One of the biggest points of my seminars is grief and loss. You may be thinking what does grief and loss have to do with corporate seminars? A lot. When I speak to groups, I am asked about the loss of a promotion or the loss of a job or the loss of a talented co-worker to another company.  The company and the professional team left behind, or the talent itself, is often left with a void and wondering what will happen next. And the unknown tends to bring up negative and fear-causing feelings.

As I tell anyone faced with fear and anxiety over the unknown, facing your feelings is really the best thing you can do to move yourself personally and professionally forward.  Fear and anxiety can overwhelm us and make us professionally or personally forgetful. What I mean by this is the failure to take care of ourselves in the present moment. We can become so stuck in the loss itself, that we take on so much stuff and added responsibilities and allow our physical and mental health to decline.

Let me give you an example; there was a creative ad team who lost their creative director to a competing company. The creative director was a fierce leader who was the backbone of the team. The team ended up feeling fearful because they now had to compete against their former boss and friend. They feared that their company’s business would decline and that they would all end up jobless. They become so immobilized by this fear that their stress levels made them so physically sick that they couldn’t work if they wanted to. Instead of reacting to fear and anxiety, they should have mourned the “loss” of their co-worker so their responses wouldn’t be so mentally and physically drastic, which is what I discuss in many of my corporate seminars.

Allow yourself, or your team, time to accept and deal with the loss of a job or even the loss of a talented co-worker. Go through the stages of grief and accept the temporary discomfort so you don’t become physically and professionally stuck! It is OK. If your company feels like it is having a hard time transitioning from a grieving process to a moving-forward process, please contact me. I can help motivate and merge employees to successfully navigate from job loss, client loss, project loss and grief to a successful future!