How to help a grieving team member overcome a personal loss

I was 14 when I first experienced the shock of a sudden death. She was one of my closest friends. We were in school together and she fell sick quite frequently. The last time I met her was during the lunch break when she refused to eat from my lunchbox because she was recovering from food poisoning. When she didn’t come the next day, we all assumed she had fallen sick again.

I learnt of her passing away only a couple of days later. And I discovered much later how sick she had been, how critical her condition had become. Yet, no one ever told me about it. I cried and cried till I had no more tears to shed. Angry, hurt and confused, I kept going back to our last meeting and kept thinking what all I could have said, and all that I didn’t say. I felt guilty for all the fights. And mostly I kept wondering if I could ever trust life again.

Such is the grief of death! It makes you go through an unimaginable amount of sorrow. And it churns up an inexplicable amount of anger and confusion. It makes you question the very premise and purpose of existence.

And it leaves you behind with a huge amount of guilt of what you could have done more with the lost one, or how you could have expressed your love to them.

Recently, I was reminded of this loss when one of my teammates went through something similar.

My colleague’s father passed away after fighting a long battle with kidney failure. She had mentally prepared herself for the loss while her father was hospitalized, but it was still sudden. She was clinging to that small ray of hope; the one which makes us believe that everything would be fine in the end.

When her father passed away, we went to meet her to express our love and support. She was facing it with enormous calm- holding it up for her mother’s sake. But I could see the underlying sorrow, anger and hurt. It surfaced in the breaks in her voice whenever she reminisced about him.

She returned to the office after some time, but it wasn’t the same person who came back. She stayed aloof, often skipped lunch breaks and appeared lost in team meetings.

I realized then how difficult it must have been for her to work amidst such a profound loss. It’s like, suddenly, your life is shattered to pieces, and yet the whole world is running mercilessly with the same speed.

This incident prompted me to write on this topic. It’s an unusual choice for me as well, not to mention a difficult one. But it’s important. Because it happens everywhere, but no one ever talks about.

I want to talk about how we, as a workplace, can become more empathetic and sensitive to the person who has just lost a close one. How we can help our teammates bear the grief and start looking at their work once again with excitement and enthusiasm. Can we, as a team, do something to make the grieving team member feel at ease?

Let’s see!

What we can do as a team?

It’s said that a team that eats together, stays together.

But when a team member is grieving, we are often unsure of what to say to them, lest something upsets them. So we find it easier to let them be by themselves, rather than involve them in the group like before.

I understand that it’s a tricky situation. And it would be very insensitive to just start talking about their loss, or give them unsolicited advice on how to cope with it. Especially if your relationship is one of just casual acquaintance.

However, the workplace environment more prevalent these days is one of small groups and informal interactions. So the team rapport and camaraderie tends to be on the warmer side. We spend more time together with teammates than with our families.

So if you’ve gone out drinking on many Friday nights, if you’ve taken out-of-town trips together (not mandated by the company), if you’re privy to their Instagram and Facebook updates, then chances are that your relationship is a warm one. And the person may actually be waiting for you to reach out.

In such scenarios, we aren’t helping with our ‘silence’, or ‘avoidance’ or ‘sympathy-full glances’. And one of the worst things to do is to suddenly stop the loud conversations or fun and jokes as soon as we spot them and replace the bonhomie with solemnity. By doing so, we make them feel exactly the emotion they are trying to forget — how their life has changed and it’s full of sorrow.

Wouldn’t it be much more helpful if we take out time and just talk to them quietly about things we’ve known them to like? We don’t have to be pushy, or overbearing in our approach. We don’t have to push them to resume normalcy.

All we have to do is hold space for them. Allow them grieve internally, while on the outside we re-engage them with the world by talking about things that interest them, sharing excitement about some work. We don’t have to distract them by being over the top enthusiastic and creating ‘fun’ events. Just be with them for breaks, work with them instead of leaving them alone, listen to them if they want to talk and be approachable.

Just keep in mind that every person deals with grief briefly. So go with the flow. If someone looks more agitated by speaking, allow the silence to return, but don’t just leave them alone.

And only when they reach out or show signs of sharing their grief, then talk to them about their feelings, their fears. There could be financial problems also at times. Offering to listen to all those insecurities might help the team member feel less burdened.

Just knowing that there is someone to talk to, someone who care, is all the knowledge that we need sometimes to heal.

What we can do as managers/leaders?

As a manager/leader, your relationship maybe cordial or friendly, but may not go deep down to being bosom buddies. In many places, the relationship is professional and very much to-the-point.

In such situations, when one of your teammates is grieving, it becomes difficult to approach the person with the same candour as one would display during normal days.

But that’s okay. You don’t have to talk to them like one does with a friend. What is important is to know that you are in a position of influence to make things comfortable for the person in the office. It’s very important to know that while others may offer words, you are the one person whose actions can bring relief (or further grief) for the person who is suffering.

Don’t immediately get down to business with them without addressing any aspect of their emotional well being. The person will feel worse, more bereft, even question their priorities. Approach them with care, initiate a conversation with simple heartfelt words and inquire about their well-being and that of their family. Let them know that you are supporting them at this time, that they can approach you anytime they need.

Be patient with them. Don’t expect them to roll back into the same rockstar mode within weeks. Don’t overwhelm them with work. Tell them that it’s okay to take it slow. Ask them if they need more time off from work or any other assistance.

Let them know they matter, that they are cared for. You would be surprised how much easier it becomes for anyone to come back to work when they feel that their leaders care about them.

And if you are the kind of leader who has created a great relationship with them, then see if s(he) feels comfortable talking about the loss.

What might be slightly easier is sharing your own story of loss if you have one. This not only helps you connect with the person, but also shows that we all are humans and some situations in life, like the death of a loved one, are inevitable.

I remember, when my CEO lost his father to Cancer, he wrote a very heartwarming piece in memory of his father. The blog made me cry (and it still does) and made me feel an immediate connection with his loss.

What we can do as an organization?

Often, the role of the organizations is limited to offering bereavement leaves to the team members. However, they are usually limited to 4–5 days (Facebook gives 20 days).

If you translate it to human language, this would mean something like- “We are sorry you lost a beloved person. Take a four day leave and come back the fifth day, else we’ll start deducting money from your salary.”

I’m sorry if that came off as rude! But that’s the truth. How can anyone set a timeline on grief! And making it just four days is adding insult to injury. It’s as if organizations expect there to be a switch that can turn off the emotion. Trust me, if it was possible to have aswitch, then the ones wanting it most would be those grieving. But there isn’t.

So what do we do?

Grief is an emotion. Loss is personal.

So there is no scientific way to calculate how much time would be required to overcome the loss. What I find best and most humane is that organizations can offer an extended time off or a sabbatical for as long as the person requires. They can also offer the ability to work remotely to those who need to stay at home. More importantly, representatives from the company can be in touch with the person to ask if they need any help with logistics or even financially.

At the end of the day, organizations are made by the people, so our basic human values should supersede any policies.

There can never be enough words that would take the pain away for the person who has lost a dear one. However, our actions can help them cope with the situation and slowly and steadily get back on their feet.

There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. My understanding of those five stages says that grieving is an extremely nonlinear process and it’s different for each person.

As an organization and as an individual, we can’t really put a time limit on it, nor can we judge a person to be right or wrong, on the basis of how he/she is dealing with it.

The only thing that we are capable of doing is offering our humble support, have generous policies in place and always be open to heartfelt conversations with the person who is grieving.

I wrote this blog for our Medium Publication- Unboxing Product Management. The publication is a weekly column by people of Quovantis to share their learning.