Are you being held hostage by your own grief?
With George Kohlriesser
“Don’t become a hostage to what you have lost.”
The impact of grief and loss at work: The latest We Are Human Leaders podcast episode is now available everywhere.
Grief & Loss: a part of being Human
One of the most prominent and universal emotional experiences humans have is grief and loss. And yet these concepts are still often considered taboo in the modern workplace. Our guest on this week’s episode of We Are Human Leaders is George Kolhrieser, a former CIA hostage negotiator and now a Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior who specializes in the impact of grief in the workplace.
George shares his personal experiences of grief as well as his professional experience as a hostage negotiator. He gives us powerful takeaway tips that we can use today as leaders, and as humans, to open up this important topic. This rich and vulnerable conversation is deeply enlightening.
How to avoid becoming a hostage to what you’ve lost.
As we discuss in depth, grief and loss go beyond the experience of losing a loved one. Loss can arise from all kinds of changes and experiences in life. As George puts it,
“The biggest amount of grief comes from loss that is not connected with death, but it's the end of something, it's the end of a part of our identity. ”
George explains that dealing with grief is not a ‘one and done’. Instead, it’s an ongoing process. Acknowledging grief as such empowers us to treat it as a natural aspect of our lives rather than something to be filed away.
So, what can leaders do to acknowledge and address grief in the workplace?
This has two aspects.
First, start with your own grief work. As George notes,
“Emotional intelligence is central to being able to connect with the people you are leading. And so what we have to do is help leaders understand what the grief has been in their life”.
This entails work on recent loss, but also grief and loss you experienced early in life as this may have a profound impact on how you view grief today.
Second, George offers suggestions on how to help someone who is in grief right now.
Ask questions in a gentle way
Listen to and hold space for their answers without judgment
Help them put labels on what they are feeling
Try to understand what’s going on for them
Know the stages of grief
George Kolhrieser is a clinical and organizational psychologist, author, speaker and consultant. He is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school based in Lausanne Switzerland and the author of the award-winning book Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others and Raise Performance and co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Performance through Secure Base Leadership.
A strong content warning for this episode, we discuss issues of mental health, violence, trauma, death and suicide, which may be distressing or triggering for some listeners.
