If you haven’t been affected yet, someone you know has. And whether driven by AI, a merger, a restructuring, or a strategic pivot, layoffs are no longer exceptional events. They’re a recurring feature of working life.
Most layoff advice focuses on the mechanics: Update your résumé, optimize your LinkedIn profile, practice your exit story. All necessary. None sufficient. What determines whether a career transition is a three-week pivot or an 18-month grind isn’t your résumé; it’s the quality of the relationships you’ve built, maintained, and invested in long before you needed them.
As I wrote in a recent article, busyness systematically downgrades every relationship we have. Layoffs reveal exactly how much that downgrade has cost us.
Before: Build relationship capital you don’t need yet
The time to invest in relationships is not when you’re in crisis. It’s now, when you have nothing urgent to ask for, and something to give.
In my book Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships, I describe four relationship dynamics: Ally, Supporter, Rival, and Adversary. In stable times, Supporters and Allies can look and feel similar: Both are friendly. Both are responsive. The difference only becomes visible under pressure. A Supporter says: “Let me know if I can help.” An Ally picks up the phone before you have to ask.
Most professionals overestimate how many Allies they have. They have a large network of Supporters—people who will help if it’s convenient, if the timing works, if there’s something in it for them. When a layoff hits, Supporters go quiet. Allies don’t.
