A lot of people are unemployed right now—some laid-off, some fired. For many, it may even be their first experience with involuntary termination. Not for me. I’ve probably been fired more than most. And, as an owner of my own business, I’ve done it to myself. Yes, there have been more times than I care to admit—so many, in fact, that I’ve lost track—when I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and said “I’ve had it with you. You’re fired.”

There are plenty of times when you should fire yourself too, even if you’re not self-employed. My pink slips have come when I possessed a healthy dose of one or more of the following maladies:

• Poor attitude. There are days when my attitude just plain stinks. I get cranky, irritable and impatient with others. It starts to slip when I begin thinking more about me than the outcome of my work and the people I am working with. When I track how inconvenienced I feel by my work and others’ demands, resentment sets in and, with it, a less than pleasant demeanor.
• Poor attendance. Why should I continued to be employed at a job I’m not willing to show up for? That’s exactly what happens, though, when I find myself flagging in zeal for my work. Yes, owners of their own business can want to escape too. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, checking out is nothing short of being AWOL.
• Poor results. When I don’t fully engage in my labors, results suffer. My clients (or perhaps for you, your boss) may not think anything’s wrong. They may be perfectly pleased with my deliverables. But I know I could have, and should have, given them a better product or delivered it sooner.

If you find yourself, as I have, with some of these performance problems, here’s how to fire yourself:

• Go “home”. You don’t keep working when you are fired. You go “home” and think about what just happened. Giving yourself permission to take some time out to review your performance is good employment policy. Of course, if you don’t have the flexibility to leave your workplace upon your self-imposed termination, you can do it during your break time, lunch time or wait for a weekend to fire yourself.
• Rate your performance. Give yourself an honest performance review. If it helps, write down all the things you think you’ve accomplished as well as your “areas that need improvement”.
• Create a corrective plan & rehire yourself. Delivering poor performance is not like you. Something is wrong. Find the problem and plan corrections. Are you fatigued? Schedule a vacation or rearrange your schedule to get the breaks you need. Is someone creating extraordinary stress? Enlist a teammate to help in some way. Are you feeling stuck? Find a life coach. For every problem, there are corrective options. List the changes you’ll make and even sign it as a way to cement your commitment to improve. Now, your ready to be rehired.
• Monitor your plan. With corrective plan in place, schedule another performance review. Tweak the plan if necessary. The goal is to make the necessary adjustments so you can avoid another self-firing; at least for awhile.

Firing yourself, of course, is a lot less painful than having a boss or a client do it, because you’ll hire yourself back again. If you don’t terminate yourself when you need it, however, chances are, in time, they will do it for you.

If you’ve “fired yourself,” what are some of the things you’ve found helpful to get yourself rehired again?

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Fifteen years ago I learned how to network—the hard way. I decided to start my own professional services company serving local technology companies within my own backyard. My first morning on the job was spent culling my list of contacts to develop my calling strategy. After reviewing over 500 contacts, I discovered I had only two within a 100 mile radius of my new home office. Like the scene from It’s a Wonderful Life, I had one mama-dollar and one papa-dollar and I needed them to make babies—fast!

Read all the books and attend all the workshops you want about networking. In my experience over the last fifteen years, great networking boils down to the consistent application of three habits. Call them disciplines, if you like, because they are easier to articulate than they are to reliably put into practice. But when you do, whether you’re networking for a new job or for a new client, I predict you’ll experience a breakthrough. That’s when they’ll become the three hardest networking habits you’ll ever love.

• Practice your ABCs. With apologies to the sales guys who are always closing, to experience breakthrough networking, you should think “Always Be Connecting.” This is hard habit numero uno of great networking. Too often, as with my story, we can have our heads so far down in our work that we don’t look up to truly connect with those around us, or just out of our line of sight. Even after I started my own company and began intentionally networking, I’d often get so buried in client activity that I wouldn’t make networking a priority. By the time the project was complete, I’d have lost any prospecting momentum. In consulting parlance that’s referred to as porpoising. As the Chinese proverb reminds us, “Dig a well before you’re thirsty.”

• Serve others. As mentioned above, great networking is more about connection than closing. Closing has to do with getting others to make your life better: How can they help you land a job? How can they hire your firm or buy your product? Instead, ask “How can I bring value to what they’re doing in a way that’s meaningful to them?” In my opinion, great networking is all about discovering the answer to that question. And that requires a lot of listening, probing and subordinating your agenda to theirs. I’ve had the opportunity to work on some pretty interesting projects by taking this approach—often much better than I would have proposed by pushing my agenda. When you boil it down, networking is about people. Connecting with them only to advance your interests is disingenuous. One of my clients, a professional services firm, maintains what they call a “referral balance sheet” to track lead sources from their referral network. They want to have positive equity on their balance sheet, always returning to others more than they receive for themselves. It’s a good principle in business and in life.

• Keep the ball. As much as possible, assume responsibility for follow-up and next steps. And do it right away, or as soon as practically possible. Your follow-through is a powerful signal that they matter to you. As in the game of golf, good follow-through is every bit as important as good contact with the ball. Failure places you squarely in the swelled ranks of the fly-by, self-serving, networking opportunist. Follow-up is not optional. That’s what makes this third habit so hard. Remind yourself, that every encounter has a follow-up. Send an email of thanks, or better, take the time to write a note. Link them to a book, or article, or another connection in your network that might be of interest to them. Be creative, but be consistent and take the initiative to stay connected long after the first meeting. Remember Habit #1? Set aside time to review your connections—particularly ones you haven’t seen in awhile—and ask, “How can I bring value to them today?”

As with any habit, it takes time to make these second-nature. Even after practicing these habits for the past fifteen years, I fail often and have to remind myself of the fundamentals. But in that time I’ve also grown to appreciate the value of them. They’ve become the hardest networking habits I’ve ever loved.

What are some networking habits you’ve found to be effective?

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That was my dilemma when I reevaluated my personal mission statement last year. I knew something needed to change because my prior mission statement failed to adequately capture both my professional and ministry interests. So I decided to subject myself to a month of harmonic scrutiny. The idea is simple and based on a few principles:

• We are uniquely crafted by God, each of us manifesting something of Himself as we set about to do what we were created to do (Eph 2:10).
• We will be held accountable for the gifts that have been entrusted to us. That’s stewardship and was the point of Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30). Part of that stewardship is taking inventory of our design.
• We learn something about the way we’re made from our response to our environment. Musical instruments are crafted to capitalize on acoustic resonance—the innate natural frequencies which require little energy to produce. Likewise, we respond to the things that we do from day to day with more or less energy depending on our design. Focusing on the things that amplify our design resonance in part of discovering our perfect pitch.

So here’s what I did. Daily, I recorded the activities and interactions that either energized or depleted me. I didn’t bother recording events, activities and interactions to which I was neutral. After a month (it could be shorter or longer for you), I reviewed the results and looked for consistent themes. When I looked at my list, a clear pattern emerged. I liked interactions and activities that provoked change and stoked creative development, particularly entrepreneurial endeavors. As I looked over my list, I had another startling discovery. My interests weren’t as divergent as I had first thought. In fact, I equally enjoy applying change and breakthrough work to both personal and corporate development. As a result, my four word mission to ignite change & inspire breakthroughs was born and, with it, a clearer sense of my purpose.

If you’ve been struggling with crafting your personal mission statement, this exercise might be helpful. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

What are some other exercises you’ve found helpful to discover your wiring?

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So, you’re in a job transition—or contemplating one. It’s time to have a good ‘ole fashioned “come to Jesus” staff meeting. One of the strategies I suggested in my post on detoxifying from a prior employer is to “own your own stuff.” As an employee its easy to abdicate the responsibility for your future to your employer. But now it’s time to mind your own business and begin seeing yourself as CEO of You, Inc. You can start by calling a staff meeting.

Here’s one way to conduct that meeting. Take out a piece of paper and draw six circles; five circles surrounding one in the middle. Each circle represents a different role within the company of You. Label the center circle “CEO” and each of the surrounding circles as VP of Sales, Finance, Marketing, Research & Development and Human Resources. Of course, as the sole employee of You, you get the honor of listing each of these titles on your résumé. Begin as CEO and ask the hard questions of each of your staff, writing the first things that come to mind next to their circle. If one of your “subordinates” has an objection or shifts blame to a peer, just pursue it with the other role and see where it takes you. Here’s an example:

CEO: Okay, team. I just got word that our only client will no longer be needing our services. The feedback I received from them suggests that we were not as indispensable as we may have thought. It appears we let our guard down and our attitude and quality of our work was not what it used to be. Now, I’m not going to dwell on the past to assign blame, but we need to learn from our mistakes so we can position ourselves better going forward. Let’s take a few minutes in this meeting to assess where we are. I’d like to start with Sales. What’s our situation?

VP Sales: We’re in a tough situation.

CEO: Why’s that?

VP Sales: Because we don’t have any active prospects. This kinda caught me by surprise. We’ve been so dedicated to our one client we haven’t been doing any networking or nurturing of relationships. I guess I didn’t think I needed to. It’s going to take some time to get that fired up again and with fewer buyers, it may be months, possibly a year, before we have another sale.

CEO: Disappointing, but I’m not surprised. I guess I knew that all along. Okay, Finance, how will that affect us?

VP Finance: Given our current expense run-rate and liquid cash assets, I estimate we have about 8 months to land a new client before we have to take some more serious action.

CEO: Okay. Marketing, what are you doing to generate leads for Sales?

VP Marketing: Um. Ah. I guess, not much. I’m not even sure where to start. The market has changed a lot since we got our last client. Our offering may not even be up to par right now. There’s a lot of competition better equipped than we are.

CEO: R&D, what are your thoughts on that?

VP Research & Development: I think he’s right. Our inventory is old and tired. We’re doing things the way we’ve done them the last ten years. I recommend we evaluate and attend some new training classes. I’ve always wanted us to do that but we’ve been so busy satisfying the client, or at least we thought we were, that we never made time to explore some new ideas and get trained on them.

VP Human Resources: I agree. One of my concerns over the last few years, and it may have contributed to our current situation, was that we weren’t really liking what we were doing. Much of what we did was by rote and resentment was starting to creep in. Morale was getting pretty low, especially lately when our client demanded more hours. I think the kind of change he’s suggesting could rejuvenate our team.

VP Marketing: And our brand.

VP Sales: It would certainly help me have something new to discuss with our network.

CEO: Okay guys. Let’s work this plan and see where it goes…

Of course a conversation like this could go on for some time. It could even turn into an all out brawl. In case it does, I suggest you do this somewhere in private where you can even talk out-loud amongst the roles without worrying that someone might think you’re a kook. Once you’ve recorded the notes from your staff meeting, find some friends whom you trust to review them with. They can add invaluable insights and suggestions to supplement those from your “staff.”

This exercise can reveal a lot about how you really perceive the business of You, Inc. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll quickly discover some things you may have been avoiding. Confronting these things with the authority of a CEO can help you address them and bring you closer to your next engagement. Earlier, I described this session as a “come to Jesus meeting,” and that’s what it is, for while you may be the CEO of You, Inc. you own no shares. There is only one Shareholder and one Chairman to whom you are accountable. And He paid a high price for you (1 Cor 6:19-20) because you are worth it.

Have you conducted a similar exercise and, if so, what was your experience?

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A number of years ago, when I was in corporate America, I experienced this emotional trifecta. The business unit that I had founded and led was being dissolved as part of a larger restructuring. Up to that point, I was having the time of my life, leading one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with to package and deliver software in a way that the company had never done before. I had plenty of reason to harbor resentment—and for a long time, I did.

About six months later, after I started my own business, I noticed something peculiar. My zeal and enthusiasm for my work was beginning to return. Creative ideas about possible ventures and opportunities were beginning to flow as if a faucet had suddenly been opened. My old self was back and I wondered where I had been. With the newfound ideas came a renewed sense of freedom. I didn’t need to have my ideas approved by anyone. Just me. That was when it occurred to me—I was detoxifying from my previous employer. Unwittingly, my thinking had been constrained to the practicalities and politics of the corporate culture I served. Absent of that culture, ideas began to flow and so did my joy.

Since then, I’ve talked about the need to detoxify with a lot of people who have experienced job loss. It’s one of the most important first steps you can take when you get a “notice.” In fact, failure to enter detox can severely limit your future opportunities. As Alexander Graham Bell wrote, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Based on my experience here are five things you can do to detoxify from your last work experience:

1. Immediately stop asking “why.” Why questions are largely unanswerable and patently unhelpful. They either lead to resentment (“Why did/didn’t they…”) or regret (“Why did/didn’t I…) and only serve to add more toxins to your thinking. For more thoughts on this, read my post, “Did you just hit a pothole?”
2. Practice telling yourself the truth. One of the attributes of a toxic environment is that it perpetuates mistruth—those lies and half-truths that diminish your value and worth. Politically charged or highly dysfunctional environments are especially hostile breeding grounds for mistruth. Let’s face it, you’re not indispensable, but neither are you without significant value.
3. Actively engage in community. One of the best ways you can practice truth telling is in the presence of community. Meet with friends and others who will ask forward-thinking questions, challenge your assumptions, and offer helpful resources to get you thinking creatively about your next opportunity. As much as possible, avoid hanging out with other displaced co-workers. Too often, the gatherings of the “ex’s” turn out to be gripe sessions that only stir up more toxins.
4. Rediscover your purpose. A positive community can play an important role in helping you rediscover what really makes you tick. Invest time to pray, think and experiment with new ideas, asking for help from your community along the way. My post “Lost your job? Don’t make that call…just yet” explores this theme further.
5. Own your own stuff. Finally, reclaim full responsibility for your future. Begin to see yourself not as an employee or prospective employee but as the owner of a business—you. As a CEO and owner of your business, you make the decisions about how you serve your clients, either as a one-client employment relationship or a multi-client contractor arrangement. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be posting about how you can engage yourself as the CEO of You, Inc.

Help add to my list. What are some of the things you’ve done to detoxify from a prior work environment?

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Most of us have reaped the benefits of good list management. Some of us have rather elaborate notebooks or software programs to help us keep on top our responsibilities. My personal favorite is Things for the Mac. It’s a great tool, and supports the principles of David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach. As with any tool, however, it’s how you use it that makes the difference. Somewhere along the way, in my early career, I learned to work my way through my “to-do” list sequentially, starting with the highest priority items, until I reached the end.

That’s all well and good, until I lost energy for the task. What do I do then? Easy. Stop whining, buck up, buckle up, slap myself in the face, if needed, and “git r done.” The problem for me, at least, has been that I’ve not had a lot of success at self-imposed torture. I find that, instead of feeling good about my “discipline,” my energy continues to deplete and I’m more likely to get distracted by less important things, like the phone, email or the vending machine. Trips to the bathroom become increasingly frequent mini-vacations from an onerous task. The project I started with enthusiasm at the beginning of the day looks more like a blood sucking monster I can’t wait to abandon by the time I head home. Of course, nothing else got done either. They were all lower priority. The blood sucking monster ate my whole day and me along with it.

I only wish Barbara Sher’s book, Refuse to Choose, was around when I was younger. It would have made me a lot more productive and feeling better about my day. In it, she likens what she calls a ‘scanner’—those who, like me, thrive on variety—with a bumblebee that visits a flower only for as long as it took to get what it came for; the nectar. Like the bee, scanners have their personal nectar, the rewards, that they get from doing a task. The key, as she describes it, is to identify your personal nectar and to move to a new task once you’ve obtained it.

For the last year I’ve been putting that advice to work with incredible results. Instead of viewing my tasks linearly, not starting a new task until I’ve completed the previous one, I now manage them more like a portfolio of opportunities to work on for as long as I have energy for it. When I feel my energy running low, it’s my signal to move to a new task. I may return to the uncompleted task several times a day, but when I do it’s with renewed energy. It seems that my brain may have needed it’s own “rest” room to get the creative juices flowing again.

If you, too, are a scanner and are haunted by the task-linear, bloodsucking monster, try it out for yourself and let me know how it goes.

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• Relax. The most important first thing you can do is to become fearless. Whether you are interviewing for a job or just networking to find an opening, the confidence you portray about yourself and your future speaks volumes. I look for three ingredients in those that I want to work with or that I refer to my network: character, competency, and confidence. It’s amazing how many people of noble character and high competence lack the confidence they need to make a positive impression. So, relax.  Breathe in. Breathe out. And repeat.  Any fear you may have of the future is not your friend. Remember, your Best Friend says, “Fear not, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 41:10)
• Think & Pray. These are combined because prayerful and thoughtful consideration of your competencies, temperament and interests is a holy endeavor. God made you for a purpose and the pause between occupations is a gift to be received thoughtfully and prayerfully. When I’m asked if I might know of an opening in some area, I always ask, “What are you looking for?” It’s a simple question that usually evokes a recitation of past positions along with the summation, “I can pretty much do anything.” Score points for confidence, lose points for thoughtless consideration. They’re not ready to even network, much less to interview. If that’s you, here’s what I suggest:
  • Read the book I Can Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher. It won’t give you the answers, but it may help you find the right questions to work on.
  • Evaluate the things you’ve done that have energized you — the hobbies, jobs, and people interactions you’ve experienced that made you come alive. Write these down as your personal interest inventory.
  • Visit your local bookstore and/or library. The bigger the better. Scan the magazine rack and the book shelves. Pull the magazines and books that are appealing to you. As you look through them, add to your list the things that excite you in some way. Pay particular attention to the advertising section at back of many magazines because they list businesses, jobs or services offered that may hold additional clues about your wiring.
  • Pray over the interest list you’ve compiled. Which ones stand out as most appealing? Revise your list based on the counsel you received from those closest enough to intimately know your wiring. Let the list germinate for a while until you are either confident of a direction or need more information to decide.
  • Now create your list of networking contacts. Who do you know that either works in a related field or has a high likelihood of knowing someone who does? Write down as many names as possible. They are your new network targets.
• Probe. Now you’re ready to network. Purposefully. Contact the people on your list. Start with those you know best but don’t ask about open jobs. Keep your focus on a different goal: to learn everything you can about working in your identified areas of interest. You’ll be amazed at how many occupations exist that could be a fit to your skills, interests and aptitudes. When you hear one that sounds appealing, ask specifically to be connected with the person in that role. Your next job may very well be in their network.

I love to network and I get excited when I meet someone who’s done their homework and can be very specific about the kind of people they would like to meet.  I’m eager to open my network to them, particularly when I know their primary motivation is to discover their fit and calling rather than mere employment.  And I have the confidence that those in my network, who respond to inquiries from those I refer to them, will take their calls. They know that their time and their network will also be respected because the caller can clearly articulate where they are looking to go and what kind of help they need.

Share your ideas, suggestions and networking successes with others by commenting on this post.

I wrote this post originally for the BoldMan Chronicles blog of BoldPath Life Strategies. Check out that blog for other posts you might find helpful.

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What’s the catalyst for creative inspiration? Years ago, Denise Shekerjian set out to unearth the answer to that question in her book Uncommon Genious. She conducted in-depth interviews with 40 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award, given to those who demonstrate creative genius in their field. Her findings? Every act of brilliance was the consequence of “tedious plodding” and a lot of “earthbound effort.” Seems Picaso was right. We don’t get inspired to do work. We do work to get inspired.

Your thoughts? How has work fostered your inspiration?

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