Creating Space for Grief in Your Leadership Right Now

I vividly remember the first time I heard the emotion of grief being named in the early weeks of  the pandemic. It felt freeing to name that emotion and acknowledge the grief that I was experiencing and support my clients to acknowledge their own grief and how it was showing up for them at work and at home. Now, here we are more than six months later and I can feel another layer of grief sinking into our collective experience. As the winter months approach and the reality of extended virtual work and restricted social gatherings starts to sink in, I can sense the weight in the hearts and minds of all of us. I am personally grieving the loss of being with my clients in shared physical space, hugging as a greeting, hosting great dinner parties with friends and family, and airplane travel, where I caught up on emails and enjoyed a hotel room all to myself. Now, I am navigating the acceptance that it will be many more months before these experiences are even possible. I know you can relate and have your own list of things you miss—big and small. 

So, how do we navigate this as managers and leaders of teams? How do we create the space for grief to be acknowledged within our teams? 

I believe that this is where courageous leaders will step up. And, when I say “courageous,” I mean a leader who is brave enough to create the space for messy, uncomfortable conversations to take place with the people they lead. This might be putting aside the task list and checking in and being a good listener when you see that someone is struggling. It might be facilitating a group conversation that acknowledges both individual and collective losses or changes that have happened as a result of the pandemic. When the doors are opened for these kinds of vulnerable conversations, you are supporting people to move through their emotions in a supportive space, rather than denying their existence and hoping people will “deal with their stuff” outside of work. That doesn’t work anymore, and, if you are modeling that by denying your own grief, then you are sending unintended signals that it isn’t safe or appropriate to talk about this at work. 

In a recent McKinsey & Company article, author Aaron De Smet shares the urgent need for four interrelated leadership qualities that the pandemic has highlighted: awareness, vulnerability, empathy and compassion. These are leadership attributes that have always been desired by followers, and now the leadership literature is celebrating these attributes and bringing them to the forefront. I am going to choose to celebrate this shift in leadership attributes as one of the unintended, yet beautiful outcomes of navigating a global healthy crisis: a new focus on bringing our humanness into our leadership. 

If you are feeling overwhelmed with this notion of acknowledging grief with your team, then take heed from De Smet’s article where he says, “You cannot resolve other people’s grief for them, but you can find ways to support them while they address it.”  This is one of the greatest gifts from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead book and curriculum: practicing empathy doesn’t mean you fix or eliminate other people’s emotional experience, but it does mean you are willing to listen and co-create a support strategy. This might look like accessing employee counselling programs, reaching out to friends who they can lean on, or taking time off work to rest and recover. To reiterate, you can be alongside your colleagues and coworkers in support without fixing what’s going on for them. And, yes, these conversations do fall into the leadership realm and are so important to have right now. 

I hope this article has sparked some awareness within you and some inspiration to be the courageous leader your team needs right now. Developing these attributes takes practice and skill-building which is what we are here to support you with. Visit https://www.inspiredresultsgroup.com/the-learning-lab to learn more about our upcoming trainings or book a discovery call to learn more about leadership coaching.