Part 2: my redundancy – the farewell message I didn't send

Part 1 here

A number of people have reached out to share their stories, offer their support, or ask me to continue writing on this topic.

It has given me the courage to share something I feel very very vulnerable about, in the hopes that it might help others in their journey of transitioning through their retrenchments.

This was the original farewell message I wanted to send to everyone

I sent it to a close friend and they responded with:

“You wanna send that as your farewell msg?”

“I wouldn’t share that email with the rest of the business”

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And they were right.

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This farewell message was born from the desire to say goodbye from my truest and most authentic self.

But I decided against it. With time, I realised this wasn’t what people wanted to hear. I was making it about me, but it wasn’t about me. It was about them. [I’ll share more in a future post].

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So here goes

From my journal

Cue emotional playlist

Saying goodbye to my team.

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Maybe them not realising… that we are now moving to our last square, the tail end.

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And I feel the sadness of that, with my whole team. But especially for those I feel may no longer need the relationship. And maybe for me… it’s a little scary… a little scary to be vulnerable to the fact that… maybe that was all it ever was. Work.

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[pause here]

[the distance between these two paragraphs is far greater than it seems]

[deep down I knew there was something more purposeful than sitting with this fear]

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But more important to me, is how well they are living their lives… and to no longer need the relationship, on a practical front… is liberating. Liberating for them. Liberating for me. And joy. Joy for them. Joy for them living their best lives. I am grateful. Grateful for the opportunity. The opportunity to maybe have added a bit more joy.

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I can’t help but be proud of everything they have achieved. The growth. The feedback the team have received. The way in which they conduct themselves. The way they look out for each other. The way they protect each other.

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I see the door.

Closing

On

This

Chapter

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And I wonder… I wonder. What impression I have left… not through me, not through the work I did, but rather the impression I left on other people’s lives. The impression on how they see themselves. How they see their work. How they conduct themselves. Their efficacy. Their ability to impact the business. The way the business sees them. I really wonder what impression I left on them… what impression I left on you.

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When I think about my manager’s departure… my heart just sinks… at work… I just feel there is this hole, the hole where he used to be. Work feels different. The team feels different. I feel some part of me is missing. I feel lost.

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And I’m ok. I’m ok with this.

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For me at the heart of it, it comes down to, [more on this in a future post]

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Reason 2: I had achieved what I had set out. To create a high performing well respected team that would continue to thrive.

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Why have I chosen to share my most intimate feelings? Because for most of my life my decision making has been driven by unconscious feelings; it is only in the last few years that I realised that bringing acknowledgement and self-reconciliation in how I feel, that I can start to pursue the life I want. In past, when there was a fire, I would either run in, freeze or run away; but I never thought about where I wanted to go. Now I douse the fires and think about who I want to be and how I want to live.

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I have spoken to countless people going through a redundancy and I can see the emotional toll that it is taking on them; on how they perceive themselves, how they perceive the world, how they respond to setbacks, how they are thinking about their next move.

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We coach in critical decision making, and the first critical decision in this situation is, how you choose to interpret the event. Often concerns will arise and it is important that we take the time to listen, acknowledge and address these one by one. Sometimes I find it helpful to chat with friends, with EAP, even ChatGPT (and if you need a further pick me-up ask ChatGPT to answer it in the voice of a motivational speaker of your choice - I personally like Vinh Giang ).