I Spent 15 Years Learning to Solve Problems. Then I Got Laid Off.

I was laid off as I finished packing lunches for the kids’ first day of school. Peanut butter, jelly, and job loss. 

Smiling for family photos and shuffling our three children out the door, I grimaced as I grinned, struggling to suppress the news my employer had so thoughtfully delivered via email in the middle of the night.

Restructuring. A difficult decision. All the best.

Throughout 15 years in Big Tech, this was the sum of all fears. Yet when it hit, it collided head-on with back-to-school energy, sandwiched between new backpacks, fresh crayons, and unopened bags of Goldfish crackers.

My first instinct was to do something. Email the higher-ups. Explain why the decision was a mistake. Heave a Hail Mary across the vocational football field. Surely there was something I could say or do to save my job.

There wasn't.

By that evening, after a day of emotional goodbyes, something unexpected had happened. I felt a strange sense of calm. I closed Slack, shut my laptop, and put it on a shelf. I had come to the end of all of that.

Of course, the job search would begin. But I had no idea how long it might last, and I wanted to do something with the unexpected space in my calendar. Something that reminded me that life was bigger than the gallery view in Zoom.

First I considered golf. Lots of golf. But golf is expensive, and I'm quite bad at it. Travel sounded appealing, until I remembered that airfare is expensive, and our three children had just started the school year.

Then I remembered a conversation with a friend who worked at a VA hospital. Years earlier, she'd encouraged me to consider volunteering as a chaplain someday. Chaplaincy, I thought. What could be more different from Zoom calls and digital advertising campaigns?

Not long afterward, I began volunteering at a nearby senior living community while receiving formal chaplaincy training.

Chaplains care for people as they wrestle with life's questions, losses, and hopes. That care sometimes includes prayer or religious conversation. Often, it simply means listening without trying to make a difficult reality disappear.

I was not especially good at the second part.

During my first week, I visited a woman who had lived in the memory care unit for several years. Almost immediately, I set about making myself useful. I cleared her lunch tray. I repositioned her wheelchair. When she expressed frustration with the timing of group exercise, I practically ran to the resident life coordinator to pass along her feedback. Rather than listening to what she needed, I was identifying problems and solving them. It was what 15 years in Big Tech had trained me to do.

But somewhere in all that activity, I had failed to do the very thing I'd come to do: listen. She had a family, a history, a life unfolding in memory care, and her own longings and losses. I was so focused on addressing her concerns that I hadn't really stopped to understand her.

I wanted to accomplish something. What I needed to offer was my presence.

Later that week, I discussed the visit with my chaplaincy training group. Someone asked a question that caught me off guard: Why had I felt such a strong need to complete tasks?

I began to see how deeply that reflex had been ingrained over 15 years of putting out corporate fires, chasing unread messages, and measuring my usefulness by objectives, results, and things crossed off a list. When I felt uncertain, I did something. When someone described a problem, I tried to fix it. I had become so accustomed to proving my value through action that I barely noticed the instinct anymore.

And here was the uncomfortable possibility: The habit that had helped me succeed at work was getting in the way of connecting with another human being.

What surprised me most about chaplaincy training was how much of it took place after an encounter. We revisited conversations, asked what we had felt in the moment, examined our assumptions, and considered what we might do differently. The point wasn't simply to learn better phrases or techniques. It was to become more aware of the beliefs beneath our behavior.

Psychologists Chris Argyris and Donald Schön described a distinction that helps explain this. In single-loop learning, we adjust what we do to get a better result. In double-loop learning, we question the assumptions that made our original actions seem right in the first place.

I could have responded to my visit by making a mental checklist: Sit down. Ask more questions. Don't rush to fix things. Those might have helped. But my training group pushed me toward a harder question: Why did I believe that being helpful required me to be constantly doing?

That's a question no checklist could answer for me.

I've been thinking about this distinction as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly familiar part of how we work and learn.

Much of what we're asking AI to do in the workplace fits naturally into that first loop. Give an AI system a goal, some examples of good performance, and information about what actually happened, and it can recommend adjustments. Ask another question. Change your tone. Listen longer. Try a different approach.

These are compelling capabilities. I've spent much of my career helping people develop professional skills, and I know good feedback matters. But receiving feedback is not the same as learning from it.

Imagine an AI coach observing my first chaplaincy visit. It might have noticed that I spent too much time completing tasks and too little time listening. It could have recommended asking more questions or allowing longer silences. And it would have been right.

But the deeper question wasn't simply how to become a better listener. It was why I felt so uncomfortable sitting still. Why had I come to believe that being helpful meant constantly doing something?

AI can help us explore those questions, too. It can prompt reflection, challenge assumptions, and offer perspectives we might otherwise miss. But it cannot do the uncomfortable work of reconsidering our beliefs on our behalf.

And that's the distinction I've come to appreciate. AI can help us become extraordinarily good at pursuing our goals. But sometimes the most important learning begins when we question the goals, beliefs, and assumptions we've been pursuing all along.

And this isn't just a workplace problem. How often do we offer solutions when a friend wants to be heard? Fill silence because it makes us uncomfortable? Confuse being busy with being important?

I entered chaplaincy fresh off a layoff, carrying 15 years of professional habits and a deeply ingrained belief that my value came from what I could accomplish. Somewhere between losing my job and sitting beside residents in memory care, I began to question something more fundamental: Why had I come to believe that being productive was the same as being purposeful?

I haven't entirely unlearned that belief. I still reach for solutions when someone needs a listener. I still feel the urge to fill an uncomfortable silence. But I'm learning to recognize those instincts, question them, and occasionally set them aside.

I went into chaplaincy hoping to make myself useful during an unexpected interruption in my career. Instead, I encountered a question I'd spent most of my professional life avoiding: What if my worth has never depended on how much I accomplish?

That’s a question I'm still learning how to answer.