Observations from the threshold. On grief, identity, leadership, and what it means to belong to yourself in the space between.
McKinsey found that unresolved grief affects fully one-third of executives, and organizations are consistently ill-equipped to handle it. The financial cost to US companies runs approximately $75 billion a year. But the loss of leadership capability, and the human suffering behind it, can seem beyond measure.
We celebrate momentum. We are suspicious of stillness. In leadership, in organizations, in the cultural story we tell about resilience, forward motion is the prize. But some thresholds need to be stood in, not crossed.
For most of us, the role was never just a job. It was how we understood ourselves in the world. Whether the transition was chosen or arrived without permission, the loss of the identity anchor is one of the most disorienting experiences a person can move through.
Grief-informed leadership is an approach to leading that recognizes grief as a normal, persistent, and performance-affecting human experience, and builds organizational practices, language, and culture accordingly. Here is what it means, and what it looks like in practice.
Military transition is one of the most significant identity shifts a person can move through. Not because the skills disappear, but because the entire framework that gave those skills meaning does. On carrying the depth that service built into rooms that were never made for it.
For decades, the role provided daily confirmation that you were someone it was worth being — the deference in a room, the calls that got returned. When it ends, what remains? On executive identity, transition, and what comes after special.