What About Everyone Else?
How to Lead Your Team When Someone Is Grieving
Table of Contents
Ask ten people what “team culture” means, and you’ll get ten different answers. Some will say values. Others, attitude or behavior. And they’d all be partly right. But at its core, culture is how your team thinks, talks, and acts, especially when it matters most.
Grief reveals the soul of your culture. If there’s a framed poster on the wall that says “Compassion,” but your team doesn’t treat a grieving colleague with care and respect, then compassion isn’t a value. It’s an empty slogan.
How you lead in this moment will be remembered. It will impact how someone else reacts when they’re struggling. It will make it a little easier for someone to ask for help. And it might turn a personal tragedy into an opportunity to strengthen your team. It’s your opportunity to show your team what’s possible when care, humanity, and strength walk side by side.
Grief Doesn’t Just Happen to One Person
When someone on your team experiences a loss, it affects everyone. You’ll see it in:
What gets said and what doesn’t
Who picks up the extra load
The dynamic between people during meetings
The tension between showing care and staying productive
Without intentional leadership, the team is left to guess how to respond. And that guesswork often leads to disconnection, discomfort, and even more emotional impact.
This is your moment to show people what servant leadership looks like in practice. Your job isn’t to fix the situation, but to guide your team through it together.
Your Role Isn’t to Speak for the Grieving Person - It’s to Lead Your Team
Here’s a basic structure you can adapt when addressing the team:
“As many of you know, [Name] has experienced a deeply personal loss. They’re grieving right now, and it may affect how they show up over the next while. That’s completely normal. This is a perfect time to really lean into our core values as we work together to support them, and each other.
We’ve spoken about what support looks like for them right now, and part of that is giving them space while staying connected. You don’t need the perfect words. Even a simple, ‘It’s good to see you,’ can go a long way.
And if this brings anything up for you—sadness, awkwardness, or questions—you’re not alone. My door’s open.”
This does four things:
Respects privacy
Clarifies expectations
Reduces fear of “messing it up”
Models steady, emotionally intelligent leadership
Speak in a way that feels natural and true to your leadership style. What matters most is that you guide your team through this moment with clarity and care.
Live Your Values Or They’re Just Wall Art
Most leaders can’t name their company’s values. They didn’t help create them, and they rarely come up in conversation. Some can recite them, but don’t consistently practice them. Even fewer lead teams that actually live them.
When someone on your team is grieving, it’s one of the most impactful moments to bring those values to life.
If your company says it values...
Compassion - You check in personally, ask how they’re really doing, and offer the flexibility you can without waiting to be asked.
Integrity - You acknowledge what’s happening rather than avoiding it, and you keep your word on the support you offer.
Respect - You don’t make assumptions about how they should feel or behave. You ask what they need and honor their boundaries.
Teamwork - You gather the team to coordinate how to cover for their absence or reduced capacity, and make sure no one carries the load alone.
Excellence - You maintain high standards while recognizing that grief affects people’s performance. You lead in a way that supports both.
Transparency - You communicate clearly with the team about what’s happening (with permission) to reduce uncertainty and gossip.
Growth - You offer resources for support and see this as a moment for the team to grow in empathy, resilience, and connection.
Let your values drive:
How you check in
What behaviors are encouraged or redirected
What tone you set when emotions enter the workplace
The stories your team tells afterward about how this moment was handled
Don’t Wait for People to ‘Figure Out’ How to Show Care. Model It
Most people want to support their grieving teammate, but normal human fear, awkwardness, or uncertainty gets in the way. They don’t want to say the wrong thing, so they say nothing. They don’t want to intrude, so they don’t bring it up.
You can change that. Not by giving perfect scripts, but by modelling simple, human gestures that say: I see you.
Here are some starting points:
“Thinking of you - no pressure to respond.”
“It’s really good to see you back.”
“If you ever want to step away for a few minutes, I’ve got you.”
Leadership tip: Narrate your own actions to lower the social risk for others.
“I sent [Name] a short note this morning. I just wanted to let them know I I was thinking of them.
“I’ve been checking in every few days with a quick message, even just a wave on Slack.”
Culture is built in how we think, talk and act, one moment at a time.
And if someone crosses the line, through gossip, sarcasm, or frustration directed at the grieving person, that’s your moment to step in and protect the team’s integrity:
“I know this has been tough for everyone. And when stress builds, it’s easy to let it leak sideways. But this is a team where we protect each other, especially when someone’s going through something heavy. If you’re feeling the strain, come to me. We’ll talk it through.”
You lead by showing them what respect and care look like in practice. Not by demanding they show up a certain way.
Support the Team Around the Grief
Grief might center on one person but the impact radiates through the whole team.
People are:
Quietly taking on extra work
Managing awkward silences or emotional tension
Wondering how long this will last and feeling guilty for wondering
Holding back their own needs because “someone else has it worse”
If you don’t name that reality, it festers beneath the surface and will drain morale and breed resentment.
Say something like:
“I know some of you are carrying more right now, both emotionally and operationally. I see it. And I don’t expect you to carry that quietly or indefinitely. I’ll be checking in with each of you, but please know, if it’s starting to feel heavy or confusing or unfair, I want to hear that. Supporting someone else doesn’t mean your needs disappear.”
Leadership tip: Use 1:1s not just for status updates, but for real human check-ins.
Start with:
“I’ve been thinking about how this is affecting everyone, not just [Name], but the team as a whole. I want to make sure I’m supporting you, too.”
Then ask:
“What’s been hardest for you during this?”
“Is there anything starting to feel like too much?”
“Is there something I’ve overlooked in how we’re handling this?”
You’re not there to fix everything. But when people feel seen, heard, and supported, they can carry more without burning out or breaking down.
Mark the Calendar Because Grief Doesn’t
Grief doesn’t respect timelines and can be maddeningly unpredictable. Sudden temporary upsurges in grief can happen at any time and be seemingly be triggered by almost anything (or nothing).
Anniversaries or holidays
Unexpected reminders
Regular work tasks that suddenly feel difficult or impossible
Fatigue from a difficult night’s sleep
Expect the grieving person to have “off” days long after others have moved on.
Normalize that by saying:
“Grief isn’t something you ‘get over.’ It shows up again and again; on anniversaries, in quiet moments, or for no clear reason at all. When it does, we won’t treat it like a disruption. We’ll treat it like what it is: a reminder that this is a place where people matter.”
And don’t rely on memory. Set calendar reminders to check in, especially around known hard dates.
Use This Moment to Build the Culture You Want
Grief, and other moments of pressure, don’t just test your culture. They reveal it.
They show you, clearly:
Who leans in, and who steps back
Which values hold up, and which quietly disappear
What you really prioritize when empathy and performance feel like a tradeoff
This is the kind of moment that shines a light on everything you’ve built together - intentionally or not.
And it’s one of the most honest chances you’ll get to ask your team:
“When life gets hard, what do we want it to feel like to work here?”
“What does meaningful support look like—not just gestures, but action?”
“If this were you, what would you hope to experience from this team?”
These aren’t soft, optional questions. They are table stakes questions for teams that want to perform under pressure while a teammate they care about.
Ask them. Really listen. And let what you hear shape how you lead.
How you lead through this will define what your team believes is possible when it’s their turn to need support.
Culture isn’t built in posters, workshops, or brand videos. It’s built in how you think, talk and act in each and every moment.
This Isn’t Just a Moment. It’s a Mirror
You might think you’re just managing a situation that needs to be managed. But how you lead means much more than that. Your team is always watching you. They’re learning, through your actions, what kind of place this really is.
They’re asking themselves (and each other):
Is it safe to be human here?
Do I still matter when I’m not okay?
Are our values something we live, or something we laminate?
This is where culture gets rewritten - not in policy, but in practice. It’s where values become more than ideals. They become instincts. And it’s where leadership steps into its sacred responsibility to serve and support the human beings they lead.
Step into that. That’s the kind of leadership the world needs more of.