what it means to get fired because I partly grew up on The Apprentice, where I would watch Donald Trump fire people for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes the people that got fired really deserved it and it was completely their fault for the team losing the task that week and other times it came down to my personal conspiracy theories that Donald was trying to keep the show’s ratings up. Even when people were fired because they deserved it was clear whether or not they learned their lesson when they had to come back in the end and help one of the two finalists complete the task to win the apprenticeship. And it was really interesting because when you saw they had learned what hurt them in the beginning they were a better asset to the finalist. When they claimed to not learn from their mistakes it always made me question whether or not it was coming from a place of wanting to sabotage the finalist they had been assigned to.
I’m not sure I have the same views about getting fired. While it may give one an opportunity for introspection, learning, and development, I’m not so sure it is a good thing. That being said, leaving a job that you have can offer the same things with the added bonus of not having been fired for whatever reason. II left a full time job, with benefits, to come to CMU. Granted that at the time I didn’t know I was coming to CMU, but it was still time for me to leave my full time job. While there may have been instances where I could have been fired, like going over budget or not meeting deadlines, but I still think that it is better to leave on your own accord than be fired. There is a competitive market for jobs and having been fired may be the difference between getting a job or not.
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