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00:00:01
The Art of Resilience Amongst Layoffs w/Jennifer Starr
38 Plays4 months ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Jen Starr, the head of North American enterprise sales at Nextdoor, about navigating the aftermath of layoffs and restructuring within companies, a journey often referred to as the "Valley of Despair." They explore the emotional and professional challenges that teams face during these times, including survivor's guilt, the importance of leadership in guiding teams through uncertainty, and strategies for rebuilding morale and productivity. This conversation sheds light on the critical role of empathy and strategic planning in leading sales teams through difficult transitions, making it a must-listen for leaders looking to support their teams through change.
Timestamps:
00:10 Introduction to the episode and guest Jen Starr.
00:44 Jen Starr discusses the concept of the Valley of Despair and its relevance to current industry challenges.
02:13 Exploring the initial shock and the journey to regain productivity and optimism post-layoffs.
04:51 Discussion on the unexpected feelings of survivor's guilt among team members.
07:28 The importance of creating space for team members to process their emotions and the stages of grieving in a professional context.
11:11 Strategies for reinvigorating the remaining team and the importance of acknowledging the contributions of those who were let go.
14:11 The role of listening and providing support without rushing to solve problems for team members.
19:20 Emphasizing the value of treating departing employees with gratitude and respect, and the impact on those who remain.
22:22 Closing thoughts on the importance of the topic and the contribution to the community.
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Close Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Deitmeyer, CEO of Close Strong. And today I'm really lucky to be here with ah Jen Starr, who's the head of North American enterprise sales with Nextdoor. And if you're not on Nextdoor, this is a legit commercial. I am, and it's cool. It's a social networking app that connects you with their neighbors, ah shares information, and also as I've learned, ah local businesses helps them advertise. So Jen, welcome to the show. Thanks, Brian. I'm so psyched to be here. It's going to be fun. So but last week we were having a chat getting ready for this and and you mentioned the Valley of Despair, which I thought was a good good good and and sad title for the show. Don't don't leave. it'll It'll be interesting. I promise you. But we were talking about about riffs and layoffs and and sort of, you know, how do you deal with the aftermath? And I was saying to you just as we were warming up today that it was
00:00:58
Speaker
Like surprising to me, we haven't talked about it. There's so much going on last year and this year that like, how how do we get team like on a human level back on track? So um can you talk a little bit about what, well, first of all, tell tell me about the Valley of Despair. You said that's actually a thing. It's a real thing. I know. So first of all, thank you for having me. I'm so thrilled to kind of cover this topic in particular. Cause I think it's so timely to where we are as an industry right now. um I was lucky early in my career to have a mentor and coach James Turk from the Turk group who first introduced me to this concept. It's, it's inside of the Dunning Kruger effect in this notion of like, you go on a real journey when
00:01:38
Speaker
often inspired by change um and often inspired by unwelcome change. And i've I've used this in every aspect of my life since I first learned about it. And there's kind of no more unwelcome change professionally than your company or or going through a riff will lay off or a structure of any kind. and And like we said last week, I mean, these are pervasive right now. Yeah. And the notion is effectively like you start from this first place of shock and then you have to get your team to back to productivity and optimism. And there's going to be a whole heck of a lot of feeling and phases in between those two points.
00:02:16
Speaker
And the valley of despair is really kind of how you navigate through and the that valley is at the very bottom in the middle. Yeah. But it's kind of first this uninformed optimism where you're like, I'm just shocked and I hope and believe everything will be okay. I've retained my job or these people I i loved will get jobs again. And you start to kind of like sit with it and you're doing maybe double the work without the team or you're not sure you agree with these changes that were just made and what the hell's going on. um And that's as you're kind of like descending into the Valley. That third phase is really like the depths. That's when you're plumbing the depths of sadness and despair. Well, and I'm sorry, it it's sort of, it's the stages of grieving kind of with the stages of of riffing. Yes. They're different stages, but similar. Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
No, it is. And then like you learn more about the new way, you you regain your optimism, and then you're eventually out. And i ideally, as leaders, we limit that amount of time, but we don't try to prevent it because people really need to naturally, to your point, it's a grieving process. You got to go through it. So I want to, I think we all naturally get a sense of like what's happening in the organization, especially in sales after one, or as we chatted about last week, two of these events. I know multiple people that it's, yeah the you know, my friends just got caught in the second round. They got, they got an email, you know, that's how they were let go. But I would love to hear your perspective on, on, on what, what's happening in, in that, in that moment. Uh, and you talked about it a little bit with the stages, but dive a little bit deeper about sort of what people are feeling the overall mood.
00:03:49
Speaker
I think there are some unexpected feelings that come up for people. One that surprised me, our most significant riff happened in the fall of 23. And we had been hiring a lot of salespeople and finance teams, as we know, draw this like straight line between number of salespeople and dollar amount, you know, and yeah, for a long time, we were kind of saying we were seeing macro changes in the market and we are seeing demand kind of drop. And potentially saw it coming while we had to continue to hire to meet this the plan, right? And so we had this big sales team. A lot of the folks that were retained were on the newer side. And so their initial reaction was um survivor's guilt, ultimately, you know, and which was not something I expected to hear from the team. But a lot of people kind of said, why am me? um Why am I still here?
00:04:38
Speaker
there's definitely the like very human emotion of people you worked alongside and respect and love um are gone. And so you feel a lot of sadness around that. And then like I just said, you're sometimes being asked to do twice as much with half the team. And so those are three of the kind of like very common feelings that I've had to address with my crew. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting too, because I feel like these things can be done well or not. And it's my, my wife's company just went through a couple rounds and what I was saying to her and and some of this, it goes back to like business schools, case studies that, you know, if ideally you're, you're taking C players and I hate to call any human a C player, but I know we all think that way.
00:05:17
Speaker
And, and you're wiping that out. And then the, some of the people that are left get, get promoted and, and get more. And that's what happened in her company. I'm like, if it's done right, like, cause I know she's a tap performer and it's like, you don't have to worry. But I wonder, one, I feel like companies don't spend enough time thinking about how to do it in a way that's, that's really human. um But the second part, how much planning do you think there is for that valley of despair after? Like what, do we have a specific plan after this to to keep people whole? Gosh, I hope so. I think the best leaders do. More tenured leaders obviously have been through this a lot. and As you and I have both said, we've seen friends and colleagues and spouses go through it this year. um So like for me, I definitively walk into the next time this happens to me in my career with a plan and some expectations. I think and hope that sales teams have very, so very strong HR business partners who have supported sales teams before.
00:06:17
Speaker
Because there is so much unique about, um you know, sales is a performance sport. So you know going in that there's risk, um there's inherent risk in your job. If you hit your goal, you retain it. If you miss, you don't. But the riff is a different beast, right? It's like you could have been doing to your point, could have been doing good work. um you could still be impacted. yeah And so making sense of that to the team that remains and being really intentional about the way you move the remaining team through this, but does require strong HR support, does require strong leadership, and does require which is
00:06:56
Speaker
In an atypical skill, I find of a lot of salespeople, it's hard for me to do, not move not trying to move too quickly to the like resolution. We love to like solve the problem and like get over the get the deal closed. you know It's like, how can I make you feel better quickly? Let's move on. I need you to be productive. You've got to resist the urge to do that. you know i i just wanna comment on that something that that sort of change my life twenty plus years ago is and you might be familiar with it or you know listeners might be familiar but it's a book called transitions strangely enough written by a guy named william bridges itself but but he he made that exact point you know when i use the metaphor and it's kinda low hanging fruit of
00:07:34
Speaker
You know, when when this happens, you're kind of midway through crossing a lake in a boat and you have a choice. You either run back to the other side or or you run to the the the new side. You run back to the old side, you run to the new side, or you just chill there in the middle for a moment. and And that, it's just such a valid point that you make because I do think, especially those of us that are so performance sport oriented, that mostly we're running forward. And yeah, talk a little bit about that that middle space. Why do you feel that's valuable? um I've said this before. i had This was like a very aha moment for me. I managed managers and one of the guys on my team who is came to me with a problem that his ICs were having, and he was you know like really just struggling through how to resolve this, and I jumped immediately to hear some things. and
00:08:23
Speaker
and he he stopped me and he was like, listen, I don't need you to solve this for me. I just needed to talk about it. And it was such a, you you think so often, like, again, like I got to get the things done and I'm going to help you and you must be coming to me because you want a resolution. And ultimately, I've found a lot of humility and a lot of really high quality connection with my team. when I sit with them where they are instead of trying to move them to a different place. Yeah. it It's such a, it's such a chance to redefine. I didn't, I didn't grow up with much and then fast forward 20 years in corporate life, started there with high school diploma, left with an MBA as a VP. And so as, as one can imagine, when you don't come from much, I was completely defined by, by 17 years with this fortune 50. And that's what I found too. Like when I, I left there and I chose to leave to start an entrepreneurial firm, but still.
00:09:18
Speaker
I took that time because of that book to, to redefine, cause it's sort of like you have to shed that old thing to get to the new thing. So yeah, I know we're spending some time in this, but it's so valuable and we're also pushed to just run, run, run, do the next thing. You have to create that space. You have to create it for yourself. You have to create it for your team because to your point, our professional lives dictate that we're moving really quickly to get everything done on our to-do list, which is increasingly getting bigger and more complex. And so. the human part of our job, the the human part of our ourselves that we bring to our job demands that we create that space.
00:09:55
Speaker
Correct. Good. I'm glad to hear you put that so forcefully. And it's very uncomfortable to but to be stuck. stuck and oh We want to be tethered. And I think that that goes the way with with a lot of life. It's like it's i often say to people that it's typically not if you're trying to make the binary choices. Typically, it's neither the black nor the white, and it's the gray. And and that's, that's where the that's where the richness is. And that's where a lot by the way, a lot of good decisions are made. And we we try to make it all crystal clear and binary. It's not that it's messier than that. I agree. So what what do you see for for those who who like don't have the chops and in leading a team after this, what do you see as kind of the the overall plan to the human plan to to kind of reinvigorate the remaining team? what What are some of the key steps in that? I have found there's power in publishing and you can get really stuck here. So there's an
00:10:55
Speaker
there's always the appetite to like answer every potential iteration of every question, why this person People literally will like pull up people's you know performance to date. It's like, well, they were averaging 97%. Wow. you know like I've seen people really get in the weeds around the why. And they want very specific answers. You don't want to go there. But you do want to get everyone together real fast. And I literally, Brian, like show them the family of despair. And I i did this last time. I was like, this is where we are. This is where I'm going to get you.
00:11:31
Speaker
It may take you a given amount of time to make your way to here, but we're going to get there together. And then you really answer as many questions as constructively, but as honestly as you can. And yeah, it, it, it helps the team to feel less afraid because the fear is, I think a guiding, you know, it's in our industry at large right now, like everyone's a little on edge. These layoffs are pervasive. Yeah. And it's, I think there's there's you know there's another old saying that darkness hates the light. And I think what i this is such a great idea of of literally laying out, like here are the stages and and this is where the valley is. Because I think when when you view something as like an objective process, right? And you can, there's another saying when you can get out of like being the star of your own movie and observe the movie. And that's what it's like, let's let's observe the movie that you're in the middle of. And I think that's such a great point. It brings a little objectivity and process to something that feels completely unfair and inhuman. Yeah, and i'll go I'll go back again to the like, we don't have as leaders, I would encourage someone going through this not to, to give themselves permission not to like, affect the outcome for the person they're talking to. Like it's
00:12:44
Speaker
Tempting to say You shouldn't feel this way because XYZ like you still have a job or now you have so much so many more accounts and so much more but you know Like I would encourage you not to do that though again. It's like tempting to try to fix it for your team You don't have to be where they are to meet them where they are um You can just acknowledge um a good example for me personally was that survivors guilt. I felt we were very thoughtful about The the potential we saw in the people we kept. And we knew that even though we had to say goodbye to people who were incredibly high value and had a ton of potential too, we knew if you were here, we there was a reason that we retained you and we believed in your ability to like get this next thing done. And so I felt it was easy for me to be like, stop feeling that way. Stop feeling survivor's guilt. You're here for a reason. You're good. But yeah me feeling that and saying that didn't
00:13:43
Speaker
help. And so just sitting with them where they are, I understand you're feeling this way. Thank you for being open and sharing it with me and you're good and you're going to be here. So it's such a, such a great point. It's such a great communication thing to, to listen with the intent of listening versus solving. And and i I know if you read the studies, that's especially a male thing. So we, we do, we want to pull out the tool belt, right? and start And start welding stuff back together. But I wonder, you talked about survivor's guilt. I wonder too, it just struck me like if there isn't also like a little that fear that comes from the imposter syndrome like, Oh, maybe, maybe I got lucky. I'm here because I got lucky or that somebody missed me on the list somewhere. I would bet some of that occurs as well. Yeah. And, and to your last point, you actually, unfortunately see that coming from women more than men.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. For, for sure. So I love, you know, and like like the concrete action step of get people together. I love if if people are trying to find if they search for a valley of despair, do you think this is something they're going to find pretty easy? Yeah, yeah definitely. It's, you can also just look up the Dunning Kruger effect and you'll see it. okay There are various iterations of it, and but it's effectively those four or five stages are consistent. Cool. so So pull them together as fast as possible. Don't try to fix it. Share that kind of objective stages that they're going through. What, in in terms of of follow on, like how how often after that, what are we what are we doing? how How long before you feel like there's at least a good patch in place? Probably varies by team and size of team and stage of company and all those things. I.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I have a bias toward action. I'm definitely, if you've done the like colors, personality assessments, I'm like pretty red in the form of like, go, go, go. I imagine a lot of sales people are. So I want to get to productivity. And I think what I've found is identifying members of the team who equally want to get to productivity and move forward and celebrating and highlighting the ways they are doing that. These people have an opportunity to see their peers are moving on. They're still succeeding. There's still goodness here. Sales is such a wonderful career um for people who like to affect their own outcomes, right? And so there's nothing better than winning. And when you start to win again, I find that's the amount of time that's sort of required. Like you close your first deal after something really upsetting has happened. You win back a campaign that someone threatened to cancel.
00:16:19
Speaker
You like have this great massive meeting with a really important prospect. Those things chip away at and eventually replace, I think, the sadness and the negativity. Yeah. it's you You mentioned a moment ago performance support, and I just did a... a podcast with a male CRO who wanted to talk about confidence. and And it was, it was so interesting to me because I felt like that was one of those vulnerable things that I as a leader and he as a leader, it's like, okay, it's true. We don't want anyone around us to know, but our confidence gets whacked. And it was so fun to talk to him about that because it did feel like a really vulnerable thing that most of us as humans and don't share. You know, the other comment I would say, you said, talked a couple of times about this bias toward action that a lot of us who are in this space have.
00:17:05
Speaker
And and you you already know this, that waiting is a very proactive decision. That is a choice. That is an action. It's just a really hard one to make. And and we don't see that as choice or action. Is that fair? A thousand percent. You think you're not doing anything when in fact you're being intentional and creating a pause. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah, this is, yeah again, I mentioned to you, i'm I'm so shocked we haven't talked about this. There's so much going on. I, I've learned a bunch for now, now for, as I meet people, I wish I had done this with you when my wife's company went through her thing. Cause she was and kind of panicking. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's super helpful. I really hope people listen and I hope they throw some comments about like what, what they're doing um to, to deal with the the aftermath. And we we could probably have.
00:17:55
Speaker
another entire show on how how to do it because I've heard some horror stories recently about about how these are done. Oh, the waking up to like realize you're locked out of systems at some ungodly hour of the morning, the the canned email. It's so it's an actually can I take a moment on that? i I talked about the importance of a strong HR team. Our HR business partners were incredibly thoughtful in the way that they went about this and what I saw had the most impact with and proud and honored to be in touch with still almost every person that I had to personally let go and they're all doing amazing. great But that we infused really specific gratitude and anecdotes and data points about their contribution. That is missing from so many of these stories that I hear where people are just a number on a spreadsheet and it's like, you have to honor the work and the
00:18:53
Speaker
the life that this person gave to this company. And so the more you can do that um with the people who are departing, and then the more you can do that with the people who stay, of continuing to say how great these colleagues were, continuing to say how much we valued them, how much we value you, and mean it. You can't just say that. It can't be performative. So that's really important. No, I think i think another great point you made that there are good people out there unemployed right now. Lost. And you said, like yeah the the evidence that I heard, I'm a big evidence guy, that you talk to these people and and they're all doing really well. um So that it's an opportunity for us, I think. Because I think in a certain period of time, especially and in my mind, like yeah you're out of a job, you must have not been ah you know a great team player or something. and And that's just not true in this world, because there's so many sweeping rifts happening and that kind of thing. Exactly right. I couldn't agree more. This is the first time in my career I've been doing this 20 years.
00:19:51
Speaker
that that has been the case. I am totally with you. It's yeah yeah it's it's it's it's kind of a new a new playbook and a new set of rules. And I think it's, again, it's really helpful for me to be reminded of that. And I think for people who go through this, you know, I read this thing a couple months ago. I was, I found myself getting hit too much by external events, the kind of things were happening. You lose a deal or or these kinds of things happen. And I read this thing about this idea that that good isn't good and bad isn't bad. Events are just events. And and and we we, as humans, throw it into good or bad category and then try to make decisions from there. And, you know, if it's helpful for anybody who who's going through it, it's, you can make much better decisions when you say, this is just what's happening versus all the drama around, you know, oh, this is horrible, why, why, why, why me?
00:20:38
Speaker
This is just what's happening. And therefore, what what action can I take? What should I be doing? What should I be doing next? And you know man, I would think if you got rift, that would be the best thing. Okay, this happened and you just gave the evidence that these people are all thriving. Yes. And it's, again, they went through their own journey of how long they wanted and how they approached their job hunts. And that's really personal and specific to them too. But you're right in that. I think anyone who has been affected by a RIF can look around and see they are an excellent company. yes So many wonderful people have been subjected to this. um And it is not a measure of your quality as a salesperson or an employee. yeah
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. Such a, such a, such a great topic. um You've been really generous with, with your time leading up to this and your ideas today. And, you know, we've tried to build a community here and, you know, we've organized some of these with 65 podcasts, I think, and started to organize them into categories. So if. One of us is wrestling with something. It's like, hey, what are my peers doing about methodology? What are my peers doing about RIFs? So you've you've added a ton to that. And and to me personally, like I i get this this kind of post care a little bit better. So thank you very much. You got it, Brian. I'm so honored to be here and talk about it. Thank you.