Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Lay-Off

I was proud of the work that I was doing and the service that I was providing the Tribal community that I served. I use the term "serve" and not "work" because, to me, it wasn't work, it was an actual life-long service. Well, that's what I thought I was doing up until the COVID-19 "pandemic". With the ceasing of gaming operations, the Muckleshoot Tribe was forced to furlough all of their Tribal employees and lay-off many of those that weren't citizens of the Tribe or had community ties. Other than being a life-long citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, I was neither of the above. Because of that and for reasons that I may never know, I was laid off from the place that I had served for over 13 years and had become like a family to me. A community in which I invested so much into had decided to lay me off without anything more than a short phone call. From the time that I last worked in my office (Friday, March 13th) to the day that I received the phone call from the HR Director, I had heard absolutely nothing from Tribal leadership, my HR Directors, my manager, etc. The only people I was constantly in touch with were the six participants in the Executive Management Training Program that I had worked nearly two years with my team creating because they had just started and their seven-year training program was set to begin. I understand that this was an unprecedented time and that nobody could have predicted what had happened, but to not receive even an email, text, and/or a phone call from anyone in leadership was troubling. I'm not necessarily faulting anyone for what happened (as a sovereign nation, they had the responsibility of retaining each Tribal employee), but it has led me to write this very blog post. Not as a criticism, necessarily, but to serve as wake-up call or a learning situation that someone may read and prevent making in a similar situation in the future. I had been serving the Muckleshoot Tribal community for over 13 years (from 2003-2007 before college; from 2011-2020 after college) and I had every intention of remaining at the Tribe until I retired. I had selected to attend Gonzaga University's Master's in Organizational Leadership Program and concentrating on servant-leadership which was the leadership style that most closely resembled traditional tribal leadership styles and methods. I had given so much to the Tribal community and to have it all ripped out from underneath me without a hint of gratitude or appreciation was what hurt the most. On 8/24/2020, I returned to the Muckleshoot Tribe to serve as their Lead Career Advisor in their Tribal College. Although this is a different role requiring much learning and adjusting, I'm excited to be back. Let's see what the future holds!