Dear HBR:

Is a recent firing weighing on you? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Susan David, a psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. They talk through what to do when your coworker has been wrongfully fired, your company has massive layoffs, or you’ve been fired.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: The Right Way to Be Fired by Maryanne Peabody and Larry Stybel — “It’s natural to want to believe that the company for which you work so hard cares about you. But allowing yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security sets you up for shock and disappointment when you are fired or laid off.”

First Round Review: How to Lead and Rally a Company Through a Layoff — “A layoff shouldn’t be a surprise to leaders, nor to its people. It’s not something that happens to a company. It’s an act by its leadership when no other routes can be pursued. In other words, when a layoff is your way forward, you should implicitly be telling people that you’ve exhausted every other route.”

HBR: Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Andrew J. Ward — “No one can truly define success and failure for us—only we can define that for ourselves. No one can take away our dignity unless we surrender it. No one can take away our hope and pride unless we relinquish them. No one can steal our creativity, imagination, and skills unless we stop thinking. No one can stop us from rebounding unless we give up.”

HBR: After Layoffs, Help Survivors Be More Effective by Anthony J. Nyberg and Charlie O. Trevor — “If your firm has downsized recently, you’re now managing a bunch of survivors—the lucky ones who didn’t get laid off. But good fortune doesn’t make for good performance—at least not in this situation. Chances are, you’re presiding over a heightened level of employee dysfunction, even if you don’t see it yet.”

Do performance reviews fill you with anxiety? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. They talk through how to handle performance reviews that have mixed messages, extreme criticism, or not enough helpful feedback.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: What to Do When You Think Your Performance Review Is Wrong by Dick Grote — “Challenging a boss’s appraisal, even in a clear-cut case of bad data, is always a ticklish matter. Be cautious. It’s not easy to say to your boss, in whatever words you choose to use, ‘You’re wrong.’ Don’t lose sight of the fact that your boss probably has a significant investment in the appraisal you’ve decided to challenge.”

HBR: How to Ask for Feedback That Will Actually Help You by Peter Bregman — “Being good at receiving feedback is especially important at work, because your colleagues are less likely to push past your defensiveness and more willing to write you off if they have a hard time working with you. If that happens, you’ll never know why — since you won’t have heard the feedback — so you’ll keep repeating the same mistakes.”

HBR: What to Do After a Bad Performance Review by Carolyn O’Hara — “But research suggests that letting something simmer can make things worse, for several reasons. When we’re stressed, our brain tends to mount a defensive ‘fight-flight-or-freeze’ response—during which there’s reduced activity in brain areas responsible for reasoning, self-control, and forward thinking. And trying to suppress our irritation has been found to make our brain’s defensive response more pronounced rather than less.”

HBR: Let’s Not Kill Performance Evaluations Yet by Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, and Adam Grant — “The long march to the boss’s office to get evaluated—it’s a moment we all dread. Performance reviews are awkward. They’re biased. They stick us in boxes and leave us waiting far too long for feedback. It’s no surprise that by the end of 2015, at least 30 of the Fortune 500 companies had ditched performance evaluations altogether.”

Is a team you manage keeping you up at night? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Melanie Parish, a leadership coach and the author of The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators. They talk through what to do when you lead a rogue team that doesn’t follow company processes, your growing team of managers is clamoring to weigh in on key decisions, or you want to improve the morale of a frustrated team.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: Connect, Then Lead by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinger — “Even a few small nonverbal signals—a nod, a smile, an open gesture—can show people that you’re pleased to be in their company and attentive to their concerns. Prioritizing warmth helps you connect immediately with those around you, demonstrating that you hear them, understand them, and can be trusted by them.”

Book: The Experimental Leader: Be a New Kind of Boss to Cultivate an Organization of Innovators by Melanie Parish — “Being a leader is lonely work. The loneliness of leadership wakes you up at three in the morning as your brain tries to solve problems you don’t have answers for. You attempt to figure out whether your best strategy is to be strong and powerful or kind and collaborative. You wish someone would give you feedback about your leadership, but the more you get promoted, the more people seem to agree with you.”

HBR: Start-Ups That Last by Ranjay Gulati and Alicia DeSantola — “When launching their start-ups, many founders eschew hierarchy because of their egalitarian ideals. But as their firms scale, a growing number of people report to a handful of leaders. Founders may think this allows them to remain in command, because all decisions pass through them. But ironically, their organizations spin out of control as centralized authority becomes a bottleneck that hinders information flow, decision making, and execution.”

HBR: How to Manage People Who Are Smarter than You by Rebecca Knight — “Getting promoted to a job that includes responsibility for areas outside your domain can be downright terrifying. Your employees may ask questions that you don’t know the answers to and may not even fully understand.”

Are you leaving your organization during a critical time? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Shirli Kopelman, a negotiations professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. In this bonus episode, they talk through what to do when you’re planning to give notice during the coronavirus pandemic and can’t train your replacement.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: How to Quit Your Job with Style by Steven DeMaio — “If you can retain a working relationship with your employer (freelancing, consultung, etc.), by all means do. Make your desire for that clear when you give your notice. If that doesn’t fit what you’re doing next, stay connected in other ways, such as real-world and online social settings, professional organizations, and occasional visits to your old stomping grounds.”

HBR: Make Your Emotions Work for You in Negotiations by Shirli Kopelman — “Emotions will inevitably arise during negotiations but instead of letting them happen to you or trying to overcome them, use them genuinely and strategically to get what you want and create value for everyone.”

HBR: How to Quit Your Job Without Burning Bridges by Rebecca Knight — “Who hasn’t fantasized about walking into the boss’s office, saying: ‘I quit!’ and then marching straight out the door? The rational side of you knows, of course, that that’s the wrong way to resign from a job. But what is the right approach? Who should you tell first? How much notice should you give? And how honest should you be about your reasons for leaving?”

HBR: Navigating the Emotional Side of a Career Transition by Ron Ashkenas — “The first hurdle is the sense of guilt about leaving a previous employer or career. If you’ve formed strong relationships with people and if the company has invested in your development, then leaving can feel like betrayal. Dozens of managers have told me they turned down exploring new opportunities because they didn’t want to leave their current employer and co-workers in the lurch.”

How does working remotely complicate your career? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Siobhan O’Mahony, a professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business. They talk through how to advance in your job when you’re not in the building, deal with a problematic colleague you never see, and manage teams in other offices.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list:

HBR: A Study of 1,100 Employees Found That Remote Workers Feel Shunned and Left Out by Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield — “Overall, remote employees may enjoy the freedom to live and work where they please, but working through and with others becomes more challenging. They report that workplace politics are more pervasive and difficult, and when conflicts arise they have a harder time resolving them.”

HBR: A First-Time Manager’s Guide to Leading Virtual Teams by Mark Mortensen — “First things first: don’t panic. Remember that global, virtual, distributed teams are composed of people just like any other team. The more you and your team members can keep this in mind, the better your results will be. As the manager, encourage everyone to engage in some perspective taking: think about how you would behave if your roles were reversed. This is a small way of reminding your team that collaboration isn’t magic, but it does take some effort.”

HBR: Why Remote Work Thrives in Some Companies and Fails in Others by Sean Graber — “Successful remote work is based on three core principles: communication, coordination, and culture. Broadly speaking, communication is the ability to exchange information, coordination is the ability to work toward a common goal, and culture is a shared set of customs that foster trust and engagement. In order for remote work to be successful, companies (and teams within them) must create clear processes that support each of these principles.”

HBR: How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote by Erica Dhawan and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic — “Old school birthday cakes are still important for remote teams. Creating virtual spaces and rituals for celebrations and socializing can strengthen relationships and lay the foundation for future collaboration. Find ways to shorten the affinity distance. One company we worked with celebrated new talent by creating a personal emoji for each employee who had been there for six months.”

HBR: The Secrets of Great Teamwork by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen — “Distance and diversity, as well as digital communication and changing membership, make them especially prone to the problems of ‘us versus them’ thinking and incomplete information. The solution to both is developing a shared mindset among team members—something team leaders can do by fostering a common identity and common understanding.”