I don’t know about you, but I’ve been personally and professionally struggling right now in a way that is hard to explain—but I don’t really have to, because almost everyone in the world is experiencing similar sensations. What’s going on right now is so intense that Harvard Business Review did an article entitled, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief”, about the importance of naming our feelings and then learning how to move forward and deal with it.

Indeed, many articles, thought leaders and regular folks alike are comparing this time to the horrific attacks of September 2011 which changed the world forever. What we are going through now is similar in that we know the world is changing permanently—there will always be a before Corona and after Corona now. And though we haven’t dealt with this exact circumstance before, there has always been grief—and specifically the kind of grief that affects us at organizational levels, large groups of people, or entire countries.

A time that stands out for me is when, during my first deployment to Afghanistan, when my combat team encountered a horrible enemy ambush, wounding nearly everyone involved and killing 10 humans. Our entire organization was rocked—nobody wasn’t affected, though we all felt it in different ways. The situation was exacerbated, much like this current one, by our isolation, we would remain deployed for 9 more months, away from friends, family and support systems.

I watched leaders, including myself, deal with leading through times of grief in completely different ways—some helpful, others not. One leader tried to mandate feelings, deciding who was ‘allowed’ to feel affected based on her assessment of people’s connection to the dead or wounded. Others understood that people needed time and space to express their grief, and were able to find ways to support our teams during that incredibly hard time.

An important point in the HBR article was how important it is for us to name grief—that by naming it we have power to begin to deal with it through the many different stages that it requires. So what should leaders be doing right now to keep their people going through this unprecedented time of mutual grief?

Here are 5 steps:

1. Create Space for Feelings

It’s crucial for leaders to recognize that there is literally no way for people to go about ‘business as usual’ right now. It’s not as simple as everyone just working from home and expecting everyone to be equally as productive as before this began. While the arguments for telecommuting generally encompass increased productivity, that is very unlikely to be the case for the majority of our teams right now. People need to know that those days when they feel like they can’t do more than get out of bed and keep their kids fed and mostly happy are understandable and expected.

One of the downsides of self-help popularization is that we’re the first generations have feelings about our feelings, and we need leaders to be explicit about the fact that it’s okay to feel whatever it might be that we are feeling. Now is not the time for individuals to be trying to regulate their responses, and leaders can help their people to understand that.

2. Unleash Compassion

Nothing about this is normal, so when the managerial rulebook fails, how do you proceed? Compassion is a great place to start. “Unleashing compassion in the workplace not only lessens the immediate suffering of those directly affected by trauma, it enables them to recover from future setbacks more quickly and effectively, and it increases their attachment to their colleagues and hence to the company itself.” (https://hbr.org/2002/01/leading-in-times-of-trauma)

Not only is a compassionate response the right thing to do, but it has business benefits as well in that employees tend to reward companies that are compassionate to them with dedication and redoubled work efforts. On the flip side, employees that aren’t treated with compassion tend to be distracted and far less effective at their tasks. Compassionate responses can start with the leadership but will quickly spread throughout the entire company.

3. Support the Search for Meaning

During times of inexplicable grief, it’s human nature to ask a lot of questions as we search for any meaning behind it all. People are asking ‘why did this happen?’, and in the cases of those who have to face the worst ‘why not me?’ Survivor’s guilt is difficult to navigate—I literally remember wanting to punch people in the face after the deaths of my comrades when they came to tell me how happy they were that I wasn’t on that fateful mission.

“It isn’t your job as a leader to answer these questions. But at the same time, it’s not realistic or reasonable to ask people to ponder these questions only on their own time, outside the office. Instead, you can cultivate an environment that allows people to work through these questions in their own way so they can eventually start assigning meaning to events and begin healing.”  (https://hbr.org/2002/01/leading-in-times-of-trauma) 

4. Model Acceptable Behaviors

This is a fancy way of saying show your own grief—in public to your team. The nature of being in a leadership position is that people model their behaviors after you, and people will feel guilty about the ways their grief is affecting them if it seems as if their leaders still have it all together. Now is not the time for the stoicism that we’ve all worked hard to cultivate, it’s time to share in our vulnerability.

I remember that some leaders told me to ‘shore up’ and to ‘never let them see me cry’, which was, of course, not helpful at all. I also remember the leaders who cried their tears in public, or shared stories of their own struggles, uniting all of us as comrades in grief. That was what made a difference. It’s time to take our armor off and all pull together.

5. Support Bottom up Efforts

While leadership has a huge role in culture which cannot be underestimated, leaders also should not underestimate the role that anyone in the organization can play in supporting others during times of grief. When you hear about acts of compassion, highlight them. When you discover that an employee has started an innovative initiative to help her coworkers cope with isolation and fear, offer some company resources to help out. Keep an open mind for ideas from every level that might support your people.

And remember, leadership in crisis is hard and nobody will ever be perfect. Examining our leadership, being open to learning and being willing to make mistakes is the only way through this.

DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE-HACKER, HOST OF THE CULTURE-HACKING PODCAST, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, AND HELP YOU RECOVER HOURS IN YOUR WORKDAY. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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