Imagine, if you will, taking the initiative to approach your newly promoted boss and asking for your own promotion. Now imagine the shock when that boss not only shatters your dream of career advancement but also explains that your current job is in jeopardy. You have just a few weeks to reprove yourself. Demotion is a distinct possibility.
I don't have to imagine that scenario because I lived it--and I was demoted. I was one of several victims of a departmental reorganization within a prestigious Washington publishing company. But my story has a happy ending: Eight months after he demoted me, my boss promoted me into the management ranks. And when I left the company over two years later, he publicly proclaimed at my farewell lunch that he was my "biggest fan."
Not every demotion will end so favorably for the employee, at least if he or she stays with the same company. Yet demotion does not have to be a career death sentence. The chances of survival, in fact, are quite good.
Assessing the Situation
The first step to recovery is assessing the situation. J. Damian Birkel is founder of Professionals in Transition in Winston-Salem, NC, and the author of Career Bounce-Back! The Professionals in Transition Guide to Recovery and Reemployment (Amacom, 1997). "Once you answer the why," Birkel says, "then you can figure out the appropriate way to manage it."
Don't automatically assume that you have no future in the company.
Try to make sense of why you were demoted by asking yourself some questions: Was the demotion political? Were you targeted because of sour relations with well-connected co-workers or your boss?
If that is the case, don't automatically assume that you have no future in the company. Taking a step down "for survival" actually may work to your advantage, Birkel claims, especially if you have done a good job of networking to foster your own well-connected colleagues. "If it is a personality conflict with your boss, moving away from that person who is harming you or could harm you more is in your favor."
Were you simply "restructured" out of a job? If so, how do you feel about the change? Can you accept the reduced stature within the company--and the lower pay? How does the company handle recycled employees?
"It's pretty hard for anybody to renegotiate the system," warns Cliff Hakim. He is the founder of Rethinking Work, a Boston-based consulting firm, and author of When You Lose Your Job: Laid Off, Fired, Early Retired, Relocated, Demoted, Unchallenged (Berrett-Koehler, 1993). "Sometimes in demotion there's not a place for the person in the system," he adds.
Were you demoted because you lack the skills to do the job? Will the company help you develop the skills to advance your career, or are you on your own? In that scenario, you must possess the confidence and talent to prove yourself when the odds are against you. Was the demotion really designed to force you out of the company? If the answer is yes, hopefully you will have asked and answered that question before the demotion. If so, you should have negotiated a graceful and favorable exit from the company.
The Healing Process
Answering such questions can be challenging because of the emotions of demotion--anger, insecurity, anxiety, and more. "You cannot help but take it on the chin," says Birkel, who once accepted a lower-level job with an employer after his previous job had been eliminated. "It hurts when you get demoted. It's embarrassing when you get demoted."
Try to assess the situation, says David P. Helfand, author of Career Change: Everything You Need to Know to Meet New Challenges and Take Control of Your Career (VGM Career Horizons, 1999). It is important to talk, talk, talk. Share your emotions with family and friends. Talk to your children about the belt-tightening the family may have to endure. Confide in colleagues you can trust. Ask them for advice on how to proceed. "For whatever handicap a person might have," Helfand says, "networking is the best way to deal with it."
Hakim even recommends hiring a career coach. They are trained to listen and can help you decide what professional course best suits you in almost any circumstance. "A good coach can ferret [your career desires] out through both asking questions and doing some testing," he says. It is important to find someone who will let you vent, especially if you ultimately decide to leave the company. If you are bitter and angry, potential employers will sense those emotions in job interviews. "You cannot push that [healing] process," Hakim adds.
The Choices Are Yours
Ultimately, though, you will face what Birkel calls the "moment of truth." You will have three basic choices. You can fight the powers that be or flee the company. Or you can take the sage advice my own father gave me just before I accepted my demotion: "If you can't fight and you can't flee, you gotta learn to flow."
If you decide to fight, Helfand says, follow the proper channels. First, register an objection with your immediate supervisor, then his supervisor, and ultimately human resources. At each step, weigh the pros and cons of proceeding. "What kind of gamble is involved?" Helfand asks. "And are you willing to take the gamble if you lose?"
Hakim cautions against a fight in the first place because of the stakes. Unless you are the subject of some type of discrimination, he says, fighting is almost always a foolish career move. If you win, you face the uncomfortable future of working for a company where you are unwanted. And if you lose, you will have a stain on your employment record that may be hard to overcome.
Fleeing is a better option. But rather than quitting immediately, consider biding your time until you find another job. If your superiors demoted you as a way to force you out, Helfand says, they may help place you elsewhere or even let you hunt for work on company time.
When invited to interview for a new job, be honest about your situation but don't dwell on it. Emphasize your strengths, and provide the names of co-workers who can vouch for your contributions to your current company. "If there's really something [your supervisors] didn't like about you that's accurate," Helfand says, "I think there's a way to package that in an interview that sounds kind of positive."
Regardless of whether the company helps you move forward in your career, do not badmouth your former employer. Keep your conspiracy theories to yourself. "Even if it's true, even it's righteous," Birkel says, "if you're hostile when you go out an interview, it's going to show." And you are not going to get the job.
Climbing Back to the Top
Perhaps the best choice you can make, if circumstances allow, is to flow--and flow in the direction of your boss. In other words, Birkel says, try to "manage your manager." Anticipate his or her needs and become a valuable employee.
"Be the answer," he says. Volunteer for jobs that nobody else wants. Offer to work overtime if necessary. Prove your commitment to your boss and to the company, and prove yourself under fire. "No matter what your position is," Birkel says, "if you can help your boss, it will make things more easy on you and him or her."
If you're going to stay with the company that demoted you, Hakim adds, "identify the assets you bring to the party" and put them to work. Don't act like a "lame duck" biding your time until another offer is on the table.
Use your experience to your advantage, too. Just because you were demoted doesn't mean you forgot everything you ever learned on the job. "If you were a director, if you were a manager, if you were a VP," Birkel says, you should still think like one because there is no better way to become one again.
K. Daniel Glover is a freelance editor, writer, and journalist with more than a decade of experience in Washington, DC. He likes to share career-related tips with real people as much as he enjoys writing for Washington wonks. Under his pen name, Mister Critter, he also authored the children's book George Washington Beaver & the Cherry Tree.
