How Should Leaders Talk About Grief at Work?

Molly Graham says leaders should say the grief out loud. Individual contributors have a clearer job in this moment: they are more productive, and they have more room to build. Managers are the ones who cannot tell what the team should look like, what matters, or what to say. A leader is a role model. How they use AI trickles down, and so does how they sit with the change.

What she wants is more managers talking about grief, about the emotions that come with change, and about how hard it is. Naming what a fast change does to people makes the feeling easier. Most of what her writing on giving work away did was tell people that others have felt the same thing, and that the feeling means the change is fast and scary, not that everything is ending. The more leaders say that, the less alone a team feels. Knowing that someone at another company feels it too makes a difference. Leaders also have to keep the definition of what good means and of accountability: what is right to hand to AI, and what people still need to own. They show that in their own work and in how they talk about it.