Suspect Your Boss Is About to Be Fired? Here's What to Do
One of my favourite bosses ever was the woman who promoted me to vice president. She was smart and kind and held her role with integrity. She was still fairly new to her role and had been working on pulling the executive team together so she could point us in a new direction. We had a wonderful offsite where the chemistry started to happen. We had bold, honest conversations. For the first time, we felt like a real team.
Unfortunately, her boss felt differently. The next week, she was fired. Shortly after the terrible news hit, she and I had a coffee. She told me that I was likely to be fired as well. Not because I was bad at my job, I was actually very good at it, but because my career was tied to her. She took a chance on a young woman. She predicted her predecessor wouldn’t see it the same way.
She was right. Less than a year later, I was out.
For a lot of women in leadership, the best thing that ever happened to their career was a great boss. This was the person who saw what you could do early, handed you the big project, and told everyone in the leadership meeting how good you were. You did the work, they supported you, and it worked.
Then one day you start to suspect that boss is on the way out, and a dreadful thought arrives right behind it. If they go, what happens to you? Who else will support you?
If the honest answer is "not many people," you're not alone and you're not in trouble yet. You do have some work to do, though, and it's much easier to do while your boss is still around to help.
Reasons to suspect your boss is about to be fired
Nobody announces these things in advance, but there are usually clues. None of them is proof on its own, so look for a cluster over several weeks rather than the odd one-off.
Their boss has started going around them. You're getting requests for updates, or meeting invitations, that used to come through your boss.
They've been dropped from meetings. The strategy session, the marketing review, or the budget call is happening without them, or they're sending a deputy.
Their authority is shrinking. Budget approvals now need a second signature, hiring requests stall, or a team gets moved out of their area with a vague explanation about synergies.
There's a new leader above them. New executives often bring in their own people, and when your boss and the new leader visibly disagree about direction, it's worth paying attention.
Consultants or an "org review" have shown up in their area. Reviews are sometimes routine, but they're also how organizations build a rationale for changes they're already leaning toward.
A role has appeared that overlaps with theirs. Think of a new chief of staff, a head of transformation, or a job posting that sounds a lot like your boss's job with shinier language.
The story about the numbers has changed. Senior leaders have stopped blaming market conditions and started talking about "execution" in your boss's area.
Your boss is acting differently. They seem checked out, unusually candid, or suddenly busy clearing out old files and updating their LinkedIn profile.
The real risk when your career is tied to your boss
When one leader has been your champion for years, something subtle happens to your reputation. Your work reaches senior leadership through them, often in their words and on their slides, and it gets filed under their team's results. People above your boss may think well of you in a general way, but they haven't formed their own view of what you can do, because they've never needed to.
As it did in my case, that arrangement works fine right up until the champion leaves. A new leader arrives with no history, the people who could have spoken up for you only know you secondhand, and the person who knew exactly how good you are is packing up their office.
You can go from being the go-to person to being a name on an org chart in a matter of weeks, without anything about the quality of your work having changed.
Your goal for the next few weeks is to move your reputation out of one person's head and into several.
While it's still a suspicion
Sanity-check your read with someone outside the building
Before you act on a hunch, test it with one person who has no stake in your organization, like a former colleague, a mentor at another company, or a coach. Stick to what you've observed rather than what you've heard, and resist the urge to run your theory past anyone who reports into the same leadership chain. If you turn out to be wrong, you want that theory to have stayed between you and one trusted outsider rather than surfacing in someone else's hallway conversation.
Take an honest inventory of your reputation
Make a list of the senior people who will matter after your boss is gone, like your boss's boss, their peers, and anyone likely to be involved in choosing a replacement. Next to each name, write down the last time they saw your work directly, meaning you presented it, you solved a problem for them, or you were in the room when it counted. Hearing about you from your boss doesn't count here. If your career has run through one champion, this list may be sobering, and that's exactly why it's worth making now.
Write down what you've delivered, and don't undersell it
Much of what your boss knows about your impact has probably never been written down anywhere, which means it could walk out the door with them. Build a one-page record of what you've delivered in the last 12 to 18 months, framed as business outcomes like revenue protected, costs reduced, risks avoided, and leaders developed.
Then read it again with a skeptical eye, because a lot of us write these badly. In a series of experiments published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Christine Exley and Judd Kessler found that women described their performance less favorably than equally performing men on a math and science task, by 13 points on a 100-point scale. The gap narrowed but didn't disappear when participants were told exactly how they'd scored, and it showed up even when there was no incentive to self-promote at all. It's worth noting that the task was one stereotyped as male, which is a fair description of most of the rooms you work in. The researchers didn't find the same gap when people described someone else's performance, so write your one-pager as if you were describing your strongest direct report, and then ask someone who's seen your work what you left out.
Ask your boss to give you more visibility
If your relationship is good, use it while it still carries weight. Ask your boss to introduce you to one or two of their peers on something specific, to let you present your own work at the next leadership review instead of summarizing it for you, or to copy you directly on conversations about your projects. None of that requires you to hint at what you suspect. A good champion wants you to be visible, and there's a very good chance yours will say yes without a second thought.
Start showing up in your own name
Look at the next month of meetings and find two or three chances to be the person presenting, answering, or following up, rather than the person whose work gets described. Send the follow-up email yourself instead of routing it through your boss, and offer to brief a senior leader on a risk you're managing. Small moves like these build a direct line between your name and your results, which is exactly what you'll need if your boss's name stops opening doors.
What not to do
Don't launch a panicked job search that you'll only half commit to. Don't pull away from your boss or start distancing yourself in meetings, because people notice and it rarely ages well. And don't align yourself publicly with whoever you think the successor might be, since you could easily be wrong about that too.
The week it's announced
Talk to your team before the rumor mill does
During a leadership change, you become the most visible leader your team has. Tell them what you know, what you don't know, and what isn't changing this week, and resist the pull to speculate. Then keep checking in over the following months as well as the first few days, because reactions to a leader's exit don't always show up right away.
Reach out to your boss as a person
Whatever the circumstances of their exit, send a short, genuine note or have a real conversation, and thank them for something specific they did for you or your team. It's basic decency, and it's also practical, because a former boss who lands well somewhere else can be one of the most valuable people in your network.
Get in front of your skip-level the same week
Ask for 20 minutes to offer continuity. Walk through what your team owns, where the work stands, and any risks the transition creates. This may be the first time this leader has heard about your work directly from you, so make it count by talking about outcomes rather than activity. If you'd like to take on more during the transition, say so plainly and without apologizing for it. Example wording: "While the transition gets sorted out, I'm happy to take on [specific area], and here's what I'd focus on first."
The first 90 days with your new boss
Learn what they're measured on before you pitch anything
New leaders arrive with a mandate, whether or not anyone has said it out loud. Before you share your plans, ask what they've been asked to fix, what success looks like to their boss, and how they like to receive information. Then find one early win you can deliver inside their priorities rather than yours.
Tell your own story, because nobody else is going to
Your new boss will hear about you from other people, and some of them won't know much. Don't wait for your reputation to reach them secondhand. Early on, ask for time to walk them through what your team delivers and what you've built. Example wording: "A lot of my team's work used to reach leadership through [previous boss]. I'd like to make sure you have a clear picture of what we deliver and where I think we can go next." Then share your one-pager, which should be in very good shape by now.
Find out how they see you before review season does
Around the 60-day mark, ask what they've noticed about your team's work, what they'd like to see more of, and whether anything has surprised them. You want to learn how you're being perceived while there's still time to shape it, rather than in a performance review after the impression has already set.
What if you decide to leave?
Sometimes a boss's exit shows you that your future at the company was more tied to one person than you'd realized. Just make it a decision rather than a reaction. Give the new leadership a fair look, weigh what you learn against what's available elsewhere, and if you do go, leave on your own timeline.
Frequently asked questions
Should I start job hunting if I think my boss is getting fired?
It's reasonable to refresh your LinkedIn profile and reconnect with your network, since those are good habits anyway. I'd hold off on a full search until you've seen who's coming in and what they want, because a boss's exit can open doors internally as well as close them.
What if my boss was the only person who really knew my work?
Then the most important thing you can do is start building direct relationships with the leaders above and around your boss, and soon. Write down what you've delivered, ask your boss for introductions while they can still make them, and look for every legitimate chance to present your work in your own name. It feels awkward at first, but it's far less awkward than starting from zero with a new leader.
How do I talk to my team when my boss is fired?
Stick to what's been officially communicated, be honest about what you don't know, and tell them what stays the same in the short term. Avoid commentary on why it happened, even if you have opinions. Your team will take their cues from how steady you are.
Well helloooooooo there! If this post hit a little close to home, you may recognize yourself in what we call the Invisible Expert, the leader whose work is excellent and whose visibility hasn't caught up. The Stuck Director Assessment shows you which pattern fits you best and the moves that tend to work for it. It's free, and you won't have to run it past anyone in the hallway first.
