A monthly newsletter by Lesley Hayman, Career Pivot & Development Coach
No. 2 | September 2026
Coming to terms with job loss: a systemic approach
Last week, I woke in the middle of a nightmare. I was trying desperately to find out whether I still worked at X University, but nobody would tell me.
Why would an event that happened twelve years ago still find its way into my dreams?
Turn the clock back twelve years to one Friday morning, when I was at X University, absorbed in planning a big international conference. Out of the blue, I was called in to see the Chief Operating Officer. The Head of HR was there too. I had an immediate sense of foreboding.
I was told to clear my desk and leave the building that day. I was being put on gardening leave because I had accepted a job with another university, a perceived competitor.
I burst into tears. On paper, I had every reason to be pleased: I was moving to a new institution on promotion, and gardening leave included full pay for three months. Yet I had no chance to finish my work, say goodbye properly to my team or prepare myself to leave. I could not make sense of my abrupt departure then. My dream suggests that some part of me is still trying to make sense of it now.
What happens when we are suddenly forced to leave our place of work?
Being asked to leave an organisation where we have spent years, with zero notice, can be surprisingly painful and disruptive even when the move is our choice. An abrupt departure gives us little time to disentangle ourselves from the organisation. The shock of the unexpected can turn our lives upside down.
- A door shuts on all the close relationships we have built, nurtured and enjoyed over the years.
- The projects and plans we have invested so much creative energy and time in will go forward without us.
- The culture we have embraced and the ways of being we have learnt to thrive in the organisation no longer have meaning.
- The desk, the chair, the potted plant and all the little things that made the office feel like a home from home are no longer accessible to us.
- The job we ‘made our own’ is, in a flash, no longer ours.
Our place in the organisation, our professional identity and our sense of self are all compromised when the truth fully hits us: we no longer belong.
For someone who has been dismissed or made redundant abruptly, the shock can be devastating. There will also be the immediate question: What now? Alongside the loss of a familiar role comes uncertainty about income, identity and the future. They may also doubt the value they have brought to the organisation over the years and what their colleagues actually thought of them.
If you have been unlucky enough to have been thrown unceremoniously out of your organisation or have had to leave through circumstances not of your choosing, how can you come to terms with your loss?
In this blog I describe an approach for making sense of leaving badly developed by John Whittington, founder of Coaching Constellations
Whittington sees leaving badly as creating an imbalance. To leave well, we need to rebalance our relationship with the organisation by recognising and making sense of:
- What the organisation has given to us and what we have received. This can include what we valued and learnt from the organisation.
- What we can keep from our time there that resourced us. This can include expertise, leadership skills and service to others.
- What we can leave behind with respect. This can include what we disliked or what disappointed, overwhelmed or challenged us.
The more you can experience this process holistically—that is, at the cognitive, emotional and bodily sensation levels—the more powerful it will be, and the greater the sense of reintegration, calm and release you will feel over time. A coach can give you the space and support to work through this, building your awareness at a deeper level. Finding your own truths and saying them out loud to a receptive listener can give them greater significance.
A way to reflect on what you are leaving
The following exercise is adapted from one of John Whittington’s*. It offers a way to explore and reset your relationship with a former organisation.
Write the name of the job or organisation you have left on a piece of paper and place it on the floor. Stand facing it. Notice what comes to mind and how you feel as you look at it. Adjust your position to reflect how close you feel to the organisation now, or how intensely you feel about your relationship with it.
Begin by finding words that encapsulate your overall feeling. You might say:
- “I loved working there.”
- “I never felt that I belonged.”
- “There were parts of the work I valued, and parts I found very hard.”
Then consider what you gained. What did you learn? Which relationships, opportunities or experiences helped you grow? You might say:
- “This was where I was given my first management role.”
- “I developed my confidence as a leader here.”
- “What I learned here will stay with me.”
Finally, acknowledge what you contributed and what you would like to leave behind:
- “I gave my energy and commitment to this work.”
- “I will keep what strengthens me and carry each forward with me into the future.”
- “I am ready to leave the rest with the organisation.”
Use words that are true for you and make the sentences specific to your experiences. You do not need to feel grateful for an ending that was hurtful, or to make a difficult experience sound better than it was. The purpose is to recognise more fully what happened and what remains yours even though you have left.
In coaching, I have seen how valuable it can be for people to speak these thoughts aloud and hear themselves:
- Some begin to see and value their contribution more clearly.
- Some find greater compassion for themselves and those they left.
- Others discover strengths and passions they overlooked that create optimism for the future.
Coaching using the approach described above has helped me make sense of my own abrupt departure. The bad dreams occur only rarely now and with less intensity. I can see that the university gave me a great deal—and that I gave a great deal of myself to it. Honouring both has helped me move on.
If you left a job abruptly and are still troubled by how it ended, you are welcome to contact me for a complimentary clarity call to explore whether coaching might help: LesleyHaymanLimited@gmail.com.
Adapted from John Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: The Principles, Practices and Application for Individuals, Teams and Groups, 3rd ed. (Kogan Page, 2020).
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