Hi Reader,

In each week's newsletter I often say "this will either resonate with you or someone you know."

This week's episode 292 is no exception.

I know many people who are struggling to find their next job after a layoff or reduction in workforce. I also know people who are employed and struggling because they feel stuck. They want to find a different job, but the circumstances don't allow.

For some (not all), their struggle is life-altering.

This week's episode is part 2 of 4 on self-leadership where I cover a challenging topic under the self-leadership theme.

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I use a visual metaphor suggesting that when you build your life on one support (such as your work), you run the risk of a collapse when it takes a hit. Think of it like a roof with just one support pillar.

When you build your life on the five life pillars, you can take a hit without it all collapsing.

As you read this or listen to the episode consider that people around you are struggling with their career pillar. My hope is this serves as a reminder to develop all the key life supports so that a "storm" cannot take your life down with a hit to one of the pillars.

Share this with someone who needs this.

In this week's episode 292 my main point is this.

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The Coach's Corner Weekly insights and actionable tips from my lens as an executive coach—helping you lead, grow, and thrive.

Your Most Stable Team Might Be Your Most At-Risk Team

There's a phenomenon playing out in workplaces right now that doesn't show up on any retention dashboard. It’s known as job hugging. It's what happens when an employee who would normally be looking for their next opportunity instead grips tightly to the role they have, not out of loyalty or satisfaction, but out of fear that there's nothing better availble to them outside.

Why the Exit Door Suddenly Feels Locked

To understand job hugging, you have to understand what's happening in the broader job market right now. AI screening tools are filtering applications before a human ever reviews them. Experienced, qualified people are submitting tailored applications and hearing nothing back, not even a rejection. Just silence.

Word travels fast. Your employees are watching former colleagues, friends, family and people in their networks send out dozens of applications and get nothing in return. And they're drawing a conclusion: “if I leave, I might be stepping into that same conundrum.”

So they stay. But staying out of fear is not the same as staying because they're engaged, valued, or growing. And that distinction matters more than most leaders realize.

The Fear Tax Just Found a New Source

In The Human Dividend White Paper, I introduce the concept of the Fear Tax, the invisible performance drag that builds when people don’t trust the intent behind a major change, like an AI rollout. Job hugging adds a second layer to that tax, and it’s one most leaders aren’t watching for.

Think about what’s happening inside the mind of a job-hugging employee. They’re already navigating uncertainty about how AI might reshape their role internally, or even eliminate it entirely. At the same time, they’ve concluded that the door to anywhere else is closed. That’s not a recipe for renewed commitment. It’s a recipe for someone who shows up, does the minimum required to stay safe, and quietly disengages from anything beyond their job description.

Four Moves That Determine Whether Your Team Survives AI Change or Thrives In It

The Leadership Parallel

There's something else worth calling out here, and it connects back to the four-part podcast series I'm currently releasing on self leadership. The individual facing a silent job search has to find what they can still control when the external circumstances offer nothing back. Leaders are facing a version of the same challenge.

You can't control the job market. You can't undo what AI screening has done to the hiring process, and you can't promise your team that external opportunities will open back up anytime soon. What you can control is whether the people inside your organization feel that they're being equipped for what's ahead, or simply managed until something changes.

That's the Human Dividend. Not the efficiency AI creates, but what you do with the space it opens up. For a job-hugging employee, that dividend might be the difference between someone who stays and slowly fades, and someone who stays and rediscovers why their contribution matters.

The door outside may feel closed for a lot of people right now. The question for leaders to ask is what kind of room you're giving them on the inside.

​Continue reading this article.

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Are you planning leadership training?

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You Can Catch This Week's Episode:

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​Listen on Spotify
​Listen on Overcast
​Listen on our Website
​Watch on YouTube​

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Why One Career Hit Can Feel Like Everything Is Gone

In episode 292, I invite you to consider the meaning of this visual metaphor.

Imagine a roof held up by a single column. On a calm day, it looks completely fine. But you and I both know it's one bad weather day away from coming down. For a lot of high-functioning people, that single column is their career. And when work takes a hit, it doesn't feel like a setback in one area of life. It feels like the whole structure is going down at once. In this episode, Bernie unpacks why that happens and what you can actually do about it today.

Who This Is For

This episode is for you if you've recently lost your job and can't understand why it feels so much bigger than a career setback. It's also for you if your career looks fine on the outside but something feels quietly off on the inside. If you've ever poured everything into your work and wondered where everything else went, this one is going to land.

Key Takeaways

1. The one-column life is a structural problem, not a personal failure. When your identity, purpose, social life, and self-worth all route through your career, a single career hit shakes all of it at once. That's not fragility. That's physics.
2. The five life pillars are load-bearing. Health, Fitness, Career, Relationships, and Legacy each carry real weight. The more of them you're actively building, the steadier you are when any one of them takes a hit.
3. Focus has a cost. The discipline that made you successful at work is often the exact thing that quietly crowded out everything else — one busy week at a time, until your whole life was standing on one support.
4. Building the other supports is not a reward for later. You don't get to work on the rest of your life once your career situation is resolved. Building those supports is what steadies you right now, in the middle of the instability.
5. This is leverage, not motivation. When you can't move the thing that's crushing you, you build more things to hold you up. That's self-leadership applied to the actual structure of your life.

Summary

This is episode two of a four-part series on self-leadership. Catch the first episode here.

In this episode I make the case that career disruption hits as hard as it does because most high achievers have built their entire life on a single support. Using the metaphor of a roof held up by one column, I walk through the five life pillars — Health, Fitness, Career, Relationships, and Legacy — and explain why distributing the weight of your life across all five isn't just a feel-good idea. It's a real move you can make today, without anyone's permission and without a single callback. At the end of the series, I will share a free tool: the 90-Day Self Leadership Blueprint.

If this resonates, I offer a complimentary strategy call. Schedule yours here.

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Podcast Rankings & Accolades

Stay fulfilled,
Bernie Borges
Founder: The Fulfilled@Work Academy™
Host, Life Fulfilled Podcast

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