If your stomach drops every time you see another round of layoffs in the headlines—or if you’ve recently gotten that call yourself—this episode is for you.

In today’s conversation, Lori pulls back the curtain on what it’s really like to be restructured out of a company you loved—and how she found power, clarity, and even joy on the other side. Drawing from her 20+ years in corporate leadership (and 14+ reorgs), Lori shares what helped her steady herself after losing her job, how she rebuilt her identity beyond the business card, and the exact mindset shifts that brought her back stronger.

Whether you’re navigating uncertainty at work or leading a team through tough changes, this episode will meet you with truth, strategy, and compassion. Because joy isn’t only for the good times—it’s a leadership tool for the hard ones too.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why even high performers get let go—and why it’s not personal
• How to reclaim your confidence after a layoff (hint: start inside your hula hoop)
• The 3 reflection prompts Lori gives her clients to remember their worth
• What true leadership looks like after the cuts
• How to find your footing again without losing yourself in the process

Joy Charge of the Week:

When the worst happens, you get to decide what it means. Your brilliance isn’t in your title—it’s in you.

✨ Resources & Mentions:

• Episode 7 with Nan Chambers on unexpected career pivots
• Lori’s “Hula Hoop Theory” for radical ownership
• Connect with Lori on LinkedIn to hear about The Connect—her new private community for ambitious corporate women (it costs less than a cute pair of shoes!)

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and if this episode helped you? Share it with a friend who needs to hear it. We rise together.

Transcript

Hi, I am Lori Pine, the joy, CEO, and today we are going to talk about something that does not feel very joyous, and so I'm gonna walk you through how to [00:01:00] get to that part. If you've been reading the headlines this week, big companies, Amazon, Target and even the newly created Skydance Paramount are all announcing significant layoffs.

It seems to happen in Q4 as though nobody knows it's the holidays and time for family and belonging and togetherness, but rather a time for companies in Q4 and Yearend earnings and a way to signify to Wall Street. That they're going to make changes so as to not repeat the same type of year that they've had, whether that's been a good year and they're going to shift into new ways of doing business, or it's been a tumultuous year and they need to tighten the belt and find a better way to deliver their p and l.

So if you have been reading these [00:02:00] headlines, you might say, Ooh, I can feel this rippling into my own company even if I don't work for one of those three. The temperature across corporate America is anxious. And I say that because I mentor a group of mid-level managers and I meet with them once a month.

And just recently I asked them to do a feelings check in, tell me what's one word that describes how you're feeling right now. And each and every single one of them used the word anxious. They're all feeling it. And you know what? I understand. I get it. I lived and breathed in that level of uncertainty and anxiety and what's going to happen, and at the [00:03:00] end of the day, what we're really wondering is what's going to happen to me.

And so. In my 25 years of living, running, working for big corporate companies, I made it through 14 reorgs. I actually lost count at 14. It could have been more, but 14 is the number I go with, and one of them I was displaced and it was from a company I loved that I wasn't sure I would ever leave, but they made that decision for me.

And at the time it was crushing and you're not sure if you're ever really going to recover or not, but the truth is, I wouldn't be where I am today had that not been an opportunity that really crossed my path. So I just want to to know that when windows close doors really do open. [00:04:00] I remember the moment vividly, the phone call.

My senior vp, how the news was delivered to me, exactly what she said, and the words changed everything. When I got the news that I no longer had a seat. It was like musical chairs, and the one chair was completely removed. But at that time, they were actually removing many chairs. The chairs for my entire team were taken away.

It's as though somebody looked at an org chart and said, we just don't need any of this business done anymore. And they wiped it off the org chart, and I was part of that. So she said. We're restructuring. Your role has been eliminated. The entire team has been [00:05:00] eliminated, and that work is going to fold into the work of another team, and it was just dead silence.

I couldn't even find the words. I managed to get through the rest of the call, and then I had a good cry. It was surreal because even when you see it coming, you never really believe it's going to happen to you. It's just not. But then it does. And what happens next? Are these racing thoughts? What will I do?

Will we be okay? Who am I without this job? I had attached so much of myself, my identity, my purpose, my worth to working for that company. And all of a sudden, one day I was all of those things and I had all of that belonging. And then the next day I [00:06:00] didn't, and I was going to wake up very untethered. That was so unsettling.

But here's the good news. If you've ever asked any of those questions or you're even asking them right now, this minute, this episode is for you because we are gonna talk about how your career is not over. This is not the end of an era for you. In fact, this is just a moment. For you to remember who you really are, and there are so many people in my circle, if you remember.

I had Nan Chambers on. She was back on episode seven. If you want to go back and listen to episode seven. Nan very bravely shared about how she was let go from her company, didn't see it coming, and some really great things [00:07:00] happened to her as a result of that. So it happens to the best of us, and if it's happening to you, we're gonna walk through this.

So you've probably heard me say that joy is a leadership advantage. It's not fluff, but joy isn't just for the seasons. When everything's going great and you're feeling good and you know that you can access it, it's actually also for the moments when everything starts to tilt a little sideways. And you're off kilter and you feel like you're losing your footing and you're just not sure where the handle bars are and you wanna hold on for dear life, that's when your wondering where your control is because you feel it just slipping away.

Perhaps your confidence is even [00:08:00] taking a hit. Today we're gonna talk about what happens when the worst happens. When you get that same phone call that I got that says we no longer need you. We wiped you and the whole team right off the board and why it might actually be the best thing that could happen to your career.

Believe it or not, we're gonna talk through this. So let's start with what's real. We are living through a season of deep uncertainty. There are so many headlines. There's reports and articles. You can go to Harvard Business Review you. I mean, you can go to any resource and. The headlines are heavy. There are layoffs, there are restructures.

You are not the only one feeling this uncertainty. AI is replacing jobs, and even if you feel safe, you might be carrying somebody else's anxiety. Somebody on your [00:09:00] team, somebody who might even be superior to you, might be having some of this anxiety, so you can't escape it. Leaders are trying to motivate their teams while quietly wondering if they will be next.

You can put on this really brave face, but still deep within the recesses of your heart and soul. Be wondering. Is this coming? Because remember, we don't rise above the level of human. We still have fears and concerns, and at the end of the day, our jobs provide security and safety from the income that we are able to then take care of our families.

Employees really are working harder than ever. Hoping visibility will equal that security, but there's no guarantee. So let's get into it because I'm seeing it in my clients. I see it in the [00:10:00] mentoring groups. You know those six women that I mentor, that I spoke about, and the collective emotion right now really is anxious.

So if you are feeling this, you are not alone. Here's the truth. Anxiety is common. It's probably rampant right now. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go to a doctor and get medicine. It might mean that you need to be around other people who are experiencing it and actually talk about it as opposed to this idea that, no, no, no, I've got this.

I can keep on going and isolate yourself. It's exactly these moments when we really wanna discover what's really going to steady us. So I'm gonna tell you about what happened to me, and I'm gonna tell you about a reframe. So in my 20 years of leading billion dollar brands, I survived these 14 reorgs. [00:11:00] 14 of them.

Most of them I survived. In many of them, I was part of the leadership team who signed non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, I was helping. Plan, who would be in the positions? Who would not be in the positions? Where were they for their, from their performance reviews? Those were hard rooms to be in, folks. Nobody took that lightly.

Every single leader that I sat in those rooms with understood the weight of what was being asked. And delivering the news that somebody no longer had a job was taxing, emotionally taxing. It was something that, you know, is something that I still think about to this day. But I will tell you that I'm in touch with the majority of people [00:12:00] and everything always worked out for every single person.

The one time I didn't survive the reorg and I was on the receiving end, my position was eliminated, my team was eliminated. You know, I loved that company. I loved my work. I had really gone through a really. Personal emotional period in my life where I had lost my mom in that last 12 months on that team, and I was already kind of on my back foot and then lost my job on top of it.

So it was one of those seasons of storm, if you will. But there I was like packing up my things, walking out of the building. I, you know, I wish I could tell you that I just let it roll off my back, but I, I definitely didn't. I cried, I had tears [00:13:00] and then I isolated for a long time and I didn't stay in touch with people because I felt a lot of shame, like I had done something wrong there.

There was something about me. That didn't perform or didn't do something right, and that's the reason I was let go. But the truth was, it, it wasn't me. It was part of something much more global, much bigger. And while I was worried about getting a paycheck, I was a single mom at that time, I, I was much more worried about.

My worth and would I find work again and would I be able to contribute again at the level that I had, at the caliber that I had with the type of people that I had. And that's really what I was the most worried about, and I was worried about what other people would [00:14:00] think. There was a lot of clout that came along with working for this company, and who would I be without that association that day?

I didn't feel powerful. I felt really powerless, and that's the day I just really just started to understand what power was and what was I going to do about that. You know, the truth was that the power wasn't in my title. It was really something about me and the work I had done, and I really had to decide that this layoff wasn't, wasn't going to be the end of my story.

It just might be the beginning of a new story, and it forced me to remember who I was beyond my business card. So if you've heard me talk about this before. You know that the hula hoop theory is this idea that we only [00:15:00] control what's inside the hula hoop, and that's us. We only control us and everything outside of the hula hoop.

We don't control and we don't control a reorg. We don't control if we get laid off, you can be a top performer and still be let go and reorg. It can come down to simple economics. It can be that you're making too much money and the company's just gonna hire somebody younger with less experience that they can pay less for.

And so what you need to realize is what is it that you can shift in your attitude and your energy and your response to get you back inside the hula hoop so that you can start. To really focus on what is yours. And when I did that, I realized I hadn't lost any of my skills. I hadn't lost any of my [00:16:00] experience, and I hadn't lost any of my gifts.

Those were all still very much intact, and I had those from a place of strength and power that I could go out into the marketplace and talk about share. Interview with, and when I did that, I became reenergized. I. I was able to sit down and say, okay, I didn't need a bunch of motivation and a bunch of hype.

I just need proof of what I was made of and what I could bring, because that would help take over all this doubt I was experiencing. So perhaps that's where you are at. That when everything feels uncertain, it's actually time to start rebuilding. And so that's what we're gonna talk about next, this rebuilding period.

The most important thing that [00:17:00] you can do, and this is what I really understand now, is to anchor yourself in what's real about you. And this is what I work on with my one-on-one clients. It's really easy when these big seismic shifts happen to become so unsettled that you forget who you are. You forget all that you've accomplished.

You forget what you're made of. And so to really ground yourself in this idea of know thyself, you know that's really ancient Greek God kind of stuff, goddess kind of stuff, know thyself. I don't mean it kind of like blah, blah, abstract, motivational kind of posty way. I mean, you can do this exercise right now.

You can pull out your phone or a piece of paper [00:18:00] and you can write down these three things. Are you ready? First, write down a problem that you solved in the last six months that no one else could have solved the way that you did. Not, I'm good at problem solving, but I want you to take an actual problem that you solved, the meeting that you salvaged, the strategy that you pivoted.

The conflict that you navigated. I want you to write it down. I have an example of this where we had a conflict with a retailer that we desperately wanted to gain more shelf space in. And he was really giving us the runaround and to the point where, I mean, we were like the at, at this company I was working for, we were like the number five brand.

He didn't have to give us the time of day at all, but he gave us an appointment for July 4th and he, he was really calling our bluff like, how bad do you [00:19:00] want this business? I can see you on July 4th and. I looked at him and I said, I'll take it. I'll see you on July 4th. I don't think he believed me. I took the appointment, it was for like 10:00 AM on the 4th of July.

I had to fly in on the third, stay in a hotel, leave my family who was all at the lake house, and there I was. And the account manager who reported to me, he also left. His family came with me and we showed up. Lo and behold. We ended up getting eight feet of space in that next shelf reset. And for those of you who might not understand what that means, that was such a big win.

So he called my bluff, I showed up. I literally had pictures of flying to a customer meeting on the 4th of July, and it was a [00:20:00] very, very big win. So I'm sure that you have an example of a problem that you have solved. Write it down. It's going to make you feel better. I am literally smiling about walking into that customer's meeting on the 4th of July.

He really was shocked that we actually showed up and that was years ago and that still makes me smile to have really pulled that off. Okay. Second, something a colleague, boss, or client has thanked you for in the last year. What did they say you did for them? What word did they use to describe you?

Capture that exact moment. What was said and how did it make you feel? I have had somebody tell me that I literally changed their life. Do you know what that's like? So tell me what happened for you. What was the moment, what was said to you that could have only been said to you [00:21:00] because of the way you showed up, the act that you performed and the way you made somebody else feel.

And number three, a skill you have that you take for granted. But other people always ask you for help with, okay, this is your special sauce. Again, I work with my one-on-one clients on this because it's so important for you to know what your special, unique, magical trait is. When it's special, you think everybody can do it, but the truth is they can't.

It's special and unique to you. The more you realize just how special and unique it is, you will begin to realize just how special and unique you are. So what is this thing? Is it something that [00:22:00] you can do by taking something that's really complex and synthesizing it down into something really simple?

Can you read a room? Can you translate data into a story? Write it down. Your brain needs concrete evidence right now to remember just how remarkable you are. So these are not affirmations, these are truths. They are facts, and facts are going to steady you when you feel like you are. On an ocean liner in a storm, and the water is coming at you and you don't even know where to stand up because the fear is just riddling you.

So this is how you're gonna rewrite your story, and here's the truth. Your value is not up for debate. It's only up for debate when you are not clear on it. When [00:23:00] you waver on it, but when you are crystal clear and you carry it with you, with this knowing, then you get to decide where you take it next, and that puts the power back on you, back inside the hula hoop, and you are gonna get to make decisions that really bode well for your next chapter.

Now for the leaders who are left inside the company still standing, because I've been this person more often than not, your team survived. You survived. You were not eliminated. You survived the cuts. I just wanna speak to you for a minute. Your people are watching how you show up right now. They're not just worried about their jobs.

They're wondering if they're actually going to be seen as humans or if [00:24:00] they're just gonna be seen as another P number and they're watching you specifically because your attitude matters. Are you going to be complaining? Are you gonna be gossiping? Are you gonna be moaning and groaning? And what they're really going to need from you is.

Not any sort of sort of certainty that you can't really deliver. Not any sort of fake optimism, not a pep talk about doing more with us. They do not need any of that. They need you to name what is hard. They need you to acknowledge it, and they need you to ask them how they are really doing and mean it.

So when they come back to you and say, I'm having a really hard time. I don't know how to prioritize. I don't know where my attention should be going. What's the biggest fire drill? When everything [00:25:00] feels like a fire drill, they're going to need your leadership to guide them. And when you start to lead from your own self-awareness.

You recognize where you're leading from fear, where you're leading from self depletion, where you're leading from sabotage. That's where the, the gossiping and complaining and moaning comes in. You give your team permission to do the same, and that will create a culture that you do not want to create. So this is how you lead with joy through uncertain times.

Not by pretending it's easy because it's not easy and everybody knows that. But by staying human when it's hard, joy lives within you. You can access it at any time. It's a choice and joy and hard times can [00:26:00] coexist. Both can be true. So here's your joy charge for the week as we wrap up this episode When the worst happens.

You get to decide what it means. Maybe the company changed direction. You still get the choice to choose your direction. Maybe a chapter ended, but you are gonna write the next story. You are the author. Write down what's true about, you know, your strengths. Say your gifts out loud. Say them. Remind yourself that your brilliance isn't a title.

It's not the company you work for. Even though most of us, some of us, I thought it was, that's not the truth. It's you. You are the brilliance and it's brilliant. People who make a company shine, you can make you shine. So if this message [00:27:00] resonates, if you're craving a space to stay connected, I wanna tell you about a community of corporate women that I'm putting together.

It's gonna cost you less per month than a cute new pair of shoes. I'm doing that deliberately to make it affordable in these crazy times. I want you to go to LinkedIn, DM me and tell me you wanna hear more about the connect. I will get you all the information you need. I think in this time we need to connect with like-minded women who are feeling the pressures.

Of what is happening in our world, in our companies, and come together so that we never have to go it alone. This is something I wish I had had when I was going through my corporate journey and I'm happy to be putting it together. For many of you spaces are [00:28:00] limited for the connect, and I would love for some of you to be a part of it.

So the connect. DM me on LinkedIn. Spaces are limited. It'll cost less per month than a cute new pair of shoes. I'm Lori Pine, the joy CEO, and I am so glad to be doing it with you. If you are an ambitious woman looking to uplevel your career and you learn something new in this episode. Be sure to give me a five star rating, hit a review and share it with another woman because we cannot leave any women left behind when the tide rises, all the ships rise, and that is our job.