When a co-worker has lost a loved one, tension can arise around the work place. That may sound a bit cruel to suggest; nevertheless, it’s true. The tension is not, by any means, a result of faults in the co-worker’s personality; it is just a fact of life. Death and grief deal tough times for us all – even those of us who may not be directly affected by the death – as in, of course, the case of a death in a co-worker’s family.
So, helping a co-worker cope with the grief of a death in his or her family in a healthy way is a benefit for all involved. Healthy grieving contributes to harmony in the workplace and, therefore, is always worth the effort – aside from the fact that it’s just the right thing to do. Below are some ideas that may help you help a friend or co-worker through a difficult situation involving a friend or relative and help yourself (or your company) at the same time.
Reasons to Get Involved
When confronted with a co-worker who has lost a loved one and is in the midst of grief, it may be tempting to keep one’s distance, to assume that they are best suited by “professional” help and that anything you may say runs the risk of making things worse than they already are. Co-workers often fall victim to this way of thing, and, while they may be cordial to the grief stricken colleague– often sending sympathy cards, attending funerals and even organizing a supportive get-together or two – their tendency to be aloof can actually be harmful. Yes, this is typically a mistaken way of thinking. An important rule of thumb to remember is this: to help is not to ignore. In fact, to help is the opposite of to ignore.
Getting directly involved in the life of someone who has lost a loved one and is going through grief is important for a variety of reasons. First of these is, simply, for the sake of maintaining harmony in the work place. If you are intimately familiar with the struggles that a co-worker may be facing, you can help this person communicate well when tensions mount at the company. If you recognize, for example, that a person experiencing a great deal of stress because he or she is unsure of how to handle complex interpersonal relations in his family who will be arriving soon to attend a memorial service for their family member, you may be able to intervene if communication become strained at work. If, for example, a grieving member of the office team becomes suddenly emotional – and even leaves the room – during a tense staff meeting, it may be up to you to explain the motivation behind the behavior that might otherwise be interpreted as bizarre. If you can help other co-workers to understand, and therefore, forgive the strange behavior, you can go a long way toward promoting a great sense of supportive harmony in the company.
A case in point that was blogged about recently (and anonymously) by a disgruntled former employee of a famous drug store chain: a young man had recently taken an entry-level shelf-stocking job at the chain’s store nearest his house but had high hopes of learning the chain’s systems quickly and perhaps advancing into a responsible management position within just a few months. About three weeks into the job, the gung-ho employee (very well liked by customers and his co-workers alike) greeted a few of his colleagues with a sad expression on his face and a grim countenance overall. What’s wrong, his friends wanted to know, reacting to the unusual demeanor of the young man. The new employee confided that his beloved grandmother was very ill in a local hospital and not expected to live out the day. “I asked the manager for the day off, and she wouldn’t let me go. She said we were short staffed today, and the store simply could not function without me.”
The two co-workers seemed shocked at the callous response from the manager, but they neglected to get involved. Two hours into his shift, the young man received a text message from his family at the hospital: his grandmother had passed. She had passed along her love to him before she closed her eyes for the last time – surrounded by everyone but him.
The young man quietly left the store and never returned.
In discussing the situation with the manager, the two employees learned that the young man had never told the manager that his grandmother was on her death bed. “I knew she was sick, but I didn’t know that she was expected to die today. He never said anything!” she exclaimed.
By electing to not get involved in the life of a co-worker in the midst of grief, the two employees lost a chance to be a significant blessing to their employer and their friend alike. Had they mentioned the issue to the manager upon discovering the trouble, they would certainly have been able to clear up the communication and send the young man on his way to the hospital in time to properly say his goodbye to his beloved grandmother. And it’s likely the young man would be a productive, fun-loving, and very talented member of the store’s leadership team today.
Tragedies like this can be avoided – to the benefit of all our society – if co-workers are willing to avoid the temptation to do nothing to help a co-worker suffering from grief.
Healthy Ideas for Helping With Grief
Helping a co-worker in the midst of grief can involve much more than just intervening for the colleague in his speaking to management at at meetings. It can also involve just listening. One of the best ways to help a co-worker who has lost a loved one is to simply approach him or her with a calm smile and say, “I’m hear to listen if you would like to talk.” Your offer may not be accepted immediately, but if you make it known that it’s a standing offer – open any time, day or night – you may be surprised at how helpful it can turn out to be. Even if it’s never fulfilled, just knowing that it’s available, can be a very significant blessing for a person who is in the midst of grief.
Besides being available for a listening session with the grieving friend, another way to help would be to understand the very stages of grief. If you are thoroughly familiar with the emotional symptoms that accompany most people at each of the five stages, you will be in a great position to be able to help your friend to cope with the troubles that may come up at the work place in the few months (or even as much as a year or two) after a death in the family. For more insight into how grief can affect the body as well as the mind, see How to Deal With The Physical Symptoms Of Grief. For this reason, we will end this article with a brief summary of each of the five stages and advise all interested parties to search through the many scholarly, informative articles throughout out the internet that discus these stages in much detail.
First, in the denial stage, a person, as the very name suggest simply does not acknowledge that he or she has suffered a significant loss. It is very likely this is the stage of grief the young man discussed above was experiencing when he neglected to mention to his boss that his grandmother would likely soon be passing.
After denial is anger. In this stage, the person suffering grief can seem angry at the slightest of annoyances. This is not likely the result of a stimuli that observers might expect, but, rather, of deep emotional turmoil being experienced by the person in the midst of grief. Knowing about this stage, and correctly assigning a co-worker’s outbursts to grief rather than some other source can do much to keep tension to a minimum at a workplace when a fellow employee is suffering from grief.Bargaining is the next stage of grief. In this stage, a co-worker may seem to be in good spirits but that’s only because he or she has worked out a (likely temporary) agreement with himself (or perhaps with God) over the loss. The bargains, as we say, are often very shaky and are likely broken. For this reason, those in the midst of grief often vacillate between anger and bargaining. Knowing this can be a great help in working through interpersonal communication issues that may arise when a grieving employee’s behavior becomes troublesome.
When depression strikes, the temptation may be to assume that a grieving person has hit a point of no return and is on his or way to a troubled, very dark, future. But that’s the exact opposite of the truth. Depressing is a sign that a person is finally coming to complete terms with himself (or with God). After a limited, temporary time of overwhelming sadness and an overall down spirit, the grieved soul will soon “snap out of it” and be on his or her way to great times ahead.
And, the acceptance stage of grief is that period of great time. In this stage, a person comes to complete terms with the loss they have suffered and are now ready to function as well as can be expected up to his or her maximum emotional potential in the work place. The best way to help a co-worker who is suffering from the loss of a loved one is to simply wait long enough for this stage to become apparent. If those around the grief stricken co-worker remain patient, they will find that, nearly every time, this stage of full “recovery” will come about, as God promises, in full order.