Synopsis

It can take less than a minute to get fired. Less than a minute to hear the words that change your life as you’ve known it. You’re stunned, shocked, humiliated—because your career has defined your life and you’ve been blindsided. You’re a company Loyalist with a capital L, and you’ve been sucker-punched professionally. How do you even talk about this?

Countless books focus on leadership and resilience, but none of them take you through what actually happens to women leaders who are suddenly let go, or who endure untenable circumstances and ultimately fire themselves. None of them take you, step by step, through the emotional process of acceptance and beginning again. And that’s where Involuntary Exit comes in.

With advice for every unexpected twist, turn, and emotional trigger, this book is based on author Robin Merle’s experience at the top of billion-dollar organizations, as well as her interviews with accomplished women who were suddenly severed from their organizations and navigated their way back to success. The real-life examples she offers in these pages prove that you’re not alone—and that you, too, will get through this. Whether you’ve been fired or need to move on, Involuntary Exit will help you rediscover your value and emerge as a stronger leader on your own terms.

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Excerpt

Preface to Involuntary Exit

By Robin Merle

I wrote this book over two years ago, before the pandemic changed our world and levied a crushing blow to our sense of normalcy. I wrote it before unemployment was at historic highs, with nearly fifteen million people in the US unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic. I listened to women’s heartbreaking stories before the advent of Zoom firings, and thousands of people from Weight Watchers were told that they lost their jobs, while they were muted, during a three-minute virtual meeting. Pre-pandemic, when I wrote about professional women being fired, sudden job loss and its traumatic impact was a private phenomenon. We talked about it in huddles with best friends or with people we trusted enough to help us, or we didn’t talk about it at all.

COVID-19 changed all that. Stories about unemployed workers filled headlines. About a month after New York City went into lockdown, the New York Times introduced an At Home section to help people get through the novelty of a life not circumscribed by work and routine but filled with uncertainty. Uncertainty was the yeast that rose steadily under the heat of the virus. Not knowing what was to come was as threatening as the virus itself. Did it make people feel more isolated? Throw them into a rage? Go up and down the seesaw of emotions until they landed at some balance of acceptance and anxiety?

Being thrust into the unknown, without bringing it on yourself, was a broad theme for all of the women interviewed for this book. They lost their jobs, or exited involuntarily at a time of stability in the world, but for them the world was not stable. All of the markers they’d known to define who they were and the purpose they had lived for were gone. Their sense of identity, so wrapped up in their positions, became a sense of loss, and at first they struggled to find a way to redefine themselves outside of their jobs. Is this happening now because of COVID-19? Are people questioning their identities and their journeys? How has the pandemic shifted our tolerance for uncertainty?

I asked these questions of Megan Marzo, a licensed clinical social worker with the Weill Cornell Psychiatry Collaborative Care Center, who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy. She told me that, as a group, the people she is seeing in her practice are more uncomfortable with uncertainty than people have ever been because of how our society has evolved. “If we can’t find the answer, we blame ourselves and think something is wrong with us. When we look at the immediate future, it’s not clear. We’re existing without knowing where we’re going to be working or not working—it’s destabilizing. Losing a job has people reeling.”

These are the feelings that I explored pre-pandemic when the act of being fired was something to be dealt with by entities that now seem quaint, like an outplacement agency or any number of cottage industry specialists that were (1) employed and (2) had little to no training for dealing with the shame and trauma of job loss, no less night sweats about identity and purpose. “Our jobs are the thing we orient our identity around,” says Marzo. “There’s a newer phenomenon where our job isn’t just about gaining resources, it’s about who we are, so when we lose that, we feel we’re failing at the purpose we decided upon.”

The good news is that almost all of the women in this book did step back, reflect, and reinvent themselves after being fired. They did so in their unique ways, which are not so much novel as workable for them. Marzo says she sees a COVID silver lining of people “adapting in beautiful ways. We’re hearing people reevaluate priorities as we acknowledge that job loss is often an identity loss. The pandemic has led people to take a step back and question, ‘Why is my identity my job? Do I like this? Why am I doing this? Is working hard good?’ As behavioral therapists, our goal is to disentangle fact and the story you’re telling yourselves about the event. You can challenge your stories and see that a lot of them are changeable and not true.”

COVID-19 has taught us many scalding and tragic lessons, but it’s also shown us that we have a lot more choices than we could see when we were chugging along day after day. “After the initial shock of trauma and absorption, there is a new forum for growth and opportunity,” says Marzo. This is my overarching message to all of you who pick up this book. Whether you’ve been fired, laid off, been the casualty of a business closure, or simply need to move on, my hope is that you’ll emerge with a new set of positive beliefs about your future and your power to change your course however it benefits you. Growth, opportunity, hope. Let’s hold on to that.

– December 2020

About the Author

Robin Merle has been a senior executive for billion-dollar organizations. She is a veteran of the power, value, and identity wars at the top ranks; has raised more than a half-billion dollars in philanthropy during her decades working with nonprofit organizations; has served as a board member for three nonprofits in New York City; and has been the vice chair of National Philanthropy Day in New York for three consecutive years. In 2017, she was named Woman of Achievement by Women In Development (WID) for her leadership in fundraising and commitment to women in the field. Robin is a frequent speaker at national conferences on fundraising and leadership. Her short fiction has been published in various literary magazines. Involuntary Exit is her first nonfiction book. Robin splits her time between New York City and North Conway, New Hampshire and Maine.

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