Setbacks in leadership are inevitable — whether it's redundancy, missing out on a promotion, or feeling misaligned with your organization. In this episode, Sarah shares practical strategies to move through the emotional toll of a setback and come out stronger, wiser, and more aligned. Drawing on 16 years of coaching experience, she breaks down a clear 5-step approach to help you reflect, reframe, and rebuild your path to success. Whether you’re currently navigating a career disruption or want to future-proof your resilience, this episode is a must-listen.

Show Notes

00:00:00 – Welcome & Introduction to the Podcast

00:01:00 – Why Setbacks Matter and What You'll Learn Today

Overview of today’s topic and why career setbacks can become pivotal growth moments.

00:02:00 – The Many Faces of Career Setbacks

From redundancy to value misalignment — common scenarios Sarah sees in coaching.

00:04:00 – The Emotional Impact of Setbacks

How setbacks affect identity, confidence, and emotions — and why it's important to honour that process.

00:05:00 – Navigating the Emotional Curve (Kubler-Ross Model)

Grief, denial, anger, blame — and how to begin moving through these emotions.

00:06:00 – Step 1: Reflect with Honesty

Understanding what went wrong, your role in it, and the lessons learned.

00:07:00 – Learning to Spot Red Flags in Hindsight

Real-life client story about ignoring red flags in the interview process.

00:08:00 – Step 2: Ask for Constructive Feedback

How to ask for helpful feedback and why it’s a powerful part of your rebound.

00:09:00 – Step 3: Objectively Consider What’s Next

Don’t rush — instead, reflect on your values and career success criteria.

00:10:00 – Sarah’s Personal Redundancy Story

How Sarah navigated being made redundant as a career coach and started her business.

00:11:00 – Real Client Story: From Employee to Contractor

How a challenging boss led one client to redefine success and change direction.

00:12:00 – Step 4: Mindset Shifts & Reframing Opportunity

From neuroscience to identity, how your brain reacts to setbacks, and how to reframe.

00:13:00 – Why Setbacks Spark Creativity

How dopamine dips create motivation for change and open new doors.

00:14:00 – Step 5: Take Action to Address What Needs to Change

Whether it’s mindset, confidence or leadership style — it’s time to act.

00:15:00 – Make Sure It’s the Right Opportunity (Not Just Any Role)

Avoiding knee-jerk reactions and choosing roles aligned with your purpose.

00:16:00 – Build a Long-Term Resilience Strategy

Practical tips for building internal and external visibility and support networks.

00:17:00 – Key Takeaways Recap

A step-by-step reminder of the framework to turn your setback into a springboard.

00:18:00 – Final Thoughts & Invitation to Connect

Encouragement and invitation to reach out for coaching or access free resources.

Useful Links

Sign up for Weekly Career Inspiration

Learn about Leadership & Advancement Coaching Programmes

Book a Free 121 Clarity Call

Join The Love What You Do Facebook Group

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Kubler Ross Curve

Rate & Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of Unstuck & Unstoppable helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Sarah know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: sarah@careertreecoaching.co.uk

You're capable of more than you know. Shine brightly, lead boldly, and unlock the extraordinary potential within you. 🌟

Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable,

the podcast for ambitious female

2

leaders who want to create more impact,

income, and influence in their careers.

3

feel connected to their passion

and purpose, but without

4

selling out or burning out.

5

I'm Sarah Archer, a leadership coach

and career strategist, helping women

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like you thrive in leadership roles

while staying true to your values.

7

I'm the founder of CareerTree

Coaching and have over 15 years of

8

coaching experience and significant HR

leadership experience to share with you.

9

I know as a female leader it can

be hard to find time to focus

10

on your career aspirations.

11

The day job can be all consuming.

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Plus, no matter how senior you are,

there are always going to be times

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when you feel stuck, when you have

self doubt, or feel like an imposter.

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And that's where unstuck

and unstoppable comes in.

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Each week I'll be sharing practical

strategies, insightful interviews and

16

inspiring stories to help you boost

your confidence, lead with purpose

17

and achieve sustainable success.

18

If you're ready to stop playing

small and unlock the incredible

19

potential you have within you and feel

unstoppable, you're in the right place.

20

Let's get started.

21

Welcome to episode 24.

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I'm so glad you're here.

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Today's topic, is how to overcome career

setbacks in your leadership career.

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I thought about covering this one

because in the last 16 years of being a

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career coach, I have worked with people

who've experienced a whole variety

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of career setbacks, and I thought it

would be useful to pull together.

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Some of the observations that I've had

from working with those people into a

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bit more of a strategy that you can use

if you are experiencing a career setback

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of some sort so that you can turn that

setback into a springboard for success.

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And often clients I've worked

with who have experienced a career

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setback can look back and see that

actually it was something in the

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end that was helpful for them.

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And I know that's hard to connect

with when you are immersed

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in the middle of a setback.

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Thinking about different

types of setbacks.

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'cause obviously there are lots

of different types of possible

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career setbacks and it's

all relative to you as well.

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The big one is redundancy.

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Probably most people in their

career lifetime are going to

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experience redundancy at least once.

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More rarer is dismissal,

but that can happen.

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That can be definitely

a setback for people.

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Or it might be not getting promotion that

can feel like a career setback or not.

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Getting that job that you went for,

that you felt was your ideal role

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that the job was meant for you.

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Or it could be that you've been sidelined,

so maybe you've been on a career break

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or you are returning from maternity

and you've been sidelined, you've got

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less responsibility, you've not been

given the influence that you, had

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prior to your break, it might be that

you've had a break and you've stopped

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working for a number of years and you're

coming back into the job market, and

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that can feel like a career setback.

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Or it could be something around a

shift in the organization's values

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or directions or the leadership.

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Teams values or direction that just

doesn't feel aligned with you anymore.

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And maybe you thought, this was my

role, this is my springboard role,

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and suddenly it just doesn't seem

to have that same opportunity.

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So you don't feel like you want to be part

of it in the same way you did previously.

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Or you have a nightmare boss, they're

micromanaging or they're very

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political and you are feeling the

effects of that, and it feels like it's

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inhibiting your career progression.

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Or perhaps your peers or even your

team, you just don't gel with and

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you feel like you are isolated.

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That can also feel like a career

setback or it could be something else.

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And I've experienced various career

setbacks in my career have been made

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redundant and that at the time felt.

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Very difficult to navigate and I'll

talk a bit more about that later on.

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I was talking to a client yesterday

who went for promotion while she was on

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maternity leave and didn't get that, and

now is having to navigate what she does

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in response . And so we're gonna talk

about the strategy you can use if you're

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facing a career setback at the moment.

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But it's important to, to acknowledge

that you are going to have a

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reaction to that setback, and it's

going to be an emotional reaction.

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First of all, it can rock your identity.

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It can make you question who you are

what your purpose is, what you're doing.

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It can shake what might have felt like

quite a firm foundation previously.

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And it can also, as I said, bring

up lots of emotions for you.

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And you may or may not be familiar with

the Kular Ross curve, which was developed

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to help people navigate grief and loss.

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And obviously a Chris setback

can feel like a kind of loss.

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And on that Kular Ross

curve, , you experience shock,

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denial, anger, dejection.

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Depression until you eventually

start coming outta that and get

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to acceptance of the situation.

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But you can ping pong along

those various emotions.

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For a period of time while you're

processing what's happened to you.

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And we can also, while we're in

that phase of experiencing those

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emotions, look for someone to blame.

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So we don't necessarily want to take

responsibility for that setback.

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We can look at the organization,

we can look at other people.

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We might even seek reassurance from

people around us that it was not.

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Us it was not our fault.

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But what that does is it stops us looking

internally and to really be able to

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navigate a career setback effectively,

to build a resilience that you need,

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you do need to do some internal work.

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And that's what we're gonna

talk a little bit about today.

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To rebound from your career

setback and create success.

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'cause that's ultimately what we

want, isn't it, is to be able to

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move past it and get to something

better than we had previously.

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The first step is to actively review

what went wrong and how you contributed

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to it, and was there anything you could

have done differently in that situation?

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Doing some reflection to think about,

did I assess that situation accurately,

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particularly in a leadership role where

you may have been party to discussions

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around whether business was going, if it's

redundancy, you know that's gonna happen.

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Were you reading it right in

terms of what might happen to you?

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Or if it's your boss

who's causing the setback?

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Did you ignore some of the signs

that may have been there for you?

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I was talking to a client a couple of

months ago who'd had a horrible experience

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with a boss who was very political and was

basically blocking her career progression.

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And when we unpacked it, she could

identify that actually when the interview

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was taking place, there were some red

flags that she in hindsight notice,

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but chose to ignore because of some

other things that were going on for her

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that meant she needed to take this job.

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And so what that did is that she

just ignored the things that could

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have helped her recognize that

actually this perhaps wasn't going

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to be the right opportunity for her.

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What we want from this setback is to

be able to take useful things from

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it that will help us in the next.

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Role the next setting.

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And often when I'm working out placement

clients, so when I'm working with

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people who've been made redundant, I

do encourage them to think about what

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they've learned from the experience

and what they might do differently

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next time so that they can take that

into their choice for the next role.

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, it is important to think about what

would you do differently and also if

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you can to ask for feedback because.

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It's always useful to know , in terms

of leadership style, management style

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are there things that you could learn

from change, do differently that's gonna

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make you even better in the next role?

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And it's a hard thing.

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It's a brave thing to do, to ask for

feedback, but it can be really helpful,

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particularly if you frame it in terms

of I would like constructive feedback.

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I'm not looking for consolation

or blame, I'm just looking for

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some things to help me grow.

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Then we want to think about objectively

considering what next and in the frame of

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what's going to be the best thing for me.

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So the temptation might be just

to, if it's redundancy or you've

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lost your job is just to go out

and find something straight away.

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I just need a job, which

is quite a normal reaction.

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Or if it's promotion I'll just go for that

next promotion as soon as it comes up.

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Or I'll start applying for other roles

that are that level because I didn't

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get it here in this organization.

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But it's actually good to do that

reflection in terms of what do I really

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want and check in with your values and

your why, because they help guide you

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in terms of choices that you have made.

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Or going to make and then

do that exploration.

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So really focused exploration

of what the options might be.

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For example, when I was made redundant

I was made redundant as a career coach.

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I've been working for Social

Enterprise as a coach, and there weren't

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hardly any paid career coach jobs.

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My options were either go back

to HR into a paid employment

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or set up my own business.

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Now my identity had always been.

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As an employee, I'd never

even on my, radar had the idea

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of running my own business.

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So I had to do some

exploration around that.

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And I knew from my values and my

why that HR wasn't an option for me.

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I wanted to be making a difference

to people in a direct way.

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I wanted to have that one to one,

one-to-one group, work with people

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to help them create career success.

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I had to do the exploration about how

I could make the business a success.

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And, it is important to think about it

in terms of your career success criteria.

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I was working with a client about a

year ago, and her career set setback

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was a very difficult boss who claimed

a lot of the credit for her work, who.

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Didn't enable her to be successful

in the role that she was doing

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as in a very big organization.

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And this boss was very political.

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And with her career success criteria, when

we worked it through, what she recognized

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is she a, she wanted to earn more money.

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She was being kept at a sort of ceiling on

her earnings and she wanted more control

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over her work and the difference she

could make to the people she supported.

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She was working in project

management and she wanted to be

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able to deliver to her standards

not be controlled by her boss who.

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Didn't really value the service that

they were providing to the organization.

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And so she decided that the right

thing for her was to become a

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contractor and take on contracts that

really spoke to her in terms of her

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values and what she wanted to do.

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And that required a big mindset

shift for her, which I'm

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gonna come on to in a minute.

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But just to work through her career

success criteria what she wants

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to do, helped her understand.

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What the options were for her out there

and how she could then move towards that.

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If she hadn't had that boss, pushing

her and not enabling her to do

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what she wanted to do, she probably

wouldn't have taken that route.

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And then, the next thing is

to do is the mindset work.

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Reframing this as an opportunity to

reinvent yourself, to do something

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different, to release your career

dreams, to expand your identity, to

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create more career success for you.

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Because the setback is

really chance to pause.

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It's like a pause button on your career.

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And it's also a push to

do things differently.

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And from a neuroscience point of view

our brains like to chase dopamine.

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Dopamine is the feel good

chemical in our brain.

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It's the reward chemical that we get.

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And so our brains like it

because it makes us feel good.

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And so if we're doing things that give us

that reward on a consistent basis, with no

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motivation for us to change that at all.

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Now when we have a career setback

that results in a dip in dopamine.

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And the brain doesn't like that.

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So it wants to solve the problem

of how to avoid the dopamine dip,

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which makes you more creative.

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It increases your problem solving

capability and your reasoning.

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And actually the more career

setbacks and you don't wanna load.

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But the more you've navigated, the

more creative and problem solving

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abilities and reasoning increases.

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It enables us , to

think differently about.

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Where we're going to take our career.

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Whereas if you don't have that pause

button or that push to make something

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change, you're probably more likely

just to continue, which might be okay,

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but it might not enable you to get the

career success that you really want

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because you're not having that reflective

time to think what's not working?

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What don't I want?

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What do I want?

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What, could more look like for me?

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And , the reframe is also being okay

with uncertainty because it could be

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that you're gonna make a shift of some

sort or, change something in your way

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of approaching your leadership role.

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So it's getting that

uncertainty, being okay with it.

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And then the next thing is to

be prepared to take action to

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address any changes needed.

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If you've done that reflective

piece at the beginning, did

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I contribute to this setback?

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What have I learned from it?

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What would I do differently next time?

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What feedback might I have had?

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You've then obviously got to think

about what do I need to do to address

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some of that so that I'm not taking

any of that with me into the next role.

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For example, with my client that I

was talking about earlier who wanted

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to go contracting, her mindset was

firmly in an employee and becoming a

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contractor felt alien and we had to

do a lot of work around her mindset and

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her confidence to enable her to feel.

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Ready to go down that route, which

she then did very successfully.

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Or it could be around

leadership style again.

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So if you've got some feedback or

you've recognized, something needs to

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change for you to be more successful

in your leadership style or your

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management style that it's thinking

about, okay, how am I gonna do that?

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I'm gonna take an interim role so that I

can experiment with my management style.

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Am I going to get some

coaching to help me with this?

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Am I going to do some, UPS

upskilling in terms of some of

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the areas that I want to improve?

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And then the fifth thing to think

about is making sure you're seizing

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the right opportunity for you.

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Not just taking the next role,

but making sure it is going

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to give you what you need.

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Because once you've got it, you've

got to go in every day and do it.

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Or making the right choice about when

to go for promotion and what kind of

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promotion or deciding how you're going

to navigate a difficult manager or a

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shift in the organizational values.

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So making sure the right opportunity,

you're seeding it at the right

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time for you is not a knee jerk

reaction to what's going on for you.

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And then my final point is to invest in

a resilience strategy so that you are.

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Consistently building your resilience.

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So when you then experience the next

career setback, you are in a much

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better place to be able to navigate

it and to feel more in control of it.

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That would be things like prioritizing

a visibility strategy for you in

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terms of your leadership roles.

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Thinking about both internal and

external visibility and making

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it a habit, a regular habit to.

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Keep in touch with people.

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So constantly building your connections,

consistently keeping in touch with people

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fostering those relationships so that

in your connections, you've got door

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openers, you've got sponsors, you've

got potential mentors, you've got.

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Cheerleaders, you've got people who

will be there to support you with your

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next career setback, should that occur.

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And, , allowing your values and your

why to drive you and your choices so

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you can have that wonderful feeling

of looking back on that career setback

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that you might be in right now, or you

might have experienced recently, and

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be able to say, actually it was the

best thing that happened to me in my

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career, or it enabled me to create the

career success that I really craved but

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didn't know how to access previously.

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To remind you of the key things.

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First of all, to recognize it is

going to bring up emotions for you

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and to be prepared to allow those

emotions to, play out, but not to

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get stuck in them to actively review.

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What you can learn from the experience,

how you might have contributed to it.

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What signs you might have ignored

that you want to pick up on next time.

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Objectively consider what next.

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Really think about what you want,

letting your values and your why

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drive you reframing the opportunity.

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To think about it as a positive being

prepared to take action around mindset,

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leadership styles, upskilling, et

cetera, seeding the right opportunity

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at the right time for you, and then

investing in your resilience strategy.

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If you are in a career setback at

the moment and you're struggling with

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it and you would like some support,

some coaching support, please do

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get in touch and do reach out.

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Really happy to have a

chat with you about it.

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And I hope that if you've had a career

setback, you can share that with people

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so that they can see that sometimes these

career setbacks can be springboards to

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the career success that is right for you.

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Thank you so much for listening

to this episode of the Unstuck

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and Unstoppable podcast.

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I have lots of free resources you

can access on my website, ww.career

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tree coaching.co

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uk, and I'll also put

links in the show notes.

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If you found this episode

helpful, then please subscribe

294

so you don't miss the next one.

295

And please do share it with a

friend and leave me a review

296

and I will personally thank you.

297

Remember, you're capable of

more than shine brightly.

298

Lead boldly and unlock the

extraordinary potential within you.

299

Be unstoppable.