The hidden perils of unresolved grief

Chances are, there’s a hidden attendee on your team’s Zoom meetings right now—a shadowy presence that’s holding back one or more of your colleagues, fostering self-doubt, causing them to dwell on failure, barriers, and everything that can go wrong. It’s sapping their energy and leadership capacity, and could even be damaging their health, along with the health of your organization.

If it’s not happening to a colleague, it might be happening to you.

This force is unresolved grief, and research suggests it costs companies billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and performance. Our own multiyear research effort finds that unresolved grief is a pervasive, overlooked leadership derailer that affects perhaps one-third of senior executives at one time or another.

And these are far from ordinary times. The death, human suffering, and loss stemming from COVID-19 is unprecedented in living memory. For those who have lost loved ones, there may be no ceremonies to say final goodbyes; there is no grieving together. Moreover, the pandemic is fueling loss and grief in ways other than death and illness. Personal losses of all kinds—postponed weddings, missed graduations, painful separations from family and friends, laid off or furloughed colleagues, shuttered offices, even the cancellation of sports seasons or other valued events—can create a lingering sense of grief that harms a leader’s effectiveness and may become debilitating if unaddressed. What’s more, a host of ordinary work experiences can trigger similar emotional responses. A missed promotion, losing a key customer or client, the end of a project or the disbanding of a team, the retirement of a beloved colleague or boss, even an M&A event—these can all spark feelings of grief that include shock, anger, sadness, and fear.

In this article, we draw upon research in psychology, leadership, and neuroscience—as well as our own longitudinal research—to highlight the challenges caused by unresolved grief and present approaches to help address the problem. Our hope is that more leaders will come to recognize that the painful emotions they and their colleagues may be experiencing—all of which are an inevitable part of being human—need not be debilitating or destructive; indeed, when addressed over time, these emotions can be reframed as constructive, positive, and creative elements of life, thereby helping leaders and organizations turn loss into inspiration.

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Πηγή: mckinsey