About Coaching Season
Built from a moment that never left.
Rafael-Cristian Rios
Founder, Coaching Season LLC
"No one should have to stand in that parking lot alone."
Early in my HR career I had to lay off over 90 people I had personally worked with for years. The way it worked: it was early morning and I was told on the spot to take "this list" and to tap each person on the shoulder, one by one, and tell them to go into the conference room that leads out into the parking lot.
With every tap the feeling in the office and within me became more intense. When it was over I walked out to the parking lot and found them all there, speaking to the news, crying, confused, holding their boxes, with no one to help them understand what had just happened or what came next. No support. No guidance. Just a parking lot full of people I knew, alone with the worst moment of their professional lives.
That hurt never left me.
The weight of that experience stayed with me and deepened when I found myself on the other side of that same conversation, laid off more than once in my own career. I know intimately what it feels like to sit in that room, walk out that door, and try to find your footing when everything has shifted beneath you. The shock. The silence. The stages you are expected to move through without anyone to help you move through them.
Watching the same gap appear after every single exit conversation.
Over 28 years in human resources I kept seeing the same gap: the moment right after the conversation ends, when the person is alone and no one knows what to do with them. Organizations had processes for the decision. They had legal review, severance packages, outplacement portals that would activate weeks later. But nobody owned the first hour when the person needed someone the most.
My commitment to showing up for people in their hardest moments runs deeper than my career. When I was young, my brother lost his ability to communicate at the age of 4 to autism. Being witness to this caused devastation in my heart and has shaped everything about how I move through the world. I have spent my life asking who shows up for the people who cannot show up for themselves.
well transitioned is part of my answer to that question, built for the professional version of that moment. The hour after the conversation.
It is a 6-week dedicated 1-on-1 career coaching program that begins within the first hour of a separation event. The same coach from the moment the news is delivered through the full six weeks of transition. Not a portal. Not a hotline. A human being who shows up before the employee has even left the building and stays until they are ready for what comes next.
well transitioned is delivered by a dedicated team of career and mental wellness coaches located throughout the United States, each one trained to show up in that first hour and stay for the full six weeks. Same coach. Start to finish.
No one should have to stand in that parking lot alone.
Rafael-Cristian Rios
Founder, Coaching Season LLC
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