Getting fired is never a good feeling. That doesn’t mean it can’t be useful. Look at Jerry Seinfeld. He used getting fired from one sitcom to learn how he wanted to create and control his own. From CNN:
Remember the ABC sitcom “Benson”? Seinfeld undoubtedly does. Early in his career he had a small recurring role as a mail boy on three episodes of the show from 1980-81. One day he showed up at work for a read-through, but he couldn’t find a script with his name on it. After Seinfeld asked what was going on, an assistant director told him he’d been fired from the show, but nobody had remembered to tell the young comedian.
A humiliated Seinfeld trudged out and decided he was through with sitcoms unless he could get more control over the creative process. As you might have heard, he was pretty successful once that eventually happened.
Look at any firing as a learning experience. What did you do wrong? Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong. In that case we look at what was wrong with the situation? We’re not all meant to be great at everything we do. By finding out what we suck at, we can focus more on what we’re good at.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
So, with any luck, we’ll end up in syndication and a multi-millionaire who works only when he wants to, which is all the time. I hope
Being a realist, I doubt you’ll be a multi-millionaire. But getting fired is hardly the worst thing that could happen to you. Unless they actually set you on fire. That kind of fired sucks.
Good point Craig, thanks for the blog.
Great post. I have been in positions where I had to let people go from organizations. My experience has been that a change in the organization leads to someone not fitting versus a serious performance issue. I have found that those people are much happier as a result of leaving and being forced to reinvent themselves. I doubt they thought so at the time however now they can reap the rewards.