Up until recently, most leaders believed grief belonged outside the workplace. If someone experienced a loss, they may have received flowers, condolences, a few days of bereavement leave, and were quietly expected to return to normal. Most other forms of loss went unnamed entirely, and it was back to business as usual.
That framework no longer reflects reality. Today’s leaders are guiding teams through layoffs, restructures, AI disruption, and the erosion of stability that employees once relied on. People are grieving careers they thought they would have, workplace cultures they no longer recognize, and professional identities threatened by automation. A layoff creates grief not only for the people who lose their jobs, but for the colleagues who remain, including the leader.
Most organizations do not call this grief—and even more still reward people for pretending they’re unaffected—but employees feel it anyway, and so do the leaders charged with holding everything together.
Skeptics might argue that the workplace is not the place to process emotions— that work is for work, and therapy is for therapy. However, the data tells a different story. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that unsupported grief costs U.S. companies up to $225.8 billion annually in lost productivity. Leadership does not for grief, but grief will absolutely your business.
In my work as an executive leadership coach and advisor, I see this hidden weight regularly. Leaders tell me they feel immense pressure to project steadiness while privately carrying uncertainty themselves. They are expected to reassure teams during layoffs and navigate rapid technological change, all while wondering whether their own expertise will eventually become obsolete.
New research from the Center for Creative Leadership makes the “humanity” gap explicit: 73% of managers report they have received no preparation to support grieving employees. The same research found that one in five bereaved employees received little or no support from their manager, not because leaders lacked care, but because they lacked practice. This humanity gap shows up in predictable patterns; leaders who want to do the right thing, but do the opposite due to a lack of training. They minimize grief, treating loss as “just business,” project false optimism, or become avoidant, retreating into silence and hoping the discomfort passes. Each of these responses isolates the people carrying the weight and, over time, fractures psychological safety and trust within the team.
So what does grief-informed leadership actually look like?
One of the most persistent misconceptions about grief-informed leadership is that acknowledging loss requires leaders to absorb everyone’s pain or fix an unsolvable problem. It does not.
People do not need perfect words or solutions; they need honest ones. Grief grows in silence.
Acknowledge the departure of colleagues, and name the shift in team culture. In practice, this can sound as simple as opening a team meeting with: “I want to acknowledge that losing three colleagues to layoffs has changed how this team feels, and that is worth naming.” Naming it gives people permission to process what they are experiencing without fear. As I often tell the leaders I work with, what we do not name, we cannot support.
Transition researcher William Bridges observed that it is not the change itself that undoes people, but the transition.
Change is an external event that leaders can move people through relatively quickly: a layoff, a restructure, or a new strategic direction. Transition is the internal experience of that event, and it takes considerably longer to release or even accept.
Before demanding enthusiasm for a new organizational direction, honor what is ending. This can sound like opening a meeting with, “Before we talk about where we are going, I want to take a moment to acknowledge what we are leaving behind.” This opening grants employees permission to process the past so they can move forward into the next chapter. When the past is treated with respect, it provides the psychological bridge employees need to genuinely commit to what comes next.
“Take all the time you need” may be kind, but it rarely translates into practice. When someone is grieving, they are rarely able to tell you what they need. Grief affects concentration, memory, and judgment, often longer than anyone expects.
Rather than waiting to be asked, leaders can make deliberate, temporary adjustments to support the grieving employee, such as shifting a deadline, redistributing a critical task, and checking in before an important deliverable is due. The gesture communicates: I see what you are carrying, and I am going to support you.
In a world where disruption has become the baseline, the leaders who build the deepest trust will not be the ones who avoid hard realities. They will be the ones willing to acknowledge them, without losing their humanity.
Part of this acknowledgment is also recognizing that you, too, may be grieving. The pressure to project calm while carrying your own grief is one of the loneliest parts of leadership, and it rarely gets named.
Find a trusted peer, a coach, or a mentor you can be honest with. Before you can name loss for your team, it helps to name it for yourself. What transitions are you grieving? What uncertainty are you holding? Build in time to reflect, and not just to plan. By tending to yourself, you also model for your team what healthy, sustainable leadership looks like.