Laid off? Lean on your relationships, not your network

In 2025, companies directly attributed 55,000 job cuts to artificial intelligence—more than 12 times the figure from just two years earlier. In 2026, the pace has only accelerated. Block eliminated 4,000 roles in a single announcement. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate positions. Meta, Atlassian, Pinterest . . . the list grows weekly.

If you haven’t been affected yet, someone you know has. And whether driven by AI, a merger, a restructuring, or a strategic pivot, layoffs are no longer exceptional events. They’re a recurring feature of working life.

Most layoff advice focuses on the mechanics: Update your résumé, optimize your LinkedIn profile, practice your exit story. All necessary. None sufficient. What determines whether a career transition is a three-week pivot or an 18-month grind isn’t your résumé; it’s the quality of the relationships you’ve built, maintained, and invested in long before you needed them.

As I wrote in a recent article, busyness systematically downgrades every relationship we have. Layoffs reveal exactly how much that downgrade has cost us.

Before: Build relationship capital you don’t need yet

The time to invest in relationships is not when you’re in crisis. It’s now, when you have nothing urgent to ask for, and something to give.

In my book Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships, I describe four relationship dynamics: Ally, Supporter, Rival, and Adversary. In stable times, Supporters and Allies can look and feel similar: Both are friendly. Both are responsive. The difference only becomes visible under pressure. A Supporter says: “Let me know if I can help.” An Ally picks up the phone before you have to ask.

Most professionals overestimate how many Allies they have. They have a large network of Supporters—people who will help if it’s convenient, if the timing works, if there’s something in it for them. When a layoff hits, Supporters go quiet. Allies don’t.

Building Ally relationships before you need them means investing without expectation. It means checking in on a colleague’s career goals when there’s no project requiring it. It means making an introduction because it’s the right thing to do, not because you’re keeping score. It means being the person who asks “How are you doing?” and actually waits for the answer.

And it means looking beyond your current company. Your professional relationships should extend across your industry, your community, and your life, and not just focus on the relationships that exist within your org chart. This entails occasional meetups with former colleagues, attending industry events, and showing up for the people in your network. The peers you invest in today become the relationships that catch you tomorrow.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “I haven’t done any of this!” Take heart, you’re not alone, and you’re not too late. Think of the best boss or colleague you’ve had, someone you’d jump at the chance to work with again. Now send them a DM on LinkedIn, an email, or even a handwritten note, and tell them what made them special. Not because you need something. Because they deserve to hear it. That single act of reaching out is how dormant relationships come back to life. The best time to invest was a year ago. The second-best time is today.

During: Be direct, then be generous

Most career advice tells you not to lead with your need. I’d push back on that. The need is real, so why dance around the elephant in the room? If you’ve been laid off, say so. Make the ask: “I’m in transition, and I’d value your perspective” or “If you hear of anything that might be a fit, I’m looking for [then describe the role]. I’d really appreciate it.” It’s an honest request, without guilt, even if they aren’t able to assist in that moment.

Ellie Rich-Poole, an executive career coach who works with senior leaders who are navigating transitions, confirms this. The people who land quickly, she says, are the ones who “proactively got in touch and asked for help—being brave and vulnerable, and specific with their requests.” Not a vague “let me know if you hear of anything,” but a concrete ask: Who is your favorite recruiter? Would you make a personal introduction? That specificity makes it easy for people to actually help.

Here’s what happens when you’re direct: You discover who your Allies actually are. The people who make an introduction or pick up the phone—those are your Allies. The people who say “let me know if I can help” and then go quiet—those are your Supporters. Recognizing the difference saves you from pouring energy into relationships that won’t hold your weight right now.

The key is what you do next. Make a deposit back into those relationships, not as a quid pro quo, but as the reactivation of your relationship investment muscle. Share an article that’s relevant to their work. Connect them with someone in your network. Ask about their challenges, not just your own. This is how you transform a moment of vulnerability into a relationship that’s stronger than it was before.

Rich-Poole makes another important point: Be visible, even when it’s hard. Post on LinkedIn. Share what you’re learning, not just what you need. A layoff carries grief, and the instinct to withdraw is real, but isolation compounds the problem. The professionals who stay visible, combining openness about their situation with genuinely helpful content for their network, are the ones who attract opportunities they didn’t know existed.

A technology leader I was coaching landed their new role within weeks of being laid off. Not through a job board. Not through a recruiter. Through a conversation with a mutual connection who knew their work and their character well enough to make an introduction without being asked. And don’t forget the people who were laid off alongside you. They’re navigating the same uncertainty, and your support matters more than you think. Being an Ally to someone in the same storm—sharing leads, making introductions, simply checking in—is how reputations are built. People remember who showed up when things were hard.

After: Invest forward, not backward

Landing a new role isn’t the end of the relationship work, it’s the beginning of the next cycle. The leaders who thrive long-term are the ones who carry their relationships forward rather than treating each job as a clean slate.

Stay connected with former colleagues. Not as a networking strategy, but as a human practice. The people you worked alongside understand your strengths, your values, and your working style in ways a new team doesn’t yet. They’re also navigating their own transitions, and your continued investment in them is what separates an Ally from a Supporter.

In your new role, start building relationship capital immediately. Don’t wait until you’ve “proven yourself” to invest in peers—that’s the busyness trap. Use the Relationship Pulse Check I recommend to leaders: three questions that work in any context. What’s working? What’s not? What’s one thing we can do to ensure mutual success? Ask these of your new colleagues early and often. They signal that you’re invested in the relationship, not just the role.

And pay it forward. The most powerful thing you can do after navigating a layoff is to become the person who helps others through theirs. Make introductions. Write recommendations. Take the call from the stranger who was referred by a mutual connection. Be the Ally you needed, especially for the people who are still searching.

Relationships are career insurance

Layoffs will continue. AI will accelerate them. Mergers, restructurings, and strategic pivots will keep reshuffling org charts. You cannot control any of that.

What you can control is the quality of the relationships you build—inside your company and outside it—with the people above you and beside you, at work and in your whole life. Those relationships are the infrastructure that holds when everything else shifts.

Forget six degrees of separation. In today’s world, you’re two degrees of connection away from your next opportunity, your next collaboration, your next chapter. But only if you’ve invested in making those connections real.

The question isn’t whether disruption will find you. The question is whether, when it does, you will have Allies . . . or just contacts.