293: Navigating Career Grief: From CBS Executive to Moonshot Mentor with Laverne McKinnon

What do you do when a dream job ends in heartbreak?

In this eye-opening episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, host John Neral sits down with Laverne McKinnon, former Senior VP of Drama Development at CBS, to talk about a rarely acknowledged experience: career grief.

After leading CBS from last place to first with mega-hits like CSI and Criminal Minds, Laverne was unexpectedly fired at the height of her career. What followed was a silent, decade-long struggle with emotional fallout that society often tells us to ignore.

Laverne introduces the concept of disenfranchised grief—a powerful term for the emotional pain professionals feel after job loss or career disruption that isn’t socially validated. Through her LEARN Framework (Look, Explore, 

Address, Reframe, Nurture), Laverne shows how we can move from heartbreak to healing, reconnect with our values, and reclaim agency over our careers.

Whether you're facing layoffs, mid-career stagnation, or preparing for a major transition, this episode will help you understand how to grieve the professional losses we’re told to "just get over."

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why career grief is real—and why ignoring it is harmful
• The emotional impact of sudden job loss after career success
• What disenfranchised grief means in the workplace
• How to use the LEARN framework to process grief and regain clarity
• The connection between unprocessed failure and blocked resilience
• Rituals like writing a "career eulogy" to create closure
• How grief reveals your core values—and points you toward your next moonshot

Connect with Laverne McKinnon

Website | LinkedIn | Substack

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Career Moonshots
• 3:43 Laverne McKinnon's CBS Success Story
• 5:50 The Firing and Processing Career Grief
• 13:56 The LEARN Method for Career Grief
• 22:05 Building Resilience Through Processing Failure
• 28:26 Finding Your Next Career Moonshot

Transcript

John Neral: 0:01

In today's job market, it is understandable that many mid-career professionals think they have to play it safe, can't make big moves and should simply be grateful for what they have. But what if you not only decided to think bigger, but acted bigger as well? My guest this week is a wonderful example of what it means to go after your moonshot. This week is a wonderful example of what it means to go after your moonshot. Laverne McKinnon reached a milestone in her career with CBS, where she worked as the Senior Vice President for Drama Development. During her tenure, she helped lead the charge at the network as they went from last to first place by working on such shows as CSI and Criminal Minds, and then, after 10 years, she was fired. How do you process? How do you move on? How do you put one foot in front of the other and get back to work, especially doing what you love? Today, you will hear Laverne McKinnon's powerful story about how she pivoted in her career after an unexpected setback and built her mid-career GPS to take her moonshot to what was next.

John Neral: 1:11

Let's get started. Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast and I'm your host, John Neral. I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula as a podcast host, you sometimes have a guest who delivers such a powerful message that you decide to shift the schedule and move that episode up because you believe this is exactly what your audience needs to hear, and that's what happened in this episode. At a time when people are fearful of losing their jobs, companies are going through dramatic organizational change and there's a general air of uncertainty, laverne's message is one I believe you need to hear.

John Neral: 2:07

Laverne McKinnon is an executive and leadership coach specializing in career transitions, whether recovering from a setback, embracing a pivot or stepping into a leadership role with more confidence. Her upcoming book Showstopper explores career grief and transformation, reframing setbacks as plot twists that offer the chance to rewrite our stories and shape our futures. A former senior executive at CBS and Epix, laverne executive produced Netflix Girlboss, teaches at Northwestern University and is a mentor for the CAPE Leadership Fellowship Program. I invite you to listen very closely as Laverne shares her best tips for acknowledging where you are in your career, leaning into what you're feeling and understanding why you should never overlook or diminish career grief, as it is an important part of your career success. That Laverne shares through her Learn Method. I am so honored to bring you this episode and it is my pleasure to introduce you to Laverne McKinnon. Hi, laverne, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here today.

Laverne McKinnon: 3:25

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

John Neral: 3:29

I am too. I've been waiting to have this conversation with you for a while, Laverne. You have an incredible mid-career moment that I briefly touched on in the introduction, but would you please share with us what that was?

Laverne McKinnon: 3:47

introduction, but would you please share with us what that was? Yes, john, I'm going to start this story out by just saying how much I love a moonshot. I love big, audacious goals and early in my career I had a big moonshot, a big dream that I would become the president of a film studio, president of a broadcast network. It was really something that I aspired to working in the entertainment industry and I got my shot at that by being hired by CBS in their children's programming department and this is back when there was Saturday morning kids programming, which no longer exists. And after two years in that department I was promoted to prime time current programming and that's like going from the little league all the way to the major leagues. It was a big leap and it was very exciting, very thrilling. After two years in that department I was promoted again to the most coveted department at the network, which was drama development, and I was part of the team that took the network literally from last place to first place by developing the CSI franchise, criminal Minds. It was heady, it was exciting. And after two years I was promoted again to the head of that department and that first year in that job I had the highest testing pilots in network history.

Laverne McKinnon: 5:01

And then after 10 years of being at CBS, I was fired and I did not see that coming at all and that experience really pivoted me and it took me about 10 years to realize that that the emotions that I was feeling after losing my job and I mean I felt I was gutted it was really, really horrible.

Laverne McKinnon: 5:32

I'm actually getting a little emotional right now just like thinking about it and reliving it. And after about 10 years after I was fired from CBS, I realized that this emotional weight that I was carrying it was grief. Cbs, I realized that this emotional weight that I was carrying it was grief. And when I gave myself permission to mourn that job loss I was able to realize that that original dream that I had of being a network president, it no longer applied to me and what was really important to me was being able to help people not feel the way that I did after a career setback. So my mid-career pivot was really driven by a very bad experience but it clarified for me what was really important to my life and how I wanted my job and my career to reflect those values.

John Neral: 6:20

So, laverne, I thank you for sharing all of that, because for so many people right now here we are almost in the middle of 2025. This is when this episode is going to drop. People are going through a lot of changes in their workplace. Some are staying with jobs because they need to, some have unexpectedly been fired, laid off, ripped from their positions, have unexpectedly been fired, laid off, ripped from their positions, and to your point. There is a lot to process when someone goes through an unexpected loss in their job. I'm wondering if you could share with us a little bit about what was that first thought you had when you were told you were being fired, and how quickly maybe your mind might've raced in that moment to start processing everything.

Laverne McKinnon: 7:19

It was surreal because I did not see it coming and, to be completely transparent, I was in a codependent relationship with my boss. So when she came to me and told me that I had become a liability, my first instinct was, honestly, to make her world better. It's like, oh, if I'm the source of pain, then I should leave. And I said it's like, oh, then let's settle out my contract, let's talk to my lawyer. She declined that offer and it took several months for my firing to become official. But when it really hit me of like, oh my gosh, wait a second, I don't have to worry about my boss, how am I feeling? It ripped me into a thousand pieces, because my identity was so tied to my job. It wasn't just the title or the salary or the perks, or the benefits or being in a position of power. It was about me being competent and capable, that I was someone that could be relied upon, and I thought of CBS as my home. And so I was shattered and I did not know what to do next.

John Neral: 8:35

When you look back on that time, would you say that being the senior VP of drama development was the job you loved?

Laverne McKinnon: 8:48

the senior VP of drama development was the job you loved. I love that job so much because I was able to advocate for writers, for talent who marginalized talent, and I really it's a great pride in that and to be a part of a team that was having such an impact on people's viewing. And when CSI took off those procedurals I mean it just changed the entire network and to see how that happened and to be associated with something that was so commercially successful is like yeah, that totally fed my ego. Sure yes, sure, yes.

John Neral: 9:26

Yeah, what would you say was the hardest thing about working in the entertainment industry? Because for many people and myself included, as a child who grew up in front of the television set, when you talked about taking CBS from the bottom to first, I remember that time. I remember the network wars and those kind of things before we really had streaming services and so much more content and entertainment on demand in terms of like. What was that specifically like for you? In terms of being in such a position of leadership and authority and influence where you really could make change that hadn't been made before.

Laverne McKinnon: 10:18

Well, I should put this into a little bit of a bigger banner, which is John, I am a recovering perfectionist and a recovering people pleaser. So the validation of being bumped up and being a part of this incredible moment in time, it was incredible and it was really feeding my people, pleasing and being a perfectionist and having these goalposts and really mixing my metaphors here, but like getting projects across the finish line. That was so much of my identity and so it felt great in so many ways where she would introduce me to people, she would put me front and center, she would validate my ideas in public settings and so, wow, it felt golden. I was like on a golden elevator until I wasn't.

John Neral: 11:15

Right. And so when that moment happens and you started processing processing the shock, the grief, the upset, the anger, the plethora of emotions that come with all of that, one of the things that struck me from our pre-call conversation and prepping for today's conversation was and you shared it openly at the beginning which was and you shared it openly at the beginning which was it took you 10 years to fully process everything that happened. You and I get that, but what would you say to somebody who might be listening, or maybe someone in your past who has said to you 10 years, that seems like an awfully long time to process. How would you respond to that?

Laverne McKinnon: 12:04

Well, I would definitely go on the defensive.

John Neral: 12:09

Of course, and rightfully so.

Laverne McKinnon: 12:12

I understand the question and it's because I did not know that I was grieving. And if I had permission to grieve and I even knew about this, I think it wouldn't have taken me 10 years to understand my experience. And so there's a term in the bereavement community called disenfranchised grief. It's a term that's coined by Kenneth Doka, dr Kenneth Doka and it essentially means any type of grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated or publicly mourned, and professional heartbreak. It falls into the category of disenfranchised grief because, hey, you should be lucky that you even had that experience.

Laverne McKinnon: 12:53

Hey, laverne, you went on to other really awesome jobs, like why are you so sad and you know? Or people who have chosen to retire. It's like, what's like, what's wrong with that? Or, oh, you've been laid off but you got chosen to retire. It's like, what's like, what's wrong with that? Or oh, you've been laid off but you got a great package. It's like you're getting paid for a couple of months but there's still a sense of loss and grief comes from attachment and the depth of our attachment.

Laverne McKinnon: 13:19

So I was deeply attached to my CBS job, so when I lost it, of course I would feel grief. You may have been in a job where it's like, oh, it was just a job, it was a paycheck, so if you left or you were laid off, it's like I wasn't attached to that. I'm completely fine to move on. So when we look at grief, we have to take a look at what was the depth of attachment. And because I didn't understand the depth of my attachment, and then the loss of that leading to grief, of course it took me 10 years. It could have taken me my entire life, except I happened to stumble upon this concept.

John Neral: 13:57

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John Neral: 15:08

Now let's get back to the episode, one of the things that we're obviously living through and seeing right now, especially for me living in the Washington DC area. We know there's been a lot of cutbacks within the federal government. We know there are a lot of people who have been laid off and riffed and lost their jobs and everything, and one of the most striking conversations I've had over the last couple weeks and admittedly it's not been a solo conversation, as this happens multiple times is that for people who are a little further along at mid-career, where they may have years of service in and they might be eligible for early retirement, one of the things I'm hearing from people that is quite honestly angering them is that people will say, oh, but you've got early retirement, you're fine, and their rebuttal is but I'm not ready. How does that fit into this concept that you see time and time again and have experienced about professional heartbreak and disenfranchised grief?

Laverne McKinnon: 16:15

I love this question so much, John, because one of I'm going to back up for a second. Sure, we believe that there are rules to grief. It's like, oh, you need to talk about your feelings, you really have to cry it out. You should go to a support group. The truth is that there are no rules to grief. Everyone griefs uniquely, individualistically, informed by our cultures, by our communities, by our religious or spiritual beliefs. However, there are tasks to grief, and so one of the tasks to grief it's the last one is exactly what you're talking about, which is agency that I actually am in control and I'm empowered to make decisions about what's best for my life. So being invited, encouraged, pushed into early retirement, it robs someone of agency, and so that is a huge component to grief, which is like, wait a second, I didn't have a chance to have a good goodbye.

John Neral: 17:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You shared an activity or a concept with me when we talked previously about helping people write a eulogy for that chapter or part in their career. Would you tell us why that's so important and impactful to do?

Laverne McKinnon: 17:47

Yes, so it's very common when someone dies that there is a ritual. There might be a funeral, a memorial service, a gathering in which we can acknowledge our feelings for that person and have an opportunity to express ourselves. So very much with professional heartbreaks or career setbacks, we can create rituals around that so that we can have a good goodbye, and one of the many rituals that I've worked with clients.

Laverne McKinnon: 18:23

I work a lot with people in the entertainment industry, a lot of writers who have written something, a script, that never sees the light of day, or maybe they got their movie produced and then it didn't do well in the box office, and so we'll actually print the script out and we'll bury it, we'll burn it, but the most important part of it, honestly, is writing the eulogy. And so I had one client who wrote a eulogy, apologizing to the script, to say I'm sorry that I did not get you across the finish line, I'm sorry that not everyone could see just how amazing and wonderful and how full of possibility you were, and then these final words, which are just, I think, incredibly powerful, which is? Rest in peace. And so this client was able to express their hopes and their dreams and their wishes for this project, what it meant to them, but then also to have that good goodbye.

John Neral: 19:28

So for people who are dealing with their own job loss or professional grief right now, how would they go about saying goodbye to that organization, that job, that work where they didn't get that chance to say goodbye?

Laverne McKinnon: 19:52

Yes. So I'm going to go back to this idea of the tasks of grief, and there's a framework that I developed and I call it LEARN. It's L-E-A-R-N. So the first task of grief is to really look at the loss laid off by the federal government and again, like that's that, that first level of loss, which is absolutely legitimate, is the job. But underneath that perhaps there was a belief that if I work for the federal government, I will have safety and security, I'll be able to stay in this job for my entire career and grow and blossom and do good things for the public. So and then, like looking again, like what's underneath that, so it might be a loss of like, for example, with me, like my identity, my confidence, my esteem.

Laverne McKinnon: 20:43

So that first step is really critical to understand what is the loss and what are all the tentacles of the loss. And then exploring the meaning. What does this mean? So a few federal workers that I have spoken to and it really does break my heart that that the meaning that they're creating as a result of no longer having their job with the federal government is oh, I wasn't good enough, I wasn't worthy, I didn't work hard enough, I'm too old, I'm too young, and so we create meanings to explain events that we don't understand. So it's important to interrogate and reframe that meaning so that it's helpful, not hurtful. And then we have to address the pain and this goes to the rituals that you and I just spoke about, john, of being able to create a ritual that allows you to address the pain that you're feeling. And then that final step is nurturing agency and regaining that sense of control.

John Neral: 21:44

It's a really helpful framework. I hope people will hit that rewind button a couple of times to go back and go through. So those five steps were to understand, go beneath the loss, to really explore what that is. So it's loss, explore, address, regain and nurture or reframe. Reframe, sorry, reframe and nurture, okay.

Laverne McKinnon: 22:08

Yes, really good.

John Neral: 22:10

You said something in explaining this framework around the explore part, which was that thought that could come up about? I wasn't good enough or, to rephrase, maybe my work wasn't good enough or there's something as an expert in this field. When you're working with people who are dealing with being unexpectedly fired or they've been laid off from a job, how do you help them work through the facts and the emotions of their natural questioning that maybe they should have saw this coming?

Laverne McKinnon: 22:53

Yeah, that's also a phrase that I've heard quite frequently as well, in the sense of shame and blame and humiliation that goes with that, and I like to practice and encourage the people that I work with to assess and not judge. It's very important not to fall into, while reframing the meaning of what happened, into a place of toxic positivity. We are professionals. We need to be able to assess what worked, what didn't work, what needs to be course corrected, what do we double down on? And so there may be an element of truth to say, oh, I missed the signs. And then it's not to stay in that place, but then to identify through data, not drama, what were the circumstances in which I missed those signs. And so those are skills and tools that can then be incredibly valuable for the remainder of one's career and professional life.

Laverne McKinnon: 24:01

So, for me, I felt tension in my relationship with my CBS boss. I wrongly attributed it to the stress of what we were doing and I just assumed oh, once we deliver the pilots for the season, you know we'll go take a vacation and we'll be back to happy times again. So what I have learned is that if I'm feeling something to get curious and if I could have done something differently. It could have been and it doesn't mean that my boss would have been honest with me but I could have advocated to say hey, I'm feeling some tension in our relationship. Are you feeling that? And if so, what is that?

John Neral: 24:40

Yeah, thank you for that. That's good, and showing up from that place of curiosity can be extremely powerful as we navigate our careers and build our mid-career GPS to whatever's going to be next. Before we start wrapping up, though, laverne, I want to touch on one other thing that we've previously talked about, and that's how we process these type of events in our career, and one of the things I remember was and the word we had used was failure. Right, we learn to process failure, and obviously not trying to equate here that being fired is a failure in that regard right, but to your point, you talk about how processing failure the unprocessed failure leads to a loss of resilience, and resilience is required for a long, fulfilling career. Yes, I'd love to know how this has shaped your resilience.

Laverne McKinnon: 25:46

Another awesome question, which is the and I'm going to go specifically back to grieving and mourning because once I knew I was grieving and I gave myself permission to mourn. I was going to go specifically back to grieving and mourning because once I knew I was grieving and I gave myself permission to mourn, I was able to interrogate that meaning that I was creating, because walking around for a decade thinking that I'm worthless, stupid and not capable anymore, it wasn't helping me on any level. And so once I was able to reframe and say, oh, my values no longer aligned after 10 years with CBS, I didn't belong there anymore. I didn't fit into the culture, that negative self-talk. It was like a lid over my resilience cup. And when I was able to remove the negative self-talk, I was then able to fill that resilience cup with hey, wait a second.

Laverne McKinnon: 26:49

I'm a great learner. I'm someone who is committed and dedicated. I am curious. I do have this depth of experience, I do have the skill set, and so it was able to help me get back onto course and to clarify what truly is my North Star, my moonshot.

Laverne McKinnon: 27:07

And resilience is a little bit like willpower. It's in the sense that it can get used up, it's not an endless well. And so compassion, self-care, checking in with ourselves and assessing where am I at in my career right now? Does it feel good to me? Am I aligned with my values? Those are all things that impact our resilience. It can impact our resilience in a negative and a positive way. So if we're not doing that stuff, so now I feel so much more equipped, when setbacks happen, to check in with myself of like, okay, how attached was I to that particular person, place or thing? And then, if I was deeply attached, let me mourn. If I wasn't, then let me just skip over into assessment and figure out, okay, what needed to be course corrected and what new best practices do I need to develop.

John Neral: 28:01

What's the most exciting thing about your work today?

Laverne McKinnon: 28:10

Oh, it's the. This is going to sound so hokey, which is why you're hearing this like pause in my voice, but it's really two things is that when I am working with a client or I'm talking to someone about this concept of disenfranchised grief and professional heartbreaks, and their face goes, oh, that's what's going on, and it's a huge aha. And it immediately gives a pathway of how to be able to move forward and stop feeling stuck. That just is so unbelievably exciting. And then the other exciting part is like then seeing that transformation occur. It's like, oh, now that I've reframed what happened in a way that's actually helpful to me, now that I've reframed what happened in a way that's actually helpful to me, and then seeing people activate on that oh my gosh, that's just. It makes me a little weepy to think about.

John Neral: 29:06

Well, your work is extremely impactful and it's needed and to work with people who are wanting to take the time to go through, be curious, explore this entire process about what this means for them in their lives and careers. That's a special relationship, you know, and that's something which, right now, with everything we're dealing with, that's a gift, so thank you for that.

Laverne McKinnon: 29:34

Thank you.

John Neral: 29:34

All right, we're gonna start wrapping up here, so I have to ask what advice would you give someone today to help them build their mid-career GPS?

Laverne McKinnon: 29:46

I really do want to circle back to this idea of professional heartbreaks and that, as you're recalibrating your GPS, is to just do a little bit of an audit and to reflect back on your career to say, oh, was there a heartbreak here? Was there a heartbreak there, is there something that maybe is unresolved and am I feeling grief? And if you are to do the work to really process those feelings so that you can come out the other side with a clear North Star, Wonderful.

John Neral: 30:25

So if people want to connect with you, laverne, learn more about you, find where you are. I'm going to turn the mic over to you. Share all the great things where people can connect with you.

Laverne McKinnon: 30:33

Oh, thank you so much. So, if you know, of course I'm on this podcast, so your listeners are navigating career transitions, and in the place that I would love to invite your listeners to is to join me on Substack, the Substack platform. You can find me under Laverne McKinnon or Moonshot Mentor. It's free to subscribe and I have weekly blogs and podcasts with a lot of tools around career transitions. There's also a paid tier. It's $5 a month and paid subscribers get access to co-working sessions, meditations. I'm also going to be launching in late April a five-part career grief workshop and that'll also be available on replay, and I'll do another one, you know, later in the summer and fall. But it's a beautiful, beautiful community, so that's the primary place. And then my website is also my name, lavernemckinnoncom, with more specific ways to connect with me and the services that I offer.

John Neral: 31:32

Yeah, I will make sure all of that is in the show notes. Laverne McKinnon, thank you for coming on and sharing your story and just being a great person and great guest today. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, my friends, we talked a lot, a lot of things today and a lot of things that perhaps weren't really easy to hear, and so if you made it to the end of the episode, pat yourself on the back, that's a really good thing.

John Neral: 31:55

But as much as we talked about professional heartbreak and grieving that job that you love, I don't want you to miss one key point of Laverne's message today, which was, as you're building your mid-career GPS, there's a moonshot in there. What's next? Where are you resilient enough to go after that next thing? You are here because you are a representation of the totality of your experiences, both in your life and in your work, and so, while work's important and work's great and everything, if you're at the middle of a crossroads, you're trying to navigate your mid-career GPS to whatever is next, don't forget to look for that moonshot and go after it, because that's a really great place to land and go after. So we wish you all the best with that and until next time my friends remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day.

John Neral: 32:55

Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform and, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnerrellcom for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters. Thank you.