So…You’ve Been Canceled at Work. How to Recover Your Professional Brand

What happens when you make a mistake at work, and everyone knows it? Whether a comment was taken the wrong way, an unfiltered moment in a meeting, or showing up unprepared, reputational hits can feel career-ending. In this episode, we talk about processing, recovering, and cleaning it up, without losing yourself in the fallout.

You’ll learn:

• How to handle the awkward “in-between” after a professional misstep
• Strategies to take ownership without spiraling into shame or defensiveness
• How your Leadership Identity can help you reconnect with your values, strengths, and next move
• 4 Tips to recover
  
  

Mentioned on the Show:  Access the Make Your Power Move Assessment and Program, for $47.  Designed to help you clarify your Leadership Identity, understand why it matters, and learn how to navigate your career authentically and confidently.

Transcript

Introduction to Workplace Cancelation

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey , welcome back to the Career Refresh . I am your host , jill Griffin . This is the place where we are exploring reinvention , leadership , career strategy , and today I want to talk about high achievers good human beings who usually get it right until they don't . Yes , we are going to talk about what happens when you are canceled at work . Ready , let's get into it . Maybe you said something a little off , or there was a tense exchange with someone above you on the org chart , or maybe you blew it in a meeting and now you're being quietly benched , or so it feels that way . Whatever the reason , the outcome feels the same . You're in that awkward in-between feeling and you're not fired , but you're not exactly in favor either , and you're feeling it and we're just going to say , for this episode , whether it's true or not , meaning that you're feeling it . We're going to believe that for you . It's true that you are feeling that you are now on the sort of a canceled list , the benched list . You're on the outskirts , okay . So let's talk about how to process it , how to recover for it and when we need to

Process Your Emotions First

Speaker 1 1:13

clean it up . So first , what I want you to think about is the process . Your nervous system is going to be on very high alert and you may be replaying that moment over and over again , wondering who saw it . If they're thinking , is it gossip happening , it's fixable . I just want you to breathe and , before you perform an apology or send a frantic follow-up email that feels graspy and clingy , I just want you to pause right . And why do I want you to do this ? Because I want you to really think about what did you intend with the action , inaction , reaction and was it received ? Get clear on what actually happened and what your role is in this . This might be a time to like grab pen and paper , open your notes app and actually write down versus just continuing to think about it through your head . And I want you to get clear on what you think happened . And I'm going to ask you to resist the urge to outsource the feedback . Right , there's a .

Speaker 1 2:07

We want to start asking people what they think . Maybe our friend , professionally , that might've been there , or what do they think . I don't want you to go fishing for everyone's opinion . However , if there is someone you trust who is very neutral and maybe was there that might be a way to go about getting some different perspective on this , but this is not someone who's going to tell you what you want to hear . This is someone who's going to help you get perspective on the situation . This is not a defense tour . This is not time to be seeding out what you want people to be telling others . Right , we're not doing this . This is not getting them to like , agree with you so that they can help you clean it up . That's not what we're doing .

Speaker 1 2:46

This is about owning your humanity without spiraling into shame or guilt or the . However it's going to show up for you , the I'm not worthies , right ? So shame is the . Sometimes I look at it as like . It's the moment in which you see yourself or the incident through the eyes of someone else and you're like oh my God , they think blah , blah , blah about me , right ? That's the way I would think about shame .

Speaker 1 3:11

Brene Brown often defines shame as the belief that something is inherently wrong with you , making you unworthy of connection or love or the project right ? The difference just from guilt because guilt is also out there too is that the key difference is the focus . Shame is focused on you being wrong , or you being unworthy , or that you're bad , whereas Guilt is more about the behavior that you did . The behavior is wrong or bad or dumb , or insert adjective . So while you can't rewrite what happened , you can decide what you're going to do next . So the next thing I want you to do after your pause is I want you to recover

Recovering from an Aggressive Exchange

Speaker 1 3:57

with intention . So I'm going to give you a few real life examples and how people in these examples recovered and how they moved forward . So we're going to break down different scenarios . The first scenario is that there was an aggressive exchange , so maybe a senior exec , you feel like they came at you but you didn't back down and maybe you even finished it . Can I see anyone hand raise , hand raise , right ? So now you're wondering if you went too far .

Speaker 1 4:25

And recently a client shared how they felt personally attacked by an executive leader and I have their permission to talk about this and this leader was pointing out an issue that was continuing to happen . So , while this client understood that this was a problem , it was nuanced . So when the executive was asking closed-ended questions , limiting the response to simple , often binary choices like yes , no , true , false , multiple choice either , or really backing my client into a corner , the client again , they felt that this was nuanced . It wasn't as easy as a yes or no . So as the pressure was ranking up , so did my client's response . So as the executive was raising their voice and really backing them into a corner , so was my client . So I want you to think like Jack Nicholson , few Good Men , that famous court scene where Jack yells you can't handle the truth . Pretty much how my client responded Whoops .

Speaker 1 5:23

So here's what we did . We didn't wait , we didn't hide , we waited Again . We needed to pause , we waited enough . So the blood pressure got back to normal . But then we addressed it . They reached out . They wrote an email that said the exchange got heated and I've reflected on my part and how I could have handled it differently . My intent was clarity , not conflict , simple , direct . The executive did not apologize we didn't expect them to but he was able to clear the air and move forward . This is not groveling . This is about leadership . This is about taking accountability and moving forward .

Speaker 1 5:55

So there's one scenario , another scenario , this one's about me

When You Say Something Inappropriate

Speaker 1 5:59

. You said something inappropriate . It was a joke that was missed , a comment that crossed the line , criticism that leaked out sideways . Oh Lord , there was a time when I knew that I was going to be speaking to a new senior leader from the London office and at the time I was always traveling . I was on the road . My husband and I rarely saw each other , maybe once , twice a week if we were lucky . So when this leader asked what I did over the weekend , I said I had a conjugal visit with my husband . Like WTF , who am I ? I don't even know what that came from . Well , actually I do know where it came from , because at the time there was a BBC show called Prisoner's Wives and everyone was talking about it , and because there was the London connection , it probably in my brain just made it click . I was mortified and it got super awkward . So it's not about judging , it was not about joking your way out of it . It was really being clear and humble and I said something like oof , I see how that landed . I'm sorry . It wasn't my intention to cause any discomfort and I'm committed to doing better . Simple , easy , moved on . I owned it and then made a promise to do better . Another scenario was you weren't prepared and it showed , and now you're feeling you froze , you fumbled and now you're feeling like you're being left out of things

Bouncing Back from Being Unprepared

Speaker 1 7:19

.

Speaker 1 7:19

There was a time in my career , very early on , where I was often referred to as a rock star and I was given an opportunity to build and design an innovation day , a thought leadership day . I wrote the hook , I pitched top speakers and journalists and authors and I designed a thought leadership event . And then you know what I did . I didn't think that I would be doing the opener for the event . I kept putting myself in the junior box and when the executive leader thought that I was going to open it and I was going to look like a champ , I didn't think that that was going to be me . I'm used to the executive leader taking the opening , them taking the credit , showing that this is what they put together and taking that win .

Speaker 1 8:03

At this point , just to a little bit of my defense at this point , I had ghostwritten articles for leaders . I had provided quotes in their voice for the Wall Street Journal and various trade magazines . I wrote copy for the earnings call and someone else reported it . So I just assumed that was going to continue . I'm just the thought person who's putting things out there and someone else is going to be the front person . But except that in this case they were giving me the chance to lead the whole thing , oof gosh . So I quickly welcomed . Everyone set the tone . Definitely not my best work , but it was a great lesson in always being prepared . The day ultimately went fantastic and I will tell you , my opening sucked and I felt it . I felt like uh-oh , they gave me a chance and I blew it . So what did I do ? I dressed it , just said clearly I wasn't my best , that was on me and I've already taken steps to ensure that that will never happen again . And then I over-delivered consistently , quietly , confidently , did it until I got back into you know , went back to neutrality and eventually went back up to that status .

Speaker 1 9:11

These are real world scenarios that happen that I hear people talk about often and your reputation recovery is really showing about who you're going

Tools for Leadership Identity Recovery

Speaker 1 9:20

to be next . You show up on time , prepared , you show up with emotional intelligence , there's no side comments , there's no gossip , you don't blame . There are two books I also find really helpful if you're in this experience . One is Dare to Lead by Brene Brown , and this is really helpful if you're working through sort of the vulnerability and some of that shame that may happen with leadership missteps . And then the second is Presence by Amy Cuddy , and that's offering you tools for regaining confidence with yourself and trust both internally and externally , after a public embarrassment or failure .

Speaker 1 9:52

But listen , there's also something else you can do , and if you feel like you've lost your footing or you're questioning who you are as a leader , I want you to go back and think about who you are as a leader and what I call leadership identity this is the work that I often do with clients is when everything feels scrambled and this is not about your title or your resume . It's about your values , your strengths , your voice and how you lead . Even when the spotlight feels a little bit shaky , it's hitting that reset button . It's coming back and reconnecting with all the amazing bits of you because they're still there , even after a stumble . And if that's something you need , if that's something that you're interested in , I'm going to put the information in the show notes because I have built a tool and a guidebook . It's an assessment that will take you through this . I'm going to drop that . The exact link in the show notes is on my website .

Speaker 1 10:40

But this is the strategic , practical dare I say , a little bit of a wink and a smile way to reconnect with who you are . It is designed to get you back in alignment when you feel like you weren't necessarily at your best right . So you may not recover the relationship . You may not always be forgiven and that's going to be painful . But what you can recover is your sense of self . You can work through that guilt , that some

Reflection and Moving Forward

Speaker 1 11:04

shame , without making it part of your identity . And , to recap , I want you to name the feeling . I want you to name it . I don't want you to catastrophize right . Yes , it's possible to co-mingle failure with your success .

Speaker 1 11:17

One moment in your career does not cancel . It's not all or nothing . Talk to someone safe , get perspective . This might be a mentor or coach , keeping it neutral . This is not finding a hype squad . This is really talking to someone who will help you through this with truth and kindness . And I want you to be gentle on yourself and know that you're allowed to be long , you're allowed to repair , you're allowed to grow . And getting canceled doesn't mean it's forever . It just means it's a moment of reflection and recalibration . I want you to be thinking about so from this place . Where do I want to go and who do I want to be next ? All right , friends , I want to hear from you . Have you been canceled ? How did you work through it ? You can email me at hello at Jill Griffin coachingcom and , as always , stay intentional , be kind and do the work . All right , I'll see you next time .