As someone who supports grieving individuals, a red flag of concern was raised in my mind when I read that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg returned to work 10 days after the unexpected death of her husband David Goldberg.  She returned on a modified schedule, wanting to support her children through daily routine and the sense of normalcy that can bring.

Don’t take my red flag to imply that Sheryl Sandberg should not return to work.  Maybe it will be helpful to her, her family, and to Facebook.  And maybe it won’t.  There in lies the red flag – the “normal” of our daily lives is shattered the moment someone close to use dies.  Life as we know it becomes life as we knew it.  She is not done grieving.

Here are four things I’ve come to understand about loss and grief that I believe are particularly relevant to this set of circumstances:

1) None of us is immune to grief.  Period.  It doesn’t matter how old, how young, how wise, how wealthy, how much support, or how ‘having it together’ we might appear, when we lose someone or something that matters to us, we grieve.  Sandberg has not just lost her husband of 11 years, she has lost the normalcy of her everyday life.  She is exploring what it means to be wife today.  It is different than what it meant to be wife just a short time ago.  Only recently she was a COO at Facebook with an avid supporter, her husband David Goldberg.  Today she is a COO at Facebook and David has died.  There is not a handbook for being the COO of Facebook and losing your husband unexpectedly.

2) Grief can be all consuming – from head to toe – body, mind, and spirit.  Individuals may experience health symptoms in conjunction with their grief such as disrupted sleeping patterns – some sleeping more, others experiencing difficulties sleeping.  Some will report challenges making even simple decisions accompanied by a struggle to stay present.  There can be a loss or increase in appetite.  There can be a questioning of beliefs.

3) Grief looks different on everyone.  I don’t know what Sheryl Sandberg’s loss and grief experiences will be.  I just know she’ll be having them.  Maybe her health is fine and she is sleeping well.  Maybe she feels able to make decisions.  Maybe she doesn’t feel distracted.   How she feels today might not be how she feels tomorrow.  Grief is a ride, an often unpredictable ride including unpredictable timelines.

4)  There is no right answer for how long to take before returning to work.  For some, going back to work after a death or other loss can be experienced as very helpful.  The work place offers the familiar.  There can be supportive friends and colleagues.   For others, the busyness of work becomes a way to keep the grief at bay.  But remember, none of us is immune to grief – busyness doesn’t make it go away.  Sometimes distraction is helpful in the short term as we deal with the shock and numbness that often occurs in grief.  It can become unhelpful if we use it to avoid the process of grief.  In addition, those well meaning colleagues can say or do rather unhelpful even hurtful things in the face of grief.  It can also mean avoided conversations, potentially impacting decisions, as individuals steer away from the uncomfortable and awkward.

I offer the following to Facebook and more generally to any organization that has a senior leader who has recently experienced a significant loss:

• Consider that the grieving individual’s leadership and decision making abilities may be impacted by the grief.
• Consider others in the organization may avoid the grieving individual in their own efforts to avoid the uncomfortable or awkward.  This may impact the flow of pertinent information.
• Acknowledge that grief is a process for which the landscape of the grieving individual can change daily, or even within any one particular day, and that the timeline for grieving is fluid.
• Offer support both to the individual and other employees.  Most of us don’t know how to do grief or how to support a grieving person.  Some education on what the process of grief is and the myriad of ways it can impact an individual could be healthy for your organization.  Bringing awareness to helpful and potentially not so helpful ways to support a grieving colleague might be of value too.
• Be prepared to make adjustments.  In the case of Sandberg, some have already been made, for example her schedule and travel.  More may be necessary.  The decision making structure and processes may need to be modified temporarily.  As well Sandberg may decide at some point in the future that she does want to take a leave from work.  Support her in that exploration and be willing to step into some difficult or awkward conversations along the way.

In the end it is not about whether Sandberg has gone back to work too quickly, rather I would offer a more appropriate question to ask is:  How can Facebook best support Sheryl Sandberg, honoring wherever she is at with her grieving process, and at the same time acknowledging that her grief may temporarily impact her leadership abilities?

© Dr. Catherine Hajnal 2015. All rights reserved.