Full Transcript for 26 | Professional Grief: The Workplace Emotion We Don't Talk About

Jen Brown: And there's a phrase that you have shared with me before about professional grief.
Elizabeth Power: There are elements of our work life that can bring us grief. And that could be anything from a boss or your work bestie moving on to another position, All of those can... can lead to a sense of grief that isn't really talked about.
Jen Brown: Hello to our listeners and viewers. I'm Jen Brown, the founder and leadership coach with Journey of Grace Coaching and a former US diplomat. Many of you know Hugo Rodriguez. He is the co-host. He's on vacation, well-deserved vacation. And I'm so excited because today I have a special guest joining Elizabeth Power. Elizabeth is a leadership consultant, executive coach, and a former senior US diplomat. That's how we know each other because I was actually a quote client of hers as she led the State Department's flagship leadership program. She created her and her team created all kinds of amazing material to help us leaders, consular leaders in the field. And I really learned so much from you, Elizabeth. So thank you for being on the show with us today.
Elizabeth Power: it's my pleasure and thank you so much for having me. I don't think I can fill Hugo's shoes, but I'll give it the old college try.
Jen Brown: Well, I think you will be just great. Not that we're prompting Hugo out by any stretch. I know he sends his regrets that he's not here to join in on this conversation today. You know, I was, as we were just talking, we first met actually in Gwyke Hill where I was serving as the Consular Section Chief and you came down and I know that we... Wow, we used all sorts of your materials, looking at ways that we could strengthen our operations, strengthen our leaders. And I'm curious in your leadership background, what stood out to you as you got to work with all of these consular teams around the world?
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, what a great question. I think what jumped out to me was that it really takes a team to do something really well, right? I think many leaders feel like I have to be the one who has all the ideas. I have to be the one who sets the vision and devises all of the processes and the organization around it. And what I... What was really hammered home for me when I was doing this job working with all of these teams all over the world was that the best performing teams were the ones that gathered ideas and input collaboratively from every team member who was involved in whatever process was at play in our facilitated session. And yeah, that is something that I have continued to carry with me. And I carried with me as a leader when I left that job and went on then to lead my own teams. I was like, okay, let's put this into practice. We're gonna be collaborative. Obviously there are some times when the leader does have to make the call, but as much as possible to be collaborative and gather input from the rest of the team about the things that they're involved in.
Jen Brown: That is such a great point. I know that was where I was at that particular moment in my own leadership journey, feeling like I needed to be the one to have all the answers. And actually when I got out of the way and started doing my own work, right, I allowed my team to really grow and step up to the plate. And it was a game changer.

Elizabeth Power: Mm-hmm.
Jen Brown: It was a complete game changer just in bringing everyone to rise and then seeing the efficiencies that could come, the innovation that could come from that collective input and team building.
Elizabeth Power: Absolutely. mean, yes, better performance, more efficiency, all of those things. And you get the bonus then of developing the people under you, right? Because you're empowering them, you're giving them some room to play and innovate and be creative and try things out. And yeah, that's going to keep paying off down the line beyond just this specific project.
Jen Brown: That's right. Absolutely. I think as a, when someone is skilled in a particular area, they have the technical know-how and expertise, and then they're promoted into leadership, it's natural to want to stick with the thing you know versus learn to develop other people. And that's really the leader's job at that point. I'm curious in your broad career, because you served in how many countries?
Elizabeth Power: Counting the United States when I did domestic tours, it was nine. was a total of nine.
Jen Brown: Right? Nine, exactly. So in nine countries, global experience, what would you say in your own career helped you to go from that technical expert into that leader of leaders?
Elizabeth Power: Hmm. Well, I think like most of us do, I started out viewing the negative examples that I didn't want to be like. Like I didn't have a clearly defined, I want to be this kind of leader, but I did have a very clearly defined, I don't want to be that kind of leader, right? And so that set me down the path of really thinking about, okay, well, if I don't want to do X, then what does Y? really look like. And I developed my own personal leadership mantra in response to a very not great boss. And that was take care of my people. Take care of my people. And I put a lot of stuff under that umbrella. It wasn't just work hours and collaboration and things like that. It was also appropriately managing their performance. That also counts as taking care of them, right? Empowering them, getting them training when possible, having real honest conversations with them about their performance. Like all of that for me came under this umbrella of take care of my people. And it started because I was working for a boss that I didn't feel did that very well.
Jen Brown: So often that is the case. know what bad leadership looks like, and that can really shape what good leadership looks like.
Elizabeth Power: Right.
Jen Brown: Share with me an example though where you did serve with someone who inspired you and where that helped shape your leadership identity. And identity is a word I want to come back to here in a moment because I know that's shaping the work you're doing now. So how did good leadership help to shape your identity?
Elizabeth Power: Mm hmm. Yeah, I did work for several good leaders. The one the one that came to mind first when you asked was was somebody who was in the deputy ambassador role when I when I got to post and then the ambassador, you know, we had a very long gap in that position. And so she stepped up to be the acting ambassador for several years. And she put as much thought and care into how she wanted to lead the internal team as she did, you how she wanted to lead the external policy that she was also responsible for. And she was so generous in terms of sharing the information that she got, the important work that had to be done. You know, she didn't keep that all to herself. She took that collaborative approach of we're all in this together. I'm one of you, I've been elevated temporarily, but I'm one of you and I'm gonna still be part of the team. I'm gonna lead the team, but I want you along with me. And it was the most effective team that I worked on in the State Department. And it was due entirely to that example that she set of we're all in this together, we're gonna work together. I'm gonna be generous with my information, with my time, with the important work. with kudos, that kind of thing.

Jen Brown: Sounds like there's a level of humility in all of that too.
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Jen Brown: Yeah. So thinking about your identity as a leader in the State Department, spanning nine countries and impacting thousands upon thousands of consular professionals and broader foreign service colleagues and civil service colleagues. How has your identity shifted? from your State Department leadership to where you are today.
Elizabeth Power: Well, it's a real loaded question, I feel like, for a former diplomat, because the nature of that diplomatic work means that diplomat becomes a huge part of your identity. It affects everything about our lives, right? From where you live, to what language you speak, to where your kids go to school, I mean, everything. And yeah, so I definitely have felt a shift since I left.
Jen Brown: It is.
Elizabeth Power: the State Department about 18 months ago. And there was some unlearning, you know, just at the very basic like work habits level that I had to do. Things like, you know, I had a fellow consultant and coach friend say to me, I grumbled to her that, you know, had somebody schedule an appointment with me for Friday afternoon, you know, and I want to do an appointment on Friday afternoon. And she looked at me and she was like, well, Elizabeth, if you don't want to do an appointment on Friday afternoon, why is your calendar open for Friday afternoon appointments? And in my head, you know, I was like, well, but work hours are Monday through Friday, nine to five, right? And yeah, so that was just one example of a piece of my, like a very basic piece of my identity that has shifted. But also I'd say more, more broadly,
Jen Brown: Thank
Elizabeth Power: Now that I am no longer associated with an institution, with an organization, you know, I get to decide what is valuable about my work, what is meaningful in my work, what a win or what a success looks like for myself. Instead of having that, you know, externally driven, it's now all very internally driven. And so there, you know, there were some rocky moments where I was like, Ooh, you know, what am I, what am I doing here? Is this, is this worth it? But as I've gone through that transition, I would say my identity is now much more internally driven, internally motivated. Um, and I, and I love that because I get to design my work around what's important to me versus what somebody else thinks is important.
Jen Brown: I love that. That is so true. There is an unlearning and then getting to be that decider in what does your business look like, right? What impact are you creating? When are you doing that work? And there's a phrase that you have shared with me before about professional grief. And I wanna latch onto that because...
Elizabeth Power: Mm-hmm.
Jen Brown: I know in our careers, we moved every couple of years. So we were constantly forming new relationships and saying goodbye to teams, right? And when you go through difficult challenges and obstacles, crises, you form a special bond. so saying goodbye to those relationships, but yet still being a part of a broader institution, right? With a mission. Leaving the State Department. How has professional grief played a part in forming you now?
Elizabeth Power: Yeah. Well, yeah. So my entry point, like you said, to thinking about professional grief was really the grief that I felt around the moves and that relocation and what did that mean for me? What did it mean for my family? Who was I leaving behind? What parts of me was I leaving behind, right? As I moved on. And I would say since I have left the diplomatic life, That is still part of how I think about professional grief. But I think about it more broadly now as well. And I think this is true in any work situation. There are elements of our work life that can bring us grief. And that could be anything from a boss or your work bestie moving on to another position, right? That there's a transition there that that you have to adjust to and you may grieve the ending of that relationship that you had or you get assigned a new portfolio and have to stop working on something that was really important to you and that can lead to grief. Layoffs, know, any sort of, any sort of change to your working environment where your expectations of what it was going to be like are no longer being met, right? All of those can... can lead to a sense of grief that isn't really talked about. think in most Western culture, we don't do a great job of talking about grief in general, any kind of grief that we might feel, but particularly in the work context, it can be hard to talk about because we don't think about work as something that you might grieve.
Jen Brown: No more. I love this because when I first heard you talk about this, I thought, yes, I went through a professional grief and leaving teams. And I know the impact it had on my family. My son didn't want to move anymore after a certain point because of grief he experienced in leaving. So my career caused an element of grief in him. And then I made career decisions based on that. But I didn't really connect the dots of thinking about losing colleagues, right? Whether they moved on or people, when I had to be the one to, as part of being a leader, terminate certain team members and the grief on a team. And in personnel situations, there's only so much you can talk about, right? So how do you effectively coach a team through that kind of grief when they're seeing changes like that?
Elizabeth Power: Right? Right.
Jen Brown: And then this idea that, you know, policies change, or maybe there's in the private sector, a merger and acquisition, and there are all sorts of layoffs and changes. So how are you working with teams, with leaders to coach them on how to address their teams through these types of challenges?
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, I would say where it comes up most often is at the individual level. it can be a little harder in a team environment to have the kind of trust and vulnerability, openness to vulnerability, right? That allows a sense of grief to, to be talked about, to be acknowledged. but when I'm coaching individual, individual leaders, I will often hear. in their responses to my questions, you know, an underlying thread of grief. And they don't frame it that way. But when I say it sounds to me like I'm hearing some grief here, what, you know, what is that? There is often a pause and then a, yeah, yeah, it is grief. I really am feeling strongly this sense of loss over, again, whatever situation it might be, a colleague who moved on, or I thought I was gonna get one thing in my work environment and now I have something totally different. And just in naming it, I can see the weight. reducing, you it doesn't lift completely, you still often have to kind of process in some way. But there's a little more openness in that individual when they're able to say, I am grieving something. This was important to me and I feel it's loss. It's important for them to say that out loud.
Jen Brown: So as they are acknowledging, right, and naming being that critical first step, what are some ways that you can help them process so that they don't stay stuck in the stress? Because I imagine this grief is tied to stress and burnout as well.
Elizabeth Power: Uh-huh. Yeah, absolutely. certainly can be. And I think one of the important things to start with is how is this grief showing up in my work life and how is it showing up in my home life? You know, there's not the bright line between home life and work life that we maybe want sometimes. those, yes.
Jen Brown: Yeah. No. No. Thank you for saying that. A holistic person, right? Yes.
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, exactly. mean, we carry the stress, the burnout, the anger, the frustration, you know, all of the emotions that we feel at work, we carry them home with us to some degree. And I know just thinking back on my own experiences with grief, like, of course, there were times when I came home from work and what I, what was the underlying feeling for me was sadness over something that had happened at work.
Jen Brown: Yes.
Elizabeth Power: But how it manifested was shortness with my husband or, you know, I was, I was too curt with the kids or, you know, I just didn't have the patience for, you know, the 18th bedtime story or whatever, you know, the situation might have been. And so getting, getting these folks to think about, okay, how is this impacting me? We've identified it. We've named it. Now, how is it showing up? How is it showing up at work? And how is it showing up at home? And often at work, one way that it shows up pretty commonly is disengagement. Because this thing is causing me pain. I want to back away from it. And so that can be a surprising realization for some folks.
Jen Brown: So when they are connecting the dots that this grief is showing up as disengagement, and I love your examples, right? Being short at home, because that's true in my case too. I didn't have the word to put to it at the time, but it certainly has played out that way. When they start to see the impact, What is like that next step for them then to say, wow, I didn't realize that this thing over here is causing me to react in this way and have this sort of negative impact. What's that next arc in their journey?
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, I think there are two critical steps. And one of them is, what do I need to do to honor this grief? And often it's something simple. Sometimes people have a specific ritual in mind, you know, obviously not as elaborate as a funeral, but think about the ritual of a funeral service. The purpose is to allow the mourners to process their grief, remember their loved one. And that kind of ritual can also play out at the individual level with a work. place grief, a professional grief, smaller. But if it's a colleague who has moved on, you know, how can I honor the grief that I'm feeling about that? Or how can I honor the fact that my career is coming to an end? How can I honor the fact that I lost my job? Or, you the project that I felt so strongly about has now been canceled, right? And those are very individual. responses, but the idea of honoring the grief, think is really important. And then the second step is, is asking the question, who do I want to be? Who do I want to be in the wake of this grief? You're not going to, the grief isn't going to, you know, magically go away, but you can choose who you want to be as a person who is carrying this grief.
Jen Brown: Right.
Elizabeth Power: And it's almost a strategy, right? Like that, take the pause, take a breath. I'm feeling this thing now. I'm going to choose how I want to react.
Jen Brown: Right. Right. You are speaking my language, that intentionality, right? Who do I want to be? What outcome do I want to create here? Yeah. But really honoring the root of what's underneath all these other actions that might be, or reactions that might be showing up.
Elizabeth Power: I like that, I could fix it you. You wanna? Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And just that acknowledgement that there's something here is really important.
Jen Brown: Right, right. So when you talk about before a client can name it and you talked about identifying that common thread, what might be some of the symptoms that people share with you when they come to work with you?
Elizabeth Power: I'll use an example that came up in a conversation that I had with my own coach. I was still at the State Department and I had a leadership coach. the struggle that I was dealing with on this particular day was I was really struggling to click with a new person on my team. And I was like, you know, just can't kind of figure out the right entree to get a good relationship with this person. Over the course of my conversation with the coach, the coach was like, I kept saying, well, I had such a good relationship with this person's predecessor and I can't figure it out. And, and my coach like the third time I said it, my coach was like, let's, let's pause for a minute. How, how sad are you about the predecessor leaving? I'm hearing that this is a grief problem and you have not fully processed your grief over this change.
Jen Brown: Thank
Elizabeth Power: and it wasn't an unanticipated change. was not a surprise. It was just a regular rotation as you know, happens any number of times throughout the course of a year. but yeah, I hadn't, I hadn't done the work to really acknowledge to myself what I was feeling. And, and that's the kind of thing that I also hear in my clients. It will just be a repeated phrase of, I didn't expect this or
Jen Brown: Great.
Elizabeth Power: I really wish it had been different. That kind of thing. I think sometimes when it's a big transition we're talking about, like I'm retiring or I'm leaving this, I know that I'm going to leave this job for whatever reason, then it's an easier, a more direct entree. But...
Jen Brown: Right, right. There's a life of it that's tied to it. Yeah.
Elizabeth Power: Exactly, exactly. But it's a little more indirect with the other scenarios and it's often just listening for the underlying emotion that probably gets repeated over the course of the conversation.
Jen Brown: Wow. You have me thinking because so often in my own career, there were those moments and I did not have that thread right before I got into coaching. I did not have someone listening for that thread. And I think about the transitions of coming and going. And yes, it was part of the lifestyle, part of the work. was known that's how it is, but we're humans and we have real feelings behind all of that. And so just going deeper with that. And then also on the project side, you have me even thinking about big projects where I invested time and heart. And then that's great. They didn't go anywhere. And, and that's a piece of my identity too, right? Because I've worked to create something that now for various reasons, didn't move forward.
Elizabeth Power: Right? Mm-hmm.
Jen Brown: And I'm thinking in a with, you know, in working with a coach in this, how do you work with someone who's maybe just kind of shoving that down and saying, well, whatever.
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, I mean, the person has to decide for themselves, right? That yes, this is what I'm feeling or no, it's not. Sometimes I'm off base. I'm just the coach. I don't know everything. They're the experts in them. But somebody who is really open to doing the work of coaching kind of generally, acknowledging, hey, I'm a work in progress and I would like your help as I continue this work. I think most times people are open to, yes, I hear what you're saying. Maybe it's not grief exactly, Elizabeth. Maybe it's I'm angry or I'm frustrated. And that doesn't mean they're wrong, right? It's their emotion. They're the ones deciding it. But just me pointing out there's something here. It seems to me to be grief, but you tell me, right? What is it? Or is it something? Sometimes it's not something, or sometimes they're not ready to dig a little deeper and that's okay. It's their journey. So I'm just there to try to help along the way, but ultimately it's their journey. So if I think it's grief, but they think it's something else, well then it's something else.
Jen Brown: I just, I love this. I'm blown away because it's, like I said, something I had never really put any framework around in my own journey. And I know you're doing more work in this space and you have a workshop coming up on August 13th. Tell us about that.
Elizabeth Power: That's right. That's right. Yeah. So on August 13th, I'll be offering a free one hour workshop virtually in middle of the day on Eastern time, which is where I'm located. Yeah. Just to allow folks the space to start thinking about some of this, how do I navigate grief? What is the grief, professional grief that I'm feeling? How do I navigate it? And what might be on the other side? I, you know, as we've talked, I've heard it a lot from my clients. but also it's present more generally in my network. and when I have posted on LinkedIn about, about grief, I find that I get a lot of comments and DMS, know, people who maybe don't want to have that conversation in the public space of comments. but come to me with messages of, this is exactly what I'm feeling and thank you for saying that. And so I can hear, you know, in the US federal government network that makes up a lot of my professional network, given my background, but also in the private sector, you know, with so many layoffs, so much uncertainty in the work world generally at the moment. there are a lot of strong feelings. There's a lot of strong emotion, a lot of sense of loss around one thing or another. And I wanted to give people the space to start thinking about it in a way that would be helpful for them to start processing it.
Jen Brown: And so just to be clear for our listeners and viewers, you don't have to come from the government sector. This professional grief applies to everybody who's gone through any sort of change in their profession.
Elizabeth Power: Right. Right, absolutely. Exactly, Yeah.
Jen Brown: That is pretty amazing to me. I love that you are doing that. And there's something else that really stands out to me. You talked about how you lived this professional grief through your own experiences with transitions. And so often in the coaching space, we are called to serve clients based on where we've been ourselves. And so I really just want to honor that because I know you are such a thoughtful leader and the fact that you have been wrestling with this throughout your own journey. And now you are serving people as they are going through professional grief on various levels.
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, thank you for that. It's definitely something that I feel very strongly about because it's impacted me so much. Yeah, as I said, it started with the moves, but once I started thinking about it, I started seeing it in so many other parts of my professional life. Yeah, and I think it's important and something we don't focus on enough. So if I can offer the space. to allow people to do that. I'm thrilled to be able to do that.
Jen Brown: And to work through that, think about what's on the other side of professional grief. We get someone who shows up, is showing up fully, more creatively, intentionally. They're coming home in a way where they can be really present with their family, their friends.
Elizabeth Power: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. I became, yeah, I was just gonna say, once I started thinking about it in these terms of, you know, how do I want to honor it and then who do I want to be now, I became a better partner. I became a better mother. I became a better daughter to my parents, to my friends, you know, I just... I was able to be intentional about who I wanted to be instead of letting this unnamed, you know, very strong emotion drive me. And I was a better employee as well.
Jen Brown: I love it. Right, right, I love this. So again, for our listeners and viewers, we will have the links on how to reach, how to contact Elizabeth and for this August 13th workshop, it is a complimentary workshop. Please click on the link, sign up. She is wonderful. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining today. I'm going to throw the last word over there to you. What would you share with our listeners if you could hand one piece of permission to everyone maybe quietly grieving at work? What would that be?
Elizabeth Power: I would say the most important thing you can do is just acknowledge it. Just acknowledge it. If you do nothing else, acknowledge it out loud to one other person. Whether that's a partner, a friend, a colleague. Acknowledge it out loud. I'm feeling sad about this thing at my work.
Jen Brown: Mm, that is. So often when we bring those types of things to light, they lose some of the weight. Yeah.
Elizabeth Power: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you share the weight, right, with the person on the other side of that conversation. Yeah.
Jen Brown: So powerful. Elizabeth, thank you again. Truly, what a pleasure in having you on. So excited for your workshop.
Elizabeth Power: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it was great to have this conversation with you. And, and yeah, I send my regards to Hugo. But very happy to be here with you and your audience.