So you put yourself out there for the big job – the one that everyone around you vowed that you’d be absolutely perfect for. A sure thing. A shoo-in. And then… You get the email, or the phone call, or – God forbid – the Slack notification. They really liked you, the interviewer tells you. But, this time, they’ve decided to go in a different direction. A direction that doesn’t involve... well, you.
Zoe Ball is currently playing out some version of this scenario – albeit with the added bonus of doing so in front of the entire nation, and with the knowledge that every single interview she does over the next couple of years will probably ask her about this rejection.
Following months of speculation, the former BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show host has confirmed that she has not been chosen as one of the new presenters of Strictly Come Dancing, despite the media (mea culpa, myself included – I maintain that she would have been a brilliant host) assuming that her appointment was something of a done deal.
“I didn’t get it, but it’s OK,” she told co-host Jo Whiley on the latest episode of their podcast Dig It. “I have worked through the seven stages of grief and rejection over the last couple of days.” Ball then reportedly went on to praise the pair of presenters that she reckons landed the gig instead of her, providing a masterclass in graciousness in the face of rejection in the process.
Most of us, thank God, will never have to admit to the nation that we’ve been turned down for that role we really, really wanted. But we will likely go through the pain of applying for a promotion, then having to contend with the fact that our fellow colleagues – along with Sandra from HR – have decided that we’re just not right for it. Or spending hours on an application for a role we’ve dreamed of, then jumping through the hoops of an involved interview process, only to receive a curt rejection email that reads like it was written by a robot (it probably was).
Indeed, likening the process of dealing with this rejection to a form of grief isn’t an overreaction. Instead, Ball might just have hit upon a better way to process this painful knockback – one that we’d all do well to take on board (rather than, say, hate-stalking our replacement’s LinkedIn page).
“The grief experienced in this scenario is often disenfranchised grief, which is the type of grief that isn’t often recognised by society,” says Anita Guru, integrative counsellor and founder of The Mind Coach. “We may invalidate our own feelings, or even hear it from someone else,” she adds, “but this can perpetuate the feelings of shame and minimise emotions.”
Grief in work is something that careers coach Hannah Salton sees a lot in her conversations with clients. “We tie so much of our self-worth to our jobs, even if we don’t like to admit it,” she says. Just think of the last time you had a conversation with someone new. The question of “what do you do?” almost certainly cropped up within the first few moments; often, it comes up seconds after we’ve asked someone their name, creating a melding of work and identity. “We introduce ourselves with our job titles and often use them as a label – a shortcut to who we are,” Salton says.
It is only human to start imagining just how your life would change if you managed to secure this dream role – whether it’s the opportunities you’d have, the way you’d be respected by others, or simply the extra salary. So, “when we want something badly”, Salton says, “we can convince ourselves that this one opportunity is the key to everything – that getting it will finally prove we are ‘good enough’”. Of course, she adds, “this isn’t true”, yet this is a trap that we fall into time and time again – and “it can make failure feel far more significant and final than it really is”.
When we fail to secure the job, we are also faced with “the loss of what could have been”, says leadership coach Keren Blackmore, founder of career acceleration programme Leap of Thought. When that possibility, the one that we were so attached to, is removed, we end up “grieving the identity that we now don’t get to step into and to own”. So, as well as dealing with the rejection, we’re also having to bid farewell to a version of ourselves – and “usually it’s a part of you that you didn’t really want to let go of”, Blackmore adds.
A bereavement or breakup often gets acknowledged, but a missed promotion usually doesn’t, which can make people feel silly for being as upset as they are
Plus, a work rejection “can feel just as painful as a physical punch in the stomach”, explains Blackmore, because our brain reacts to these situations in a similar way, activating many of the same neural pathways. Hence, that almost visceral reaction that can throw us off kilter.
So how can we recover from such a knockback? It’s important, Salton says, “to allow yourself to sit with that grief”, rather than trying to “bury it and move on quickly” – even though “society doesn’t really give us permission to grieve career losses the way we do other losses. A bereavement or breakup often gets acknowledged, but a missed promotion usually doesn’t, which can make people feel silly for being as upset as they are”.
This loss – and the way you’ve reacted to it – “can tell you something important about yourself”, Salton adds. “Why did you want that role? What story would you be telling about yourself if you’d got it? These answers can point you in the right direction.”
Blackmore agrees. The moment after a rejection or loss can be “the most destabilising time”, but it can also be incredibly “powerful”. “Often,” she adds, “when you go from role to role, you don’t have those moments of pause”, so this can be “a really great time to look around and go, ‘what is my story?’” She suggests asking yourself about the things you most value professionally. “Is it money, is it status? Is it to be doing work that I love? What really motivates me?”
And as with any form of grief, she adds, acceptance is important. “The more you think, ‘I should have done this, I could have done that’, the more you sit there recounting it, the more exhausting you’ll find the whole thing, and the longer you’re going to stay in that place of disillusionment,” she says.
Plenty of Blackmore’s clients have found it useful, she adds, to tell themselves that “‘this opportunity wasn’t meant for me’. There are so many people who you would have thought of as very pragmatic who use that to help them with the acceptance.”
When you’re in the thick of grappling with rejection, that might feel like an empty platitude – but often the passage of time really does give us a different, more positive perspective. “It’s amazing how many people I’ve worked with have reflected later that missing out on what they thought they wanted actually served them better,” Salton says. “A better opportunity came along, or they realised they wanted it for the wrong reasons – to please other people, or because the job simply sounded good on paper.”
A bit of hindsight, then, can work wonders. That, and the knowledge that, unlike Ball, we probably won’t have our career knockbacks broadcast across the country.
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