His answer made me look straight into his eyes.
I was coaching a senior leader who was working with a tech company and was recently asked to go. I had asked him a simple question on his next steps and priorities going forward.
The answer that I received got me jolted and found it hard to believe what he told me. He mentioned “My first priority is to support my team members to secure a job”.
On further probing he said “My team has supported me so far in thriving in my job and I am seriously grateful to them. Its payback time now. It is my turn now to support them to find a job”.
During these times of huge layoffs where everyone is looking for themselves, this answer was a outlier. If this is not leadership, then what is? A leader never abandons his ship, maybe that’s why its called “leader-ship”.
This article from HBR elaborates on the actions to take to deal with layoffs compassionately, that are so common nowadays.