I have been invited to write a series of Opinion Pieces on Grief for Coaching at Work Magazine, led by Liz Hall.
In the first in a series of articles on grief, Emma Pearson explores the grief we forget to name, and discusses why loss belongs in our coaching conversations. (First published in Coaching at Work, 27 April 2025)
You don’t need to have lost a loved one to be grieving. And you don’t need to be a therapist to support someone – a friend, or even a client – who is grieving. The truth is, we are all grieving. We grieve because we are human, because we form attachments in order to survive, and because – as part of living systems – those attachments inevitably shift or end.
Loss is part of life. If we have felt love, connection, or hope, grief will be close by when any of those change or disappear. It may be ‘little g’ grief or ‘big G’ Grief – only the person experiencing it gets to decide. But the grief is there. Many of the clients we coach are grieving. Some know it. Many don’t. Some may not yet have language for what they’re feeling. And not all grief looks like tears – though tears may come. Or not. Either is okay.
What is grief?
As coaches, we’re often invited to walk alongside people at thresholds – endings, transitions, promotions, demotions, departures, new beginnings. And with each of these comes an identity shift. The transition may feel exciting and full of possibility. It may feel disorienting or heavy. More often, it’s a tangle of both. And within that tangle, grief often resides. Because every transition involves an ending.
William Bridges’ work on Transitions (Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, Balance, 2019) is foundational here and it is well worth a revisit.
So what is grief, anyway?
For me, grief is an umbrella – a wide, all-encompassing response to loss, including emotional, physical, mental, social and spiritual changes. It includes the sadness and anxiety we typically associate with it, but also numbness, relief, insight, gratitude, reorientation. Underneath it all is the simple fact:
something precious – chéri, as the French say – has been lost. And we are trying to find our way in its absence.
Yes, bereavement following the death of a loved one is what most people first associate with grief. But grief can also arise from:
- A life-altering diagnosis
- Divorce or separation
- Children leaving home
- A promotion that never came
- The end of a major project
- Job loss or role change
- Dreams set aside
- Cultural displacement
- The planetary crisis
The list is long, and intricately weaves the personal and professional.
It doesn’t take much coaching skill to notice that many – perhaps all – of our clients are swimming in the fog of our times. Some appear as high performers, charging forward with energy and vision. And that’s wonderful – no need to prick any balloons. But most, given a pause and a bit of space, will admit that something has shifted. That their work or life no longer feels the same. That meaning has subtly changed shape.
If you sit with them a while, and hold the space with compassion and curiosity, clients will touch on the tension of “these times”. They speak about the state of the world. If they have children, they worry about the kind of future those children will inherit. And they begin – often haltingly – to ask: So now, how do I live, knowing this?
Not my job?
The world is in crisis. We know why. And we also know it’s hard to separate out the complex,interwoven strands of our planetary unravelling. The sixth mass extinction is underway, and this timeit’s caused by one of Gaia’s own: us, homo sapiens sapiens. Once we truly know, it’s hard to un-know. And that knowing brings its own grief.
Rather than turning away – or busying ourselves with more goals, outcomes, and to-dos – coaching can offer something else. It can offer a pause. A pit stop. A place to stand back and reflect. And when that happens, grief often seeps in. Quietly. Or with force. And it’s asking to be met.
I believe it’s not only our role to be prepared for grief when it arrives – but to actively welcome it in. Because turning away from what hurts – in ourselves, in our organisations, in the wider world – has helped bring us to where we are now.Coaching is not therapy. But like therapy, coaching is relational, human, and concerned with transformation. While some grief needs specialist support, most does not. What it does need is holding. Witnessing. Space.
This is where coaching can help.
Our role is not to diagnose or fix grief when it appears. But we can recognise it. We can allow it. We can offer space for it to unfold.
And yet we often miss the cues. Or assume “it’s not my job”. In many industrialised cultures, grief, death, and bereavement are still taboo. Grief is seen as personal. Not professional. And coaching?
Coaching is meant to be future-focused, growth-oriented, goal-driven.
Conscious leadership
But here’s the thing: the past informs the present, and the present shapes the future. When we skip over the losses, we miss their wisdom. When we rush to reframe, we risk colluding with the client’s own desire to bypass what aches. Often, clients don’t name what they’re feeling as grief – because they don’t recognise it. Many still believe grief only applies when someone dies.
So what can we do as griefwise coaches?
We can listen for transitions – and for the losses they engender.
We can wonder: What is being let go of here? What’s ending? What’s changing shape? We can gently invite clients to honour those things, before moving forward.
If we are to support a shift to conscious leadership – one that responds wisely to these times – we must begin with wholeness. And grief is part of that wholeness. It is a sign of care, of connection, of being alive.
When coaches are griefwise, we don’t just help our clients navigate change. We help them become more fully human. More aware. More integrated. More able to contribute with clarity and heart. Isn’t that what coaching is for? To help our clients, our organisations – perhaps our planet – truly thrive?
About the author
Emma Pearson is an executive and systemic team coach, OD consultant, and business psychologist. She supports leaders and teams in navigating complexity, strengthening connections, and fostering cultures where both people and organisations can thrive. Loss has shaped her as much as her work. In the space of a few years, she lost one of her best friends, her youngest brother, her husband, and her teenage daughter. That depth of grief has sharpened her awareness of life’s impermanence, the urgency of living fully, and the kind of leadership we need in these times—one that is courageous, deeply human, and awake to what truly matters.
