The Gift of Unemployment
Hint: It’s NOT a Government Check
I’m proud to say been “unemployed” three distinct times over the past 30 odd years.
The first time occurred when I left the Ph.D. program in Engineering at Columbia University in August of 1987. At the time, I was completing a summer internship in the research labs at Allied Signal near Morristown, NJ.
The prior two years of work and study in Materials Science at Columbia were difficult. During the summer of 1987, I got a taste of working in the corporate world and wanted to learn more about the business side of materials (rather than the scientific and engineering side).
The prior fall, I had the opportunity to conduct some pioneering experiments at the recently commissioned National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island. The results of those experiments were presented at a professional conference in the Spring of 1987.
All of this “work” was utterly unfulfilling to me. About the only thing I did enjoy was learning how to ski at Keystone Mountain after the conference.
On a fateful summer day in August, when I called my Ph.D. Advisor to set an appointment with him to discuss my departure from Columbia, he said [paraphrase without the prophanity]: “Langiulli, you were walking in the great halls of science.” And then he hung up.
Welcome to unemployment 101.
I started looking for work (in the days before the internet). Thankfully, I was renovating a vintage 1860 house on the New Jersey Shore, which kept my hands and mind occupied.
On October 19, 1987, I dressed in my best navy suit. I took the bus and subway to downtown Manhattan where I awaited an interview at Paine Weber for a Materials Industry Analyst position. When I arrived that afternoon, the secretary told me to go home. There would be no interview today. It was a day later to be called Black Monday, which involved a sudden, severe, and unexpected stock market crash of 22.6% that fateful day. Up until recently, it was the most significant one-day percentage drop in Dow Jones history.
It’s a date in my life that lives, as FDR once said, “in infamy.” There would be no Wall Street job for me then, or ever. Unemployment 101 continued as did the work on the house and search for employment.
In December 1987, I was fortunate to interview with the Materials Group at Kline & Company, a consulting firm located in Fairfield, NJ. I started work there in January 1988, learned how to do primary market research, and developed several close friendships from that experience that persist to this day.
Unemployment 101 complete.
Fast forward nearly 20 years to 2006. I was living in San Franciso with my lovely wife. We had a young daughter, and we were thinking about having a second child. I was working long hours, six days a week in a struggling product development start-up company. During my tenure of about three years, the company grew rapidly through its revenue generation (no investors). I was responsible for a group of about three dozen professionals. There were many growing pains, including setting aside my pay several occasions so that others could receive their paychecks.
All of that is pretty typical for a start-up. What was not typical, nor acceptable, were the integrity lapses of the Founder and his second in command. Seeing no end in sight to the breeches of integrity, I walked away. I think I slept for three days after my resignation.
Welcome to Unemployment 201.
During this period, I was able to cobble together a few consulting assignments that enabled the family to stay afloat and for my wife to give birth to our second child.
Also, a dream of doing nonprofit fundraising work that had been bubbling up inside me for many years became more present and in focus. Eventually, I landed a frontline fundraising job at a local university doing major gifts work. This kind of fundraising is relationship-driven, as opposed to transactional. It’s the kind of work that I had been craving — close, one-on-one contact with individuals where affinity gets created. And yes, transactions do happen.
Unemployment 201 complete.
I spent the following 10 years engaged in meaningful fundraising work, including leading a fundraising team. I happen to be an able administrator, team leader, and manager. All of these are within my zone of excellence. While the work was challenging and fulfilling, there was still something missing for me.
I could not put my finger on it until I read Shirzad Chamine’s book: Positive Intelligence. Somewhere in the book, Shirzad mentions that he was the CEO of the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI), which trains more coaches worldwide than any other organization. I looked up CTI on the web and noticed that a Coaching Fundamentals course was being offered in New York City in the coming weeks, so I registered thinking: “I want to be a better coach-manager with my team.” Little did I know what I was getting myself into. From that very first weekend workshop (and perhaps for the first time in my adult life) I saw the possibility of deep, close personal and professional relationships beyond (and including) family and friends
Welcome to unemployment 301.
In the spring of 2015 (a year after completing my coach certification), I decided to step down from my fundraising leadership role at a prestigious university to pursue work as an executive coach and trainer helping nonprofit leaders.
We relocated the family to Florida to be closer to my parents, and I embarked on one of the most challenging and the most fulfilling phases of my adulthood. I am now self-employed, and I’ve discovered work that is in my zone of genius. It’s work that is in my “sweet spot.”
In the Buddhist tradition, this is called “right livelihood” or “perfect occupation.” You might think of this as a calling. Or, you might consider it a “vocation,” which is directly related to what you hold as the utmost importance in your life. This kind of work is different for different people. For example, the practice of medicine and nursing might align with a desire to relieve human suffering. In my case, I now get to deploy all of my superpowers — courage, compassion, and wisdom — in service of leaders in the nonprofit world who are more driven by purpose than profit.
I am happy to share that I discovered my vocation after much trial and error (including unemployment) over the past 30yrs. I now experience that there is no difference between my work and my play. I enjoy working so much, especially coaching leaders, that when I engage in it, I get completely lost. It’s is an ideal state, one which is now commonly referred to as “flow.”
I would not have discovered my current vocation without the three episodes unemployed. Those episodes were (and are) gifts. I see that now in hindsight.
Right now, we have millions of people in the United States and elsewhere that are unemployed. You may be one of them. If you are, then I encourage you to take this time to consider how you may want to earn your livelihood going forward. This time of unemployment is a gift. It’s an opportunity to transform your life and the impact that you have in the world.
The Covid-19 crisis will pass. You live in society, and you cannot get away from it for very much longer. Eventually, you will emerge from the “stay at home” cocoon.
As you do, you may want to consider: “who am I and what do I really want to do?”
