Skip to main content

Dealing with Loss

How fast do you expect people to "get over" dealing with loss?

Really?

I find that often we expect people to be over it all too quickly. We move quickly thru our own loss on the surface to give the appearance of normality and cling to some kind -- any kind -- of routine to get us back on track. But what is back on track? To what extend is there no going back? How do we acknowledge our true sense of loss and how do we allow others to do the same?

I saw a funny play the other night, "Becky's New Car" at the Theater Company of Lafayette. It's a charming comedy filled with human foible type laughs and some serious explorations into what makes us who we are. Comedy that also provokes thinking is a treasure.

One of the characters is broadly sketched for his many faults. He's funny because he's so seriously concerned with his own needs that he hardly sees the needs of others. So we laugh. And we laugh at his tight clinging to the past, especially the loss of his ex-wife. It's a death that society would expect him to be over and ready to move on. The audience laughs as he references his loss (and his attempts at recovery) over and over. And, there is something funny about repetition. But it's not all funny.

I talked with the actor, David Bliley, briefly after the play was over. As an actor myself, I could sense that he put some serious work into his role and was taking the grief component seriously. He was. "I'm not really playing some of those lines for laughs," he said, "and I don't necessarily think they're funny..."

"I could tell," I said. "In part, that makes it even more funny, and yet it's poignant at the same time. We expect people to be over grief all too soon..."

"I agree," said David. "I've never lost a wife to death but I know that breaking up is grief enough that you don't get over all that fast...I wanted to show that grief is serious..."

Thank you for that, David. Grief is serious and long lasting. Some parts of our grief never go away. Some loss we never fully recover from. We go on. We build new lives. We try new things. We launch new relationships, but the loss is a permanent part of our lives. And why not?

It is not a judgment of someone's character that they continue to carry their loss. It's an act of respect and love for the person they lost. Or the people they lost, for as we get older the losses keep adding up. One person after another leaves our life and we must face the future without them. We can still smile, we can still laugh, but we must not pretend that we aren't still effected that they can no longer share that laughter.

I've experienced loss in my life, as I'm sure you have. This has been a tough year, losing both an ex-mother-in-law that I dearly loved and a step father who was always kind and generous to me and who had become inseparable from my mom. The losses are fresh, and the effects persistent. In conversation with my mom yesterday, she cried telling me a story about her beloved Jack.

I cried a little, too.

What does this have to do with high performance leadership? What do centered leaders have to do with grief?

Everything, perhaps. As leaders it is our job to help people navigate change and to provoke new directions. All of that produces loss, which produces grief. We need to experience that grief, understand that grief, empathize with that grief, and support those others whose experience of that grief may take longer than ours.

Centered leaders are compassionate, patient, and generous with their flexibility toward recovery. People can be relied on to be people, and people in loss are not always ready for work Monday morning -- even two weeks or two months after a profound loss. We can hold people to standards without crushing them under the wheel. The art of leadership is remaining human while getting the work done. Building the kinds of teams who not only tolerate grief but support those who are experiencing it can only lead to greater long term loyalty and success. It's not easy. Attendance policies direct us to weed out those who miss too much time. Goals call for immediate and constant action. But as leaders it is our responsibility to keep both courage and compassion in the game.

And so I ask leaders everywhere to keep in touch with their compassion. Remember that just because you may have forgotten someone's loss, that they haven't and they never will. It's not an excuse to avoid work, because we all have losses to deal with, but it is a reason to remember that some days that grief is more present than others.

When we are gone, don't we hope that we are missed?

Why would it be different for anyone else?

Centered leaders show compassion, courage, clarity, and creativity in their daily work. Sometimes, some days, that component of compassion is all that people need to see...

-- Douglas Brent Smith


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Problem With Compromises

Think about the last time you compromised on something. Whether it was a big compromise or a little compromise, how do you feel about it now? While we often call it "meet in the middle" it seldom does. Compromises are not automatically fair, no matter how implied that fairness is. Someone usually gets more out of a compromise than the person they are "compromising" with. If the low end is you, you don't like it -- and you remember that. If the top end of the compromise is you, you probably forget all about it even though the inequity simmers in the background.  Compromises must be constantly revisited because they are inevitably unfair. If you get the chance to balance things out, your relationship will prosper. If you miss that chance, the relationship will suffer. What's your choice? -- doug smith 

Who's Misunderstood?

When someone is disappointing you they may have misunderstood your intentions. (Or, maybe you have...) The challenge to misunderstanding is that we seldom understand that we have understood. The illusion of truth is as strong as steel. Disappointment, originating in unmet expectations, requires clarity to be cured. Clarify your intentions. Clarify your expectations. Clarify, and confirm. What do you think? -- doug smith

Show Up!

  "You've got to be there. Big decisions are being made!" my former boss told me a long time ago. "If your voice is in the room you might be heard..." It was good advice then and it still is. Show up. When there's a goal you're working on and an opportunity appears to advance that goal -- show up. When changes are being made that will affect you -- show up! When it matters to you -- show up. You won't always get what you want by showing up, but you never will if you don't! -- doug smith

Nobody Is Interested In Excuses

Imagine this - you've been expecting someone on your team to complete an important task. The deadline is looming. You're ready for the deliverable at any time, and then...and then they start the list of excuses why they can't complete the task. No fun, right? Not acceptable, true? True for you, and true for others who rely on you as well. Leading for success leaves little room for excuses. When I worked at Whole Foods one of my bosses once said, "we live in the land of no excuses." It was true there then, and it's true here now. Nobody is interested in any excuses. -- Doug Smith

Growing

Mountains never stop growing; why should we?   It came as a surprise to me to learn that the Rocky Mountains are still growing. Trimmed a bit by years of erosion, they are still poking their way skyward and changing in the direction of growth.   As leaders we find ourselves faced with the dynamic between growth and erosion, life and decay. Standing still leads to the less desirable choice. Growth requires our attention, our efforts, our drive. Growth requires the courage to step forward, the creativity to find new ways of dealing with challenges, the clarity of purpose to know which direction you are growing in and the compassion to forgive those who slow you down.   What are you doing to spark your leadership growth today? -- Douglas Brent Smith  

Not Too Many Goals

How many goals should you have? Is there a limit? I've known people who said that they had a hundred goals. They were working their way thru the list and checking them off one by one. Good for them. I  could never do that. It's too many. How do you even keep that many straight? How do you build energy for them? Some people call a list like that a bucket-list. If that's what it is, it isn't so much a list of goals as plans for experience. That's very different. Goals require work. Goals require attention. Goals require a level of focus seldom afforded anything else. The discipline that takes limits the capacity anyone has for setting goals. We can only do so much. Of course, we aspire to do more. Of course we put lots of stretch into our goals and our list of goals. But, we can only do so many. I can't tell you what that number is. I find that 5 goals a day is a good number for me. Five achievable goals for each day and another 3 - 5 major goals that ca...

Does Punishment Work to Motivate People?

Do you believe that people only respond to two basic motivations, punishment and reward? If that's the case, then punishment should be an effective motivator, right? People will do whatever they have to do to avoid punishment, right? Maybe. Fear certainly does effect behavior. A strong leader may create an atmosphere where people will do what they are expected to do to avoid punishment. Fear may prod some people into towing the line. They will do what they are told to do. But, they will likely do no more. Fear creates a lowest common denominator mentality. Of course we do not want to be punished so of course we will do whatever it takes to avoid that punishment. Sometimes, whatever it takes creates side-effects that leaders don't want, don't count on, and don't deal with effectively. It can spiral into an non-virtuous cycle of failure. No leader really wants that. Here's one of the biggest problems with leading by punishing: P eople find ways to get even with those ...