Greetings From Goizueta: How A Layoff Made Me A Better MBA

It seems like MBAs are the masters of the business universe. We run Fortune 500 companies, start hedge funds, own sports teams, and live in beach front homes in the Hamptons or cabins in Vail.

Then, there’s someone like me, whose MBA journey started from an apartment in Charlotte after I got laid off from my first job after undergrad.

MBAs can come off as if we’re excellent at everything. Smart. Talented. Sometimes, you’ll even find pro athletes and artists in our midst.

I felt like that: good at everything. I was used to being a top performer at work and school through undergrad. I was Magna Cum Laude in undergrad while holding internships most semesters, including American Airlines and Penguin Random House. I was doing my thing. I was jamming!

 A WAKE-UP CALL

Martin Gravely, Emory University (Goizueta)

Once that first job hit? YIKES! I felt like I couldn’t get anything right. I couldn’t do SQL right. If, from, then? It wasn’t clicking. I had never done that sort of work before and it showed. Where I thought I’d do well, the analysis of data, I couldn’t get that right either. I never went deep enough. I never asked “why?” enough to get to the core takeaways of the data we were analyzing. And, somehow, I couldn’t even dress right. I like to think of myself as a well-dressed guy, but my blazer and dress shirt during a video meeting drew criticism.

Fortunately, one thing I could do right all day – every day – was show up and try. That saved me and got me an opportunity on a different team where I thought I’d be a better fit. In some ways, that was true. Still, my confidence had taken a beating and I felt distracted. I wasn’t valuing the small things. There would be typos in emails to clients or datapoints missing from my analysis or data wrangling. Looking back, I could say I wasn’t put in the best position to succeed with the rushed onboarding and a lack of communication from the leadership around me. Bottom line: I didn’t do everything I needed to do. I should have valued the details – the fundamentals – more. In the end, when the company was changing strategy in the midst of some financial precarity, my name ended up on the pink slip.

To be honest, I didn’t see it coming. Despite my missteps, I thought I was providing value. I was the first person on the social media team to dedicate time to looking at the data and tying to the performance of posts and campaigns. I helped all the brand managers understand what worked well and what didn’t. I stepped in to do the unsung work of making posts for managers who were sick or on vacation. I put in extra hours to create reports beyond what was asked of me. Overall, I thought I was doing well – at least that’s what I had been told. Turns out, that wasn’t really the case and I became a casualty of circumstances far above my grade or level of influence.

A CHANGE IN PRIORITIES

Strangely, I was okay with that. I could acknowledge then – and now – that I could have been better. I would have valued the importance of the basics and executed on them with greater attention to detail. At the same time, I would have channeled my off-hours leaning more towards areas where the firm hoped to ultimately position itself.

What I am not okay with is how my peers and I were treated on the way out. I felt like I was treated like a number in an Excel spreadsheet cell. It wasn’t a unique story. A meeting invite was added to my calendar. There were no details about agenda or attendees. The invite’s ambiguity told me this might mean trouble. At the Zoom call, I was joined by seven colleagues, an HR representative, and a recently-hired director. The director proceeded to read off a script from his other monitor, telling us that the ‘strategy has shifted’ and ‘money is tight’. You know, the usual suspects that lead to you losing your job. There was little compassion and even fewer answers. It was one thing to be let go, but I watched mothers cry as they asked for answers. All the director could do was muster up an unconvincing “I’m sorry”.  That dismissive behavior opened my eyes and gave me a different reason for going back to school.

Originally, I wanted to pursue my MBA so I could move into a different industry and go deeper into marketing. All of that remains true. After experiencing a layoff (and surviving another at the next company where I worked), learning how to be a people-first leader became my principle “why” for getting an MBA. I want to learn how to be a leader who can maintain people at the center of decision-making. Profits matter. Costs matter. Hard decisions must be made to maximize the first and minimize the latter, but neither of those things happen without people making it happen. People are the way.

Emory MBA students walking the halls

A NEW PURPOSE

I want to be a leader who can inspire people, empower people, and be gracious during the hard times. An MBA can give me that education, so that’s why I’m here. I’ve seen this kind of leadership done well, but largely I’ve seen it done poorly. I want to do what I can to be a good example of corporate leadership. Emory University’s Goizueta Business School was the perfect place for me to go further on my reason for school. Emory aims to build “principled leaders” and that is absolutely who I want to be. We have these opportunities baked in with our core teams in the first semester of our first year. There are clubs where we can learn how to lead and practices these principles. In classes like Principled Leadership with Professor Rod McCowan or Good Growth with Professor Omar Rodriguez-Vila, we examine how the best leaders reflect the best practices, At Goizueta, principled leadership is not just for marketing. It is demonstrated in class, through the administration, and through student action.

Getting laid off was great for me. Not financially, of course. That was a disaster. Big picture, it forced me to check my ego and reset of my understanding of where I am in life. Today, I’m a better, more confident, more complete, and more capable me because of that experience. My MBA opportunity is pushing me forward in that journey. Use your MBA opportunity to grow. Test your limits academically. Be a leader of an organization. Be the social butterfly you never thought you could be. You earned this opportunity to have a unique experience of growth and exploration in an environment that encourages that. Don’t waste it.

Bio: Born and raised in Cincinnati, OH, Martin graduated from Seton Hall University with a B.S. in Marketing and Economics. After undergrad, he worked in digital marketing and social media analytics in health media before moving to into the agency world with SSCG Media Group as an analyst and brand supervisor.

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