Coming up, I'll tell you why you need a layoff safety net and I'll explain it.
And then new data managers are saying what they think about working with Gen Z and it's
not so good, but I'll coach you up leaders.
Let's go.
So you're winning at life with some common sense teaching and interpreting of what's going
on in the world today that is holding you back from making the money you desire and living
the life that you desire.
I'm Ken.
Let's go.
All right.
So you hear about layoffs all the time because it's what makes you click on the story.
Recession being reported probably going to happen fourth quarter of 2023.
A lot of economists are saying it's a certainty.
May not be a bad recession, but certainly a mild one in 2024.
Who knows?
Nobody knows.
Economists are just as accurate as the weather man.
But let's always be prepared, shall we?
Because layoffs happen.
You cannot control it, but you can control what you do in the wake of a layoff.
So let's talk about a safety net.
Safety nets are just that safety nets protect us from harm.
When there's a safety net, I can't die and I can't get too badly hurt.
Now I talk a lot about how much I love golf.
I'm not very good at it, but I do enjoy the sport and I also enjoy top golf.
I was just out of fundraiser recently in Nashville and there's some hilarious videos
on top golf of people doing really bad things, silly things.
But the first time I went to top golf and I saw the second, third and fourth level I
was thinking to myself, man, this is dangerous.
And then as I got closer to the golf man, I saw a safety net.
And boy, oh boy, did top golf know what they were doing?
Watch this.
Oh boy, just right off the old edge there.
They could see her pride is hurt.
It may have scraped her knee a little bit, but she's okay.
Thank God for the safety net, right?
It's like whoopsie.
All right, so by the way, you can learn how to swing a golf club and not do that.
However, you cannot control when economic things happen or bad decisions are made in
a company you get laid off.
So let's talk about a safety net.
There's two types of safety nets that I've addressed on the show.
There's two safety nets, one, a financial safety net, that emergency fund.
But more importantly, I don't want you eating up that emergency fund if you can go work
somewhere else.
So that's a mindset to go.
I'm going to have savings enough to kind of make it through a couple of weeks.
And I'm going to be able to adapt my budget, my lifestyle because I've learned how to do
it.
And I'm going to go work anything to just keep money coming to the door.
So that's the financial safety net.
But I think more importantly is the emotional safety net because getting laid off or fired
is devastating.
And if you don't have an emotional safety net for when this happens, because it's going
to happen to most of us, it can affect you so much emotionally that you don't have the
ability to function properly, to be able to activate a financial safety net plan and
go work somewhere else because you're devastated.
So I want to talk about the emotional safety net that you need to have in place because
job loss is one of the top 10 most stressful life events according to Holmes Ray heat stress
test.
It's used by the American Institute of stress.
That's kind of mild in the way they put that.
But the data set psychological data says that the stress, the trauma from losing your job
is right up there with the stress and trauma of losing a loved one, divorce or even being
jailed.
And you imagine same effect on your mind and your body.
So we need an emotional safety net.
So I think there's four people that constitute your safety net.
These are people.
These are archetypes that I'll go through for you.
And if you've got these people in your life, and by the way, this is this, these four people,
this is going to be, this is going to be so valuable for you in other areas of trauma.
So it doesn't have to be job loss.
You lose a loved one.
You go through divorce.
You need these four people in your life.
These four people create an emotional safety net that when something like a layoff happens
to you, you aren't destroyed.
The first one is the comforter.
These are people who are just naturally really high on empathy.
They got great empathy.
It's just oozing out of them.
They always can put themselves and other people's shoes.
And because of that high level of empathy, they also have high levels of compassion.
They're the caretakers of life.
They just are great at seeing, hearing, and caring for people.
And you need those people.
You get some people in your life that you know I'm talking about.
They're just natural comforts.
They're the ones you go to when you're at your lowest, when you're hurting the deepest.
The second person you need in your life as a part of your emotional safety net is the
comedian.
Now the comedian is different than the comforter in that.
The comforter is the one who sits and you could see your pain on their face and they're
caring, loving, kind, listening, seeing you.
The comedian is a whole different deal.
They take your mind off of all the pain.
See the comforter sits with you in the pain.
Picture your pain, your trauma like a baby pool.
You parents out there, you remember sitting in a baby pool with your toddler for the first
time?
And then you're sitting in there with them, make sure they don't drown.
They don't harm themselves.
See, that's the comforter.
They sit in the baby pool and they soak in the moment, the pain with you.
Hey, jump on my bike.
Let's go.
Now some of you millennials or maybe all of you millennials and Gen Zers have no idea
what it's like to ride on the handlebars of your friend's bike.
But we did that kind of crazy stuff back in the day.
It was fun.
It took your mind off everything.
It was exhilarating.
That's what the comedian does.
They make you laugh.
It's a medicine to the soul.
The third person is the cheerleader.
Now this is the person you've soaked in the pain with the comforter.
You've been distracted and lifted by the comedian, but the cheerleader now is going, get back
out there.
You got this man.
It happened to me.
It's happened to them.
You got this.
They're like the golden retriever.
They're just like, let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go for a walk.
Come on.
Let's get back out.
Come on.
Let's go.
And then finally the coach.
This is deeper.
The comforter sat with you and soothed you.
The comedian distracted you and lifted you.
The cheerleader praises you and pushes you back out.
Now the coach instructs you and guides you to learn from what you've just been through,
to harness the defeat so that you get more victories.
That's what the coach does.
They're watching the game tape.
They go back in and go, let's see what we can learn from the film here so that the next
time we don't repeat that problem.
We don't allow ourselves to be manipulated or treated poorly.
Those are the four people, the comforter, the comedian, the cheerleader, and the coach.
They're your emotional safety net so that when the layoff or the firing happens, it's
just temporary.
Folks, I can't tell you how many people I've coached who are afraid to move forward to
do the work that they love to make that contribution in this world that they care about because
they don't have enough money.
They don't have enough margin and so that safe job is actually holding them back.
That's why I decided to lead a Financial Peace University class.
This is Ramsey Solutions number one money class that's going to teach you how to handle
your money and beat debt so that you have the freedom and options to chase the life
that you want to live.
That's living and working free.
I'm going to guide you through it.
That's right.
I'm going to be leading this virtual class.
You can join from anywhere and it starts on June the 2nd.
But you need to sign up now because it is limited and it will fill up fast.
Go to fpu.com to sign up and I'll see you in the Financial Peace class.
It's going to be great.
Well, we're bringing you some comments since in a world that doesn't have a whole lot
of it and we're doing it in the area of work because winning in your work is going to give
you the greatest chance to win in your life.
Financially, emotionally, mentally, relationally.
If your work life sucks, it's dragging the rest of those areas down and you want freedom.
You want freedom to live the life that you desire and so I want to be your guide and warn
you, guide you, coach you, cheer you on.
You're enjoying the show via podcast.
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Follow us and give us a five star review.
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and share as well.
Also to you parents out there, you're feeling the pressure your kids are getting high school
age.
They're in high school.
They're nearing college.
It's a big decision and culture has told you the kiddos got to pick the right college,
pick the right major and then everything's going to fall in place.
Well, that's simply not true.
You're being pressured to make a decision with them, help them make a decision that could
cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, certainly tens of thousands of dollars that
they may not be able to afford.
You and your family can't afford.
But see, none of that stuff that we're talking about right there has anything to do with
their uniqueness and the role that they were created, filling you as their parents know
them better than anybody else.
Help them know themselves.
Are they too young to figure out their future?
No, but there's a process.
And so I've taken what I teach on this show and we've created the curriculum for students.
It's a home study.
You can guide them along.
They can do it themselves.
If they want to figure out their uniqueness, how they are put together and what a purpose
for life at work looks like for them.
It's called Foundations in Career Discovery.
I'm teaching.
We have a great group of students that I talk with throughout in a living room conversation.
The course is only $49.99 for one student.
For one year, you can add an additional student for $30 a year.
It comes with all kinds of supports for you, mom and dad, as their teacher.
You get a teacher account where I encourage you and equip you how to have these conversations.
Additional resources for you, the teacher, student progress tracking and a grade book.
Each student will get free access also to the get clear assessment that has been taken
by tens and tens of thousands of people.
And we now have the student version for them.
You can also purchase up to 10 students per account.
All the details, cankolman.com slash student, cankolman.com slash student.
All right.
Speaking of young people, new data here, three and four managers, specifically 74 percent
of managers and business leaders said Gen Z is the most challenging generation to work
with.
This from new data from resumebuilder.com.
They published this survey last week.
About 40 percent of those leaders and managers said it's because people in this age group
are talking about Gen Z lack technological skills.
Now this was a head scratcher for me.
Really?
I would think this is a very tech savvy or a demographic.
I'm telling you in my house, my kids are way more technology advanced than I am.
But you know, who knows?
It's a curious, curious statement, but it's not as relevant as the other data.
The same proportion of managers, 40 percent feel that Gen Z employees lack motivation
and get easily distracted.
Really?
Well, again, Gen Z, these are kids born between 97 and 2012.
So they quote Stacy Holler, who's the chief career advisor at resumebuilder.com.
And she says, as a result of COVID-19 and remote education, it's possible that Gen Z
is lack the foundation to be more successful than older generations in entry level positions.
God bless you, Stacy.
You're wrong.
It has nothing to do with COVID-19 and remote education.
COVID-19 that led to remote education in large portions of the United States has led to depression
and isolation and kids falling behind in our assembly line education process.
That you can blame on remote school by a bunch of scaredy cat leaders who followed along with
the power players who are now admitting each and every day that this stuff didn't work.
Thank you.
Today said, the masks are marginal.
Now, the really good mask, of course, those are great.
Well, yeah, but the masks, the gators and everybody wore that Fauci and all the governors
and all the senators and all the just absolutely feckless leaders who were scared to challenge
anything with common sense told your kids that it were a mask and now he's saying they
were maybe 10 percent effective.
He'll change that 10 months from now.
That's how it affected COVID affected kids with isolation and awkwardness around all
this crap that we now seen and didn't do anything at all.
That's not my point, but I thought I'd throw a little common sense at you anyway.
You know why?
Because you need to start thinking for yourself just because you're governor or your mayor
or your senator or the president or the news anchor says it doesn't mean it's right.
Can I remind everybody for a moment while I'm on a rant that most of the educated people
in the world in a certain time period of history said the world was flat and they thought
Christopher Columbus was going to sail off the edge of the world into a million splinters.
So can I just tell you folks, why don't you challenge the process?
I'm not going to say it.
I got to keep going.
So Stacy's wrong.
It's not COVID-19 in remote education that make Gen Zers less successful than older generations
in entry level positions.
You know what it is?
It's smartphones and social media that make these kids less prepared.
What do I mean?
Well, the data says that they're lacking skills as it relates to interpersonal interaction
and they're easily distracted.
You know why?
Because of Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram, they are constantly getting updates, infusions
into their system, right?
The infusion.
It's like, hey, oh yeah, I got my hit, my latest update, the latest thing.
And so they're so distracted because they're used to getting something new that entertains
them every five seconds.
So now you're going to take their phone away and they got to work and be focused for 30
minutes.
Folks, we've conditioned these kids.
Now here's the good news.
You can recondition their brain.
About 30% of the respondents said they prefer to work with Gen X and about 4% said they preferred
to work with baby boomers.
Well, I'm sorry.
You got to lead who you got leaders.
About 27% of those leaders surveyed said they fired a Gen Z in their first month.
And one of the reasons 12% said they fired a Gen Z employee because they were too easily
offended.
But again, you know why they're so offended?
Because their parents have protected their feelings their whole life.
I don't want Johnny to feel bad.
So I'm going to pull him from this school.
Uh oh.
I don't like it when you Mrs. Fairburn challenge Johnny from talking too much a class.
Your tone wasn't great.
Because she's frustrated because your kid won't shut his mouth and behave.
Why don't you tell Johnny to behave?
And if he doesn't, you're going to take his phone away for a month.
Watch Johnny start to shut his mouth in the classroom, mom.
And though you attack the teacher.
So now Johnny becomes 21 and he goes to work and he's distracting his fellow employee and
his boss goes, Hey, Johnny, get to work.
And Johnny goes, I don't like the way you talk to me.
Because every time my teacher talking to me, that's why my mom came in and fixed it.
They're so sensitive because they've been parroted poorly.
They're so distracted because they've been allowed to roam on social media.
Hey leaders.
Welcome.
You shouldn't be firing them.
You should be doubling down and training them, guiding them, coaching them.
You got to rewire them.
Real sure you're going to have anybody to hire.
Get over it leaders.
All right, folks.
In Dallas, Texas, surrounding areas, you got one more day to jump in to our career breakthrough
event.
Who is this event for?
It is for someone who just is sitting right now going professionally and financially.
There's a huge gap or certainly a gap that's bothering me between where I am now and where
I want to be.
And you've been overlooked.
You've been rejected.
You're dealing with some confusion.
A lack of ideas or you got the idea, but you don't know what the execution looks like to
get there.
My event is for you.
I'll be out there solo.
It's going to be great.
Dallas, Texas, Ken Coleman dot com slash events.
Dallas, Texas, May 23 coming at you and you can still get the few tickets left.
You can jump in now.
All the details, Ken Coleman dot com slash events.
I'll be speaking as well as doing interventions in the crowd and it's been magical at all of
our stops.
Great things happening.
I'd love to see you there.
Bring a friend.
We got a couples discount and that'll work if you want to bring a friend as well.
Family member that needs some breakthrough, Ken Coleman dot com slash events coming to
you.
Dallas, Texas, May 23.
All right.
Melissa is on the line in Oakland, California.
Melissa, you're on the Ken Coleman show.
I can.
Thank you for taking my call.
Well, thank you for calling.
What's up?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I love your segment on No Job is Secure because that's exactly what happened to me.
So I'm a librarian and I worked real hard from 2011 to 2015 to get my graduate degree
and student loan debt and all that stuff.
And I've also been working at a higher ed university for about 20 plus years, 15 of
which were in admin and I was really tired of admin.
So I went back to grad school to get some other type of degree and I landed a dream
job.
It was great.
I worked in an archive and I really enjoyed everything I was doing.
There was an admin component, but mostly my supervisor was really encouraging for me
to learn archival skills and develop my librarianship.
But what happened was in about six years into the role, we hired some new employees.
And one of them I have known since the time I started working there, she knew me.
We always had a good, you know, rapport.
And the other two were really new to me, one of which I later came to find out was kind
of a troublemaker.
And my supervisor wasn't around very much and they were coming to me with questions because
I was the admin person and they were, I was getting all this frustration that they were
having at the same time.
I was feeling really stressed about some personal issues that were going on.
So I just said, you know what, I'm going to go to my boss's supervisor and say what's
going on.
And you know, hopefully there will be some resolution.
Well, she asked for certain names of who was telling me what.
So I did tell them.
And one of them, the person that was kind of the problem employee was coming to me with
concerns about the other person who I know possibly flirting.
There was a question of flirtation with the supervisor.
Between who?
Between the person that I know and my super and my former supervisor.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I wanted to nip that in the bud.
So when I was talking to his supervisor, my boss, the supervisor, that was one of the
things I shared.
Well, it came around his supervisor, talked to him and then it came around that I was
the one that started the rumor to the point where I had gotten a harassment charge brought
against me and I had to go to the ombud person, had to talk with an independent investigator.
This has never happened to me before.
And it finally came back as, you know, there was no harassment.
It was a case of gossip.
I got the resources for gossip and let it all go.
So I was thinking, okay, you know, there's some feelings hurt, but I'm going to try and
repair it.
I apologize.
And unbeknownst to me, I was all of a sudden I got this email that said, hey, we're going
to welcome you into this other role as a cataloger, which is, you know, librarian work as well.
So I was shocked, but I said, well, okay, you know, that sounds good.
And then later the department that I was working, the larger department, they re nicked on
that and they put me into an admin role.
Higher pay, much better title, but I worked really hard in grad school to get out of that
work.
All right.
So I've got, I've only got now about five minutes with you.
So what's the question and how can I help?
Okay.
So the question, two questions, two parts.
One is, how do I get over being ostracized and getting over my anger?
Because I really don't even want to interact with a lot of people now, which is totally
not my character.
And how do I encourage myself to go into looking for archival work, even though I don't have
all the experience that other people do?
And or do I just stick out this admin work?
I have five years to retirement.
No, okay.
All right.
So let's take the first question.
How do you get over the, you're going to have to take some personal responsibility on
this.
Yeah.
I'm not going to say that you gossiped because the technical definition of gossip is you
heard from one coworker about this flirtation and then you would have told five or seven
other coworkers.
You technically went to leadership with this.
Yeah.
Based on what you told me.
However, I don't know how much facts you had and I'm not sure it's your responsibility
to go above your leader's head on this.
Yeah.
If it's sexual harassment and it's harmful and we have clear cut evidence.
Yeah, I think you blow the whistle.
I'm not trying to try this.
You know, it's not like I'm Judge Ken all of a sudden, but I do feel since you asked
me how do I get over it.
I think you have to take some responsibility to go.
Did I know that I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew was I absolutely certain that
there was flirtation was going on?
And while it may be inappropriate for a married person to be flirting with someone else and
I think it is, is that your whistle to blow?
Mm hmm.
Because it blew up in your face.
Yes, it did.
Yes, it did.
Because it was your word.
It was someone else's word that became your word against your supervisor's word.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And the supervisor's denied it and then his supervisor's believed it.
And then you've been reassigned.
So you're going to have to learn a lesson here and go, there are times in life where
I need to stand and fight.
There are other times where it's not my business and I need to get over it.
So I think you need to learn from this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not saying you did anything wrong.
I'm saying I don't know that you should have blown the whistle in this case unless you absolutely
knew for a fact.
Because even the way you said it to me, you went, and I had to nip that in the butt.
Well, it's not your position to nip that in the butt.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yep.
All right.
So I think there's a learn.
So we got to learn from our, from our past mistakes.
I think this was a mistake.
I think it was a professional misjudgment on your part.
No big deal.
Let's get over it.
So get over it.
I'm telling you, you didn't do anything wrong, but it wasn't a great move.
Yeah.
So now it's, it's, it's impacted you.
So, so now we have to ask based on this, how possible is it for me to actually get into
the archiving work at this particular place?
Because now I've, I've created some tension and it feels like on the surface that you
aren't going to get that opportunity.
Is that fair?
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
So now I'm looking somewhere else.
I'm not sticking it out for five years.
I would stay there until you found an archiving job.
And if you can't get the experience to do the archiving job, well now you're between
a rock and a hard place.
But I would look outwardly and go, can I do more archiving work or more importantly,
can I go back and do the type of work that I was doing for another library or another
institution?
Because it was your dream job.
Yeah.
So you know what the dream job is.
I've not spent any time walking through why it's a dream job because you don't need me
to do that.
You can describe it to me and anybody else on paper and verbally why it was a dream job.
Let's go see if we can find that somewhere else, but stay put right now because you need
the finances.
And I would do your best to eat humble pie every day you walk in.
Humble pie, right?
I mean that.
I mean, I just pictured like I'm in the car and I get out one of those little triangle
little things that my wife always cuts the pie with and I'm getting me a scoop of humble
pie and I'm eating it on the way in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's the best you can do to try to revive the situation you've apologized.
But that doesn't mean you've been forgiven and it doesn't mean that you won't be limited.
And so that's your reality.
So I'd be looking for something somewhere else that is the dream job because you know
what it looks like.
You know how to find it.
So go look for it until then stay put and learn from this.
Listen folks, our morals aren't everybody else's morals.
We still got to live.
This is the Ken Coleman show.
Thanks for listening to the Ken Coleman show.
For more, you can find the show on demand wherever you listen to podcasts and watch the
show on YouTube.
You can also find Ken across all social media by following at Ken Coleman.
Thanks for listening.