December 5, 2011
Grief as a Bridge to Living
This past week I was a keynote speaker for a living light ceremony put on by a local hospice organization. The audience was made up of survivors who had lost loved ones. The main message of my talk was "Grief is good, Loss stinks". The intention was to invite people to consider the pain, sadness, anger, resentment, fear and lonliness that come with loss is an opportunity to express the dark emotions that are discouraged in our culture. I invited the audience to consider that without feeling the full range of emotions that come with grief we deprive ourselves of feeling the full range of light emotions that we all seek. Joy, happiness, love, gratitude and enthusiasm.
As I drove home from the event I started to think about how true this is in our work lives. Without the full range of emotions we miss out on the creative possibilities that come on the other side of loss due to organizational changes and downsizing, cancelled projects and reduced budgets. Losses at work result in the same range of grief emotions that come from loss of a loved one. Often much less intense, but never the less real. The losses are similar. Often, we don't see them coming. We have little to no control over the outcome. And boy does it stink!
When leaders make some of the tough decisions to position the company for continued success the emotional fall out has to be considered and managed. If ignored, the result is stuffed pain, anger, resentment, sadness and fear that sabotage creativity and invite mindless compliance. The return on investment of managing the emotional aspect of change is a healthy, creative and highly contributing workforce.
Posted by Nancy Ballinger at 5:29 pm
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