Unsolicited Advice: How to handle layoffs with care

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Fixable – "Unsolicited Advice: How to Handle Layoffs with Care"

Episode Overview

Date: March 3, 2025
Hosts: Anne Morriss (CEO, author) & Frances Frei (Harvard Business Professor)
Theme:
In this episode of "Fixable", Anne and Frances tackle the widespread workplace challenge of navigating layoffs—not for those laid off, but for the leaders, managers, and HR teams who remain to pick up the pieces. Drawing on their extensive experience coaching leaders through organizational disruption, Anne and Frances provide actionable, compassionate advice for leading teams with care, transparency, and effectiveness after layoffs.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Context and Normalization of Layoffs

• Industry Trends: Tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are reducing workforces even amid economic recovery ([05:02–06:00]).
  • Insight: Layoffs are increasingly normalized as a response to business disruption, particularly in anticipation of AI-driven transformations.
• Global Resonance: Layoffs aren’t limited to tech—public sector and government roles face similar turbulence.

"Even as the economic news is relatively good... layoffs have almost been normalized at this point as a way to deal with our economic anxiety."
— Anne Morriss [05:42]

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2. What Companies Get Wrong About Layoffs

• Failure, Not Strength: Layoffs often presented as bold, necessary moves rather than signs of planning failure ([06:00–07:18]).
  • Frances: Leaders should approach layoffs with humility and take personal accountability for missteps.
• Poor Framing: Companies miss learning opportunities by failing to acknowledge mistakes, opting for a “toughness” narrative instead of honest reflection.

"A layoff is on the other side of your failure. So the first thing I think they're getting wrong is when they talk about it, they're not doing it with the humility and bit of shame around confessing a failure."
— Frances Frei [06:11]

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3. The Unseen Costs of Layoffs

• Research Backing: Studies (e.g., by Sandra Sucher) show layoffs corrode innovation, engagement, and talent retention, leading to a more fearful, less productive culture ([07:27–09:04]).
• Blunt Instrument: Layoffs may have short-term financial appeal, but long-term collateral damage is real and underappreciated.

"The path to competitive excellence is not littered with layoff announcements... that is getting lost in this whole story right now."
— Anne Morriss [08:30]

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4. Steps to Handle Layoffs With Care

Step 1: Own It Openly and Specifically

• Start With an Apology: Leaders must begin by sincerely admitting to what went wrong, including their personal roles ([12:45–13:26]).
• Be Specific: Avoid vague platitudes—state clearly the errors in forecasting, strategy, or management that led to layoffs.

"It will be very difficult to listen to any of the words that come out of your mouth if you don't own it in the beginning."
— Frances Frei [12:49]

Step 2: Communicate a Realistic Plan

• From Past to Present: After owning mistakes, share an actionable, detailed strategy for moving forward ([14:29–15:09]).
• Clarity vs. Ambiguity: Any ambiguity breeds negativity, so leaders must be crystal clear in plans and rationale ([15:09–15:39]).

"All ambiguous information is interpreted negatively. We have a negativity bias. So if you want us to think positively about something, you have to be crystal clear about it."
— Anne Morriss [15:24]

Step 3: Tell an Optimistic, Vivid Story of the Future

• Paint the Vision: Use specific, data-driven language to describe what the next phase looks like, why it's worth striving for, and what's in it for employees ([15:55–17:02]).
• Repetition Matters: Repeat the vision often to embed it throughout the organization.

"Tell us about the future in vivid and specific language. Tell us what it's going to feel like when we get there... and then repeat it over and over and over again."
— Anne Morriss [17:02]

• Advice for Middle Managers: Even if senior leadership falls short, model these steps within your sphere of influence ([20:16–21:13]).

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5. Addressing Employee Value Proposition and Honesty

• Adult-to-Adult Conversation: When security can't be promised, be transparent about risks and rewards, and focus on what you can offer: experiences, learning, meaningful work ([23:00–24:43]).
• Compensation Reality: If financial compensation can't offset risk, offer development opportunities and address compensation candidly in the future ([24:12–24:53]).

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6. Creating Space to Discuss the "Undiscussable"

• Courage Over Competence: Teams need to openly talk about the pain and uncertainty, not brush it under the rug. This courage is a hallmark of high-performing organizations ([21:13–22:54]).
• Normalize Discussion: Leaders should model bringing up difficult subjects, making collective pain discussable and moving toward performance.

"A very key characteristic [of high-performing teams] is that they have the courage to discuss the undiscussable."
— Frances Frei [21:13]

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7. Taking Care of Yourself as a Leader

• Emotional Toll: Stewarding a team through layoff-induced trauma requires recognizing personal emotional needs and boundaries ([26:58–28:50]).
• Share the Load: Draw on the team to avoid burnout, and be intentional about self-care and recovery.

"What do you personally need so that you can show up for work the next day in a sturdy place?... It is in the best interest of you and it is the best interest of your employer to figure that out really quickly and to solve for it."
— Anne Morriss [26:58]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Layoffs as Failure:
  "It's not lost on me that the companies that say they want us to believe in their abilities to use AI in the future weren't able to use it to help anticipate what was going on today."
  — Frances Frei [09:04]

• On Human Collateral:
  "We take the collateral damage of humans that leave and the collateral damage of humans that stay. We take it too lightly."
  — Frances Frei [09:36]

• On Resilience and Optimism:
  "Even though the whole organization, including you, dear leaders, has gone through a trauma, it's up to you now to get your can do spirit."
  — Frances Frei [18:39]

• On Courage vs. Competence:
  "You just need—this is courage over competence. Courage over competence."
  — Frances Frei [22:18]

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:40–03:12| Introduction to topic: Advice to those surviving layoffs | | 05:02–06:00| Tech layoffs as case study; normalization of the practice | | 06:11–09:36| Companies’ mistakes: lack of humility, collateral damage, failure framing | | 12:21–14:08| How to lead after layoffs: Start with apology, own the mistakes | | 14:29–17:02| Next steps: Articulating clear, optimistic plans for the future; communication pitfalls | | 18:24–21:13| Storytelling for leaders, narrative building, bringing others along | | 21:13–22:54| Discussing the undiscussable as an attribute of high-performing teams | | 23:00–24:53| Employee value proposition when security can't be promised; honesty and compensation | | 26:58–28:50| Self-care for leaders—managing the emotional toll of leading through layoffs |

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Actionable Takeaways

• For leaders: Own mistakes, apologize sincerely, communicate a rigorous and optimistic path forward, and address employee concerns honestly.
• For managers/middle leaders: Model best practices even if senior management fails to; narrative matters at every level.
• For organizations: Encourage open discussion of painful and difficult subjects (“discuss the undiscussable”) to improve performance and resilience.
• For everyone: Recognize emotional trauma, share the burden, and prioritize individual and collective self-care to recover and thrive post-layoff.

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Fixable provides a nuanced, compassionate, evidence-based roadmap for leading teams through layoffs, with an emphasis on transparency, courage, and sincere care for those left behind.

Transcript

[Anne Morris]

Hello everyone. We heard you loud and clear that you wanted advice on a special topic. And we have some exciting news for you. We're now planning a series on Fixable to help you with your confidence at work. And we need your help to make it happen. What are your most pressing questions and problems when it comes to building and maintaining confidence in your job? Please give us a call at 234 Fixable. That's 234-349-2253 and let us know what's on your mind. We can't wait to hear from you.

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Additional terms and conditions may apply. Welcome to Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. I'm your host, Anne Morris.

[Frances Frey]

And I'm your co host, Frances Fry.

[Anne Morris]

This week we're bringing you another edition of Unsolicited Advice where we give advice to people who didn't ask us for it.

[Frances Frey]

Well, who's our lucky recipient today?

[Anne Morris]

Well, Frances, today's unsolicited advice isn't totally unsolicited. We want to address a question we see so often in our show inbox, which is what to do after your company experiences a layoff. Today we want to talk to the people who have to pick up the pieces the next day. Senior leaders, managers, HR teams.

[Frances Frey]

Oh, we get this question all the time. All the time.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, we've coached a lot of leaders and organizations through this one. I also want to acknowledge that as we record this, there are whole public sector organizations and organizations that rely on government funding that are confronting large scale layoffs and disruption right now as the Trump administration works to reshape government. For those of you listening out there who are impacted and looking for work, we're thinking about you and the people who depend on you. We hope you'll listen to our episode from last season on job seekers and find something there that is helpful to you. The headline on our advice is to not do this alone. Your real enemy right now is isolation. So build a community to help you get through this difficult time. You're going to get to the other side, we promise. Absolutely.

[Frances Frey]

This kind of disruption to your life is a team sport.

[Anne Morris]

And Francis, in a future episode, we hope to give unsolicited advice to the architects. These decisions, surprising to no one. Our point of view is that move fast and break things is not the right approach here.

[Frances Frey]

Does that mean we're going to give Elon advice?

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, we'd love to give Elon some advice and his boss and the Republican Party, because this is not just about one or two men at the top, which is how this story is being told. We gave advice to the Democratic Party last year and it only seems fair to include our Republican friends as well.

[Frances Frey]

I do love symmetry.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, it's just balanced. We're just going for fair and balanced. Frances.

[Frances Frey]

I like it. I like it.

[Anne Morris]

In the meantime, today we're going to talk to the people left holding the bag at any organization that's experiencing layoffs. We want to answer the question, where do you go from here?

[Frances Frey]

Let's get into it.

[Anne Morris]

All right, Frances, to put this Conversation in Context if we look at tech as an illustrative example here, what seems to be happening is that after a spike in layoffs in the last few years, some companies are continuing to shed workers in 2025 and rethink exactly who they're going to need to compete in an AI world. As we record this, Meta just laid off about 5% of its workforce. Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Google, they've all announced job cuts while still hiring for more specialized roles in AI and machine learning. I think a fair way to characterize the general mood is that even as the economic news is relatively good, at least here in the US Disruption and uncertainty in the business environment are still driving a fair amount of caution. And layoffs have almost been normalized at this point as a way to deal with our economic anxiety.

[Frances Frey]

You know, that normalization, I find that it really underestimates the consequences of repeated layoffs.

[Anne Morris]

So what do you think companies are getting wrong about this calculus?

[Frances Frey]

Anytime a company has a layoff, they should do a deep dive and have the humility to understand, where did I go wrong? Because for sure, a layoff is on the other side of you, senior executive. It's on the other side of your failure. So the first thing I think they're getting wrong is when they talk about it. They're not doing it with the humility and bit of shame around confessing a failure. They're not taking it personally enough. They're almost doing it with like a jocular muscular energy. Like, look, we're tough enough to do this. I'd like you to be humble enough to admit you've had a failure because it's the only way you're going to learn from your failure.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. And just to underline that, because that's exactly where we're going next, I'm sensing also the opposite in some organizations, like, hey, look at this as a sign of strength, we're willing to inflict this kind of damage on people. I don't know if that's the kind of masculine energy some of these leaders are talking about, but I think they are deeply misreading the situation.

[Frances Frey]

Please. The role model of any energy is not failure dressed up as strength. Please, please, please.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, for sure this step is not being framed as failure. And I want us to get into storytelling, maybe in a structured way. But I mean, just to state maybe what's obvious, layoffs can help you make progress on some problems. If you're making a strategic pivot, if you're evolving to a more specialized workforce, if you're looking for a financial lifeline for whatever reason. Obviously this is a tool in the toolkit. Markets often will reward you, particularly in the short term, if they interpret this move as a sign of a leaner and meaner workforce. But the costs of this decision often get less attention. And I just want to pause on this before we can jump into what you do about it, because I think it's material to where we're going to go in this conversation. But if you look at the data and some of your colleagues really study this rigorously. Sandra Sucher I'm thinking of. I know there are others, but if you pull the lens back and look at what happens next to companies, what you see is reduced innovation over time, lower team engagement, attrition of talented people, a culture of hesitation and fear that starts to seep into the workforce unless you're deeply intentional about it. And so layoffs are this very blunt instrument with real collateral damage. And the path to competitive excellence is not littered with layoff announcements. And I feel like that is getting lost in this whole story right now.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah, a layoff is a failure to anticipate market trends. It's a failure to anticipate technology trends. It's not lost on me that the companies that say they want us to believe in their abilities to use AI in the future weren't able to use it to help anticipate what was going on today. So it's that that is like deeply troubling to me and incongruous. But it's also a failure to manage performance. Like if, if there are all these people that could be managed out now.

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[Frances Frey]

With your day job over the last year? Why, why was this not caught? So it's just showing a ineffective management, it's failure anticipated. It's that we weren't really doing our job that well. And it's that we take the collateral damage of humans that leave and the collateral damage of humans that stay. We take it too lightly. I'm really stuck on when we work with companies in crisis, when they've inflicted harm, the ones that are a successful turnaround, they really frame this the right way. And I have yet to see an organization recently frame this with any hope of, of making a positive move forward. But maybe that's the point of this episode. Maybe we can help if they, if they want to.

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[Anne Morris]

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I was thinking so much.

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[Anne Morris]

Okay, so let's get into what doing this well looks like. And I'd like to position us as coaching well intentioned leaders who remain at these organizations and whose job it is is to bring this workforce that has just absorbed this pain bring them along and into the future. So where do you start with that challenge?

[Frances Frey]

I would start with an apology.

[Anne Morris]

Some Own it. Some Own it Energy.

[Frances Frey]

Own it Energy. It will be very difficult to listen to any of the words that come out of your mouth if you don't own it in the beginning and so own what went wrong to lead us to this place and your role in it. And the more sincere and the more specific, the more likely you are to repair the relationships that you have undoubtedly harmed. And I'm talking about the relationships within the organization because you've destabilized them, you've injected trauma, particularly if you have made a habit of this over the last couple of years. So I would start with an apology.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, and I like the list of mistakes that you start to articulate earlier. But if you have found yourself here where you have hired human beings and then let them go. Right. And it's and it's not for obvious performance reasons either you overconfidently predicted demand, which I think we saw that happen during COVID or the strategy that you assumed would work is not working. So one of the two things happened, and it's on you and I. I love your advice to start with explicitly, unambiguously owning it. This. I made a mistake and it was not free. Both for the good people leaving and the good people staying.

[Frances Frey]

Exactly right. And then my subtext is, an AI can help people. Use your own products. AI can help.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah.

[Frances Frey]

I would expect that the organizations or the parts of organizations that have really digested AI would be able to anticipate these much better than the rest of us using the old fashioned. Whoops.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, Well, I think that bridges to the second point, which is, okay, own your historic mistake. Now bring us into the present tense. What is the plan? Right. What is the plan to not make this mistake going forward. But what is the plan, period? Because now you have a smaller workforce looking at all of its options for employment. So you got to make the case for staying and for really leaning in. So what's your plan? What's the update? What's the new strategy? What's the plan for better execution? What else besides letting people go is the company doing to position itself to win?

[Frances Frey]

And I think it's really important to do it in that kind of context because, as our dear friend and colleague Tom delong always advises, all ambiguous information just assume it's being interpreted negatively.

[Anne Morris]

So you still in this trouble? I think about that bumper sticker all the time. All ambiguous information is interpreted negatively. We have a negativity bias. So if you want us to think positively about something, you have to be crystal clear about it.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah. And I think optimism is really essential here. But it's hard to get to optimism with ambiguous information. So I think after we've apologized, we gotta get to work on convincing people that we've got this.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. Own it. We've got this. Step two. And then I think the third step here is to describe the future in rigorous and optimistic terms. So give us a plan for the present tense, and then tell us what the payoff is if we roll up our sleeves and help you build the next phase of this organization. For instance, I'm struck by the research that Gallup does every year. And I think the latest data I saw was that only 15% of US employees strongly agree that their organization's leadership makes them enthusiastic about the future. In our experience, that number drops to single digits at best during a layoff.

[Frances Frey]

As you know, I'm gnaw off a limb competitive. If I was competing against companies that were doing these layoffs, I'd be Salivating. Because what do we have to do? We've got to explain what happened, own it. Address the present moment and then give an amazing plan going forward.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. Tell us about the future in vivid and specific language. Tell us what it's going to feel like when we get there. Give us a data driven case for why we're likely to get there and then repeat it over and over and over again. I mean, one of the things I'm struck by is there's a lot of behind the scenes energy that goes into preparing for a layoff. Companies think about it for a long time. They think about how to do it. They think about, okay, how are we going to compensate? Very deeply, well intentioned. They send the email, like the grim layoff email and they dispatch people to go and execute this. And then they breathe a sigh of relief thinking that their work is done now. They've just begun, that their like communications work is done and they've only done the first step. There's this huge communication need now to tell us the plan. Right. And tell us what's gonna happen when we get there. Because you have the whole rest of the workforce that you now have to bring along and get buy in from. And I feel like the investment in that part of the challenge is just painfully, painfully, painfully short of the challenge.

[Frances Frey]

If we were gonna bring this to advice to the people who are staying, realize that your job is to place a narrative in the minds of people that they can proudly and eagerly talk about in your absence.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah.

[Frances Frey]

And so you have to give us the rigorous and optimistic way forward in a language and with enough repetition that it sticks so that I can talk about it to other people and that those people understand it as if you said it to them. So in many ways, even though the whole organization, including you, dear leaders, has gone through a trauma, it's up to you now to get your can do spirit. And what I want to advise is you might be done with layoffs because you were planning it for a long time. And so you might be tempted to have an exasperated sigh or an exasperated.

[Anne Morris]

You'Re done thinking about, you're ready to move on.

[Frances Frey]

And you might be disappointed with others who aren't matching your cadence. You had months of a head start.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. And so you've metabolized it. You've absorbed the shock of this. You've gotten yourself in the mindset to move forward. But the people around you are just beginning to move through those phases of metabolizing this information and they're new reality.

[Frances Frey]

When we talk about the storytelling for bold change. And I think that's what this is. We summarize it with honor the past, create a clear and compelling change mandate that's here and provide a rigorous and optimistic way forward. So if I was going to think about what's the summary advice from storytelling, honor the past and rigor and optimism about the future. And I would make that as tight as possible.

[Anne Morris]

And to your point, if you're somewhere stuck in the middle of this hierarchy, if the pattern holds, your senior leaders probably have not thought deeply and rigorously about how from a storytelling and from a support standpoint, they're going to bring the rest of the workforce along. And so what can you do within the circle of influence that you totally control? It might only be with your direct reports to block out, you know, these narrative steps with people. We've seen it make a huge difference. Because part of that first step of owning the past, owning the mistakes, owning where we are, owning the costs for everyone leaving and staying, you're also making that discussable. You're bringing it out of the shadows. The individual pain that people are experiencing in their offices and you're saying, yeah, no, this is collective pain. We're going to name it, we're going to work through it and we're going to get to the other side together.

[Frances Frey]

And that's not a nice to have high performing teams as we know and as influenced by the great Chris Argyrous high performing teams. A very key characteristic they have compared to everyone else is that they have the courage to discuss the undiscussable. And layoffs can be a third rail. Like one person will say to another, oh, don't talk about it. Our senior team doesn't like to hear about it. That is not what the senior team should be looking for in an organization. In fact, the opposite. Bring it up. Reward people for bringing up, make sure that it is metabolized through everyone so that we can overperform. So this is not a grin and bear it moment.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. What I find so hopeful about Ardres research on this and it really did fall out of a lifetime of work on identifying the variables that really explain high performing teams. And then here's the part that really excites me. They're not even that good at it. Yeah, you don't even have to be good at it.

[Frances Frey]

You just need this is courage over competence. Courage over competence.

[Anne Morris]

I have this people pleasing side and so I will pause in the face of conflict sometimes and I have to steel myself for it. And I go back to this again and again because his research doesn't conclude. If you're a UN level conflict negotiator, discuss the undiscussable.

[Frances Frey]

But everybody else. But everybody else stay clear.

[Anne Morris]

This stuff is high stakes for you to touch. No, his point is really all of us need to get in there and find a way to make this stuff discussable so that we. Right. Size it and it's not to feel good.

[Frances Frey]

Right.

[Anne Morris]

This is a hardcore variable that defines high performance.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

So now, Francis, I want to throw out a couple other things to think about if you're the one who has the ball in this complicated moment. One, I want to talk for a second about the employee value proposition. Because you may be in a situation where you can't offer stability or security. It may be a fast moving situation. You may not be able to guarantee that there won't be layoffs again. But I think there's an interesting question about what can you offer in those moments when I've seen people do this really well. It's an opportunity to have a clear adult to adult conversation with the people around you. That is roughly. I am not going to protect you from the truth here. I can't make any guarantees. But if you stay and if we figure this out together, we are building a future where you will have a place. So this is a high risk, high reward situation. I'm not going to shield you from the risk part, but I want to have a very clear conversation about the reward.

[Frances Frey]

I love that because it's acknowledging we are in a risky environment. Then we would expect compensation to be different than if we're in a safe environment. We would expect that. My need to give you experiences and education to augment all of the rest of it. Also compensation, experiences, education, you gotta dial all of those way up to make up for what you have dialed way down, which is security 100%.

[Anne Morris]

And you may be in an environment where comp can't be on the list today.

[Frances Frey]

But then make sure it's experiences and education. Make sure you have really gone after the other one.

[Anne Morris]

Yes. And let's talk about comp compensation tomorrow.

[Frances Frey]

Oh yeah, Good.

[Anne Morris]

When we hit it out of the park because your employees are all thinking about it. So you not talking about it is not helping you in any way.

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[Anne Morris]

For instance, there's there's another category I want to make sure we really hit, which is how to take care of yourself in an environment like this. Bringing a network of human beings through this. And I keep saying trauma and I don't want to casually use that word, but it really is often experienced as trauma for the people staying being responsible for those human beings. Absorbing this experience and getting them to the other side. It takes an extraordinary amount of emotional energy. What do you personally need so that you can show up for work the next day in a sturdy place? Being able to create an environment where the people around you can get back up and start to thrive again? It's a very personal question and it's not optional. It's not indulgent. It is in the best interest of you and it is the best interest of your employer to figure that out really quickly and to solve for it.

[Frances Frey]

So two things come to mind. One is it's why we need a team so that no one of us is on 24. 7. Right? The great research by Leslie Perlow showed us that teams that share the 24.7burden outperform teams where everyone is on 24.7. So let's share the 24 7. That's the first thing. The second thing is what we know from the trauma ward and I do think it's the right word. They have shorter shifts and so you can do it, but understand that it's like you're metabolizing food and energy and stress at a very different rate. And so you gotta go off camera, you gotta go take timeouts at a much higher clip. If it were you, Ann Morris, the amount of food you would have to consume, I mean you eat how many times a day now? You would just be eating non food.

[Anne Morris]

I eat every three hours and it would go down to 90 minutes for sure. And it has when I've been in this situation of having to lead people through layoffs. Amy Cuddy calls this surge capacity when she talks about this challenge. So how do you solve for your own surge capacity? And it requires deep intention and deep care of yourself in order for you to be of service to the human beings around you.

[Frances Frey]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes like this one. So please keep reaching out. If you want to figure out any questions about your workplace problems together, send us a message email call text fixableed.com 234fixable that's 234-349-2253 we read and listen to every single message.

[Anne Morris]

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me Anne Morris and me Frances Frey. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasser from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne Hylash and our.

[Frances Frey]

Show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.

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