Redundancy to Renewal: Lessons from a Career Coach

From Redundancy to Renewal: How One AIPC Graduate Turned Coaching Skills into a Lifeline for Workers in Transition

Few moments at work are as destabilising as hearing the words "Your role is no longer required." For Tristan, those words weren't just something he'd delivered to others in his HR career. He heard them himself, on his first morning back from five weeks in Europe.

Since completing his Diploma of Professional Coaching with AIPC in late 2025, Tristan has turned that experience into a coaching practice and a published book. His story shows how coaching skills can change one of the hardest moments at work.

Seeing redundancy from every side

Tristan's background is in recruitment, talent acquisition and HR. He's been the person delivering difficult news, the person managing the process, and the person made redundant, more than once.

"Studying with AIPC gave me the missing piece," he says. "It turned what I had seen and lived into a way of genuinely helping people move forward."

In the year since graduating, he has kept working in HR while building Career Velocity, a coaching practice focused on career transitions and redundancy. He has also published his first book, Terminated, Not Terminal: Navigating Redundancy With Confidence, Clarity and Choice.

The gap no one was filling

After his own redundancy, Tristan noticed something missing. There was no practical guide for that moment. Nothing covered what to say in the room, what to do in the first 72 hours, how to manage the money, or how to rebuild your sense of self when your job title disappears overnight.

His coaching work showed the same pattern again and again. "Capable, experienced people were losing confidence not because they lacked skills, but because nobody had given them a structure for what comes next."

That insight matters for any workplace. The people facing redundancy usually still have their skills. What they lose is a sense of direction, and coaching is well suited to helping them find it again.

"Terminated, Not Terminal is the book I wish I'd had that morning."

A transition, not a verdict

The book's central message is simple: "Redundancy ends a role, not a career, and it doesn't define who you are. It's a transition, not a verdict."

With structure, honest reflection and support, Tristan believes redundancy can become "a turning point you choose rather than something that simply happened to you." The final chapter puts it this way:

"You are not starting over, you are continuing, with more awareness, more agency and more self-trust than you had before."

Coaching on the page: turning instruction into conversation

Tristan credits his AIPC study with shaping how the whole book is written. A coaching mindset changed it "from a list of instructions into a conversation."

The book doesn't simply tell readers what to do. It asks the kinds of questions a coach would ask in a session and gives readers space to find their own answers. Each chapter includes:

• Coaching Insights that explain the thinking behind each stage of the transition

• Reflection prompts that help readers slow down and notice what they're really feeling and thinking

• Practical exercises that help them move forward with clarity

Active listening, a core skill from the Diploma, also shaped the tone. "I wanted readers to feel heard before being advised, because in my experience people can't take in practical guidance until they feel understood."

Workplace leaders, HR professionals and managers can learn from this. A redundancy conversation, a performance discussion or a career check-in all go better when the person feels heard before they're advised.

His HR and recruitment experience adds grounded detail on top of the coaching approach. The book covers what really happens in a redundancy meeting, how recruiters actually read a résumé, and how to negotiate an offer with confidence. "The combination of coaching and real-world HR insight is what I hope makes the book different."

Advice for AIPC students and graduates thinking about writing a book

For anyone thinking about writing their own book, Tristan offers some practical advice.

1. Start with the problem you see over and over. "That's where your book already exists." Write for one specific reader in one specific moment, not for everyone.

2. Don't wait until you feel ready. His book took about a year, and he wrote much of it while still completing the Diploma. That meant the coaching skills he was learning "flowed straight into the pages."

3. Draft first, refine later, and ask for honest feedback early. His father read a much rougher draft and gently told him what wasn't working. "The book is far better for it."

4. Find people who know the publishing world. Working with an experienced publishing consultant turned a daunting process into a manageable one.

5. Keep helping readers after the last page. For Tristan, that meant a free downloadable toolkit of worksheets on his website. It supports readers and keeps them connected to his coaching practice.

6. Trust your coaching voice. "The skills you develop through AIPC (curiosity, great questions and genuine listening) are exactly what readers are looking for."

Why this matters for coaching in the workplace

Restructures and role changes are a reality in many organisations, and the way people are supported through them matters. Tristan's journey shows what coaching adds. It gives people structure when things feel uncertain, it makes them feel heard before they're advised, and it helps them see a setback as a transition they can shape.

For HR professionals, people leaders and aspiring coaches, his message is clear: coaching skills are practical tools for helping people move forward at the moments that matter most. To connect with Tristan, you can find him on LinkedIn, and his book, Terminated, not Terminal in digital and hard copy formats on Amazon.