Fired at Fifty: Research Shows the Best Way Forward

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110412100722.htm

cienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2011) — Research from the University of Bath shows that the way older managers make sense of a sudden job loss dramatically affects how they cope with the experience.

The two-year study found that executives and professionals who were most inclined to make the best of the situation and open to change fared better than those driven to regain their former status.

The managers who took part in the research, aged 49 to 62, all held senior, high-earning positions. They lost their jobs in acrimonious circumstances and all felt deeply traumatized.

Professor Yiannis Gabriel and colleagues at the University of Surrey, David Gray and Harshita Goregaokar, invited the managers to talk to them about what had happened and discovered they had created different storylines or 'narrative coping' strategies to make sense of their situation.

Those that coped most successfully were able to see the situation as a new chapter in their lives that included part-time work, self-employment, study and volunteering.

They were able to take a philosophical approach to their job loss, and had accepted that life may or may not return to what it was. They had redefined themselves outside of their former career status and the trauma of their unemployment.

In contrast, a second group saw their job loss as the 'end of the line' and believed their career was over. Although they saw themselves in a new post-career phase in their life, they were deeply wounded by their job loss and experienced profound despair, feelings of devastation and acute depression.

A final group coped somewhat better by viewing their situation as a 'temporary derailment' of their career which would eventually return to its former glory.

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