Most leaders spend decades building an identity around what they do. Then a restructuring happens. The market shifts. The diagnosis comes. And suddenly, you’re standing in that terrifying space between who you were and who you’ll become.
BJ Coleman knows that space intimately. When his pro career ended abruptly, he went from living his childhood dream to having his world turned upside down. being told: “You’re no longer going to be a member of the team. Find your own way home.”
What he built from that breakdown became his book, The Pivot: A Playbook for Navigating Life’s Hardest Transitions. But this isn’t just another sports story. It’s a blueprint for any leader facing the moment when Plan A dies — and they have to figure out what comes next.
The Iceberg You Can't See
We spend most of our careers showing the world what’s above the waterline: the credentials, the title, the wins. But Coleman’s “Pivot Rule #2” gets at something deeper: Don’t be afraid of your iceberg.
“We see the end as a failure or something that’s concluding,” Coleman explains. “When you’re going through a pivot, it’s really the invitation. It’s the door opening of something that you never could have even imagined.”
That’s not motivational fluff. Coleman took the skills he learned in quarterback rooms — reading complex situations, making decisions under pressure, building team cohesion — and translated them into leading behavioral health organizations. He went from calling plays to turning around struggling healthcare facilities.
The transferable skills were always there. The pivot forced him to see them.
The Grief No One Talks About
Here’s what struck us most about Coleman’s story: He dedicates an entire chapter to grief. Not as a footnote. Not as something to “power through.” As a standalone, unavoidable part of any major transition.
“As a male, dealing with grief, shame, failure is so very difficult,” Coleman admits. “And probably more so now than ever before because of social media, where everything’s caught on camera and everybody wants to be perfect.”
We see this constantly in our work with organizations. Leaders lose their roles in restructurings that have nothing to do with performance. Teams get disbanded. Companies get acquired. And everyone’s supposed to just…move on.
But Coleman’s research into his own experience revealed something critical: You can’t skip the grief stage. When you try to numb it or bypass it, “it can absolutely lock up versus unlock some of your greatest talents.”
That’s not weakness. That’s neuroscience. Our recent SparkEffect survey on job loss impact found that a significant portion of people still feel shame even when layoffs are purely business decisions. The shame keeps them stuck. The vulnerability, when it’s finally allowed, sets them free.
This is what makes career transition support so critical. When SparkEffect works with displaced employees, we’re not just helping them update their resumes or prep for interviews. We’re creating the container where grief can be acknowledged without judgment. Because until someone can name what they’re losing — the identity, the routine, the sense of purpose — they can’t access what Coleman calls the “iceberg beneath the surface.” The transferable skills, the hidden strengths, the next chapter waiting to be written. That’s not career coaching. That’s career transformation.
Help Is Not a Four-Letter Word
Coleman’s transition from football to healthcare leadership taught him something counterintuitive: The best leaders aren’t the ones with all the answers. They’re the ones who create environments where asking for help isn’t risky.
“As with many, I could barely navigate the healthcare system,” Coleman laughs about his early days in the industry. “Now I’m able to engage with the professionals in the space who help guide me each and every day.”
That’s “Pivot Rule #6” — and it challenges everything we’ve been taught about executive presence. Especially in our American “fake it till you make it” culture.
But Coleman draws a distinction most people miss: There’s a difference between not knowing what you’re doing and knowing how to engage the people who do.
“The best operators, the best leaders, the best trailblazers I’ve found — they’re not afraid to engage and create those forums where their professionals get to be the subject matter experts. In a way, that is them asking for guidance and help.”
That’s not uncertainty. That’s competence.
There’s an organizational pattern that makes this harder than it should be. In our team alignment work using the Harrison Assessment, we’ve noticed a troubling US trend: people scoring very high on being helpful to others, but very low on being assertive about their own needs. This imbalance shows up everywhere, but it becomes especially problematic during career transitions. People will support their colleagues through layoffs while privately struggling to ask for the help they desperately need themselves. Coleman’s point about creating “forums where professionals get to be the subject matter experts” isn’t just good leadership, it’s a structural intervention that gives people permission to seek guidance without feeling like they’re admitting weakness.
Movement Over Perfection
If there’s one thread that runs through Coleman’s entire philosophy, it’s this: Movement matters more than having it all figured out.
“You’re only going to accomplish your greatness, your purpose, when you move,” he emphasizes. “It doesn’t have to be large movement, but you gotta keep moving.”
We see organizations paralyzed by the need to have the perfect strategy before taking action. Leaders waiting for the perfect next role before making a move. Teams waiting for perfect clarity before starting.
Coleman’s counterpoint: “When you stop, it’s over. When you stop, you won’t get there.”
The pivot isn’t about having a perfect plan. It’s about taking the next step when everything feels uncertain. It’s about one foot in front of the other on the days when there’s no good play to call.
What This Means for Your Organization
If your organization is going through disruption — and whose isn’t? — Coleman’s framework offers something most change management approaches miss: permission to feel the loss before rushing to the next thing.
That matters because:
- Unprocessed grief becomes organizational drag. When people can’t acknowledge what they’re losing, they can’t fully commit to what’s coming next.
- Vulnerability scales. When leaders model asking for help, teams stop pretending they have it all together. That’s when real collaboration begins.
- Identity shapes everything. If your team’s identity was tied to the old way of doing things, the new strategy won’t stick until they’ve had space to grieve what’s ending.
Supporting Transitions, Not Just Managing Them
This is exactly the philosophy we bring to career transitions and outplacement at SparkEffect. When organizations need to support displaced employees, most firms focus exclusively on job search mechanics: polish the resume, practice the interview, apply to positions. Those things matter. But without addressing the identity loss, the grief, and the need for movement over perfection, people stay stuck in exactly the space Coleman describes — that terrifying gap between who they were and who they’ll become.
Our approach starts where Coleman’s book does: at the base of the mountain after the fall. We create space for grief. We help people identify their “iceberg” of transferable skills that were hidden beneath the job title. We build the permission structure where asking for help becomes the path forward, not a sign of failure. And we emphasize movement — one concrete step after another — over waiting for perfect clarity that never comes.
Because the organizations that handle transitions well aren’t just fulfilling a legal obligation. They’re demonstrating that their people matter even when the business relationship ends. When they do this consistently, the people who remain notice how departures are handled and draw conclusions about whether this is a place worth staying. That’s how you maintain trust during disruption. That’s how displaced employees become advocates instead of detractors. And that’s how leaders model the vulnerability that makes transformation possible.
Coleman’s now running Pivotal Health Partners, working with struggling healthcare organizations that need operational turnarounds. And he’s bringing the same philosophy: meet organizations at the bottom of the mountain, not at the top.
Because that’s where the real work happens. That’s where courage gets built. And that’s where the next version of you — or your organization — starts to take shape.
Want to hear the full conversation with BJ Coleman? Listen to the complete episode on Courage to Advance. His book, The Pivot: A Playbook for Navigating Life’s Hardest Transitions, is available now.
