Leading while grieving: Identity, role and authority under strain

There are periods in a person’s life when the personal and professional collide with unusual force. Many of us in mid-life are faced with a dying parent, a serious family illness or the slow anticipatory grief that accompanies a loved one’s decline. These experiences don’t remain neatly outside organisational life but unsettle identity, distort role enactment, and challenge our capacity to take up authority with clarity.

Systems‑psychodynamic thinking gives us language for this disruption. Susan Long’s Transforming Experience Framework describes how identity is shaped by deep “core constructs” – these are the stories we hold about who we are and how we operate in the world. These constructs are usually stable, but they can be shaken when life events activate older, more vulnerable layers of self. As Long writes, “We have a construct about our own identity… core constructs are the ones we hold deeply.”

When a parent is dying for instance, we often find ourselves pulled back into earlier identity roles whether that’s the child, the caregiver, the rebel, the responsible one. These roles sit in tension with the organisational role we are expected to take up as leaders. Sher and Lawlor’s work on role highlights this dynamic: “Role as ‘given’… and role as ‘taken’… how the role is construed and interpreted subjectively.” In crisis, the “taken” role can shrink, distort or feel harder to inhabit.

Identity under pressure

A personal crisis creates what Obholzer and Roberts call a disturbance in the “inner world” that leaders bring into organisational life. They note that unconscious processes intensify when emotional strain is high, shaping how authority is experienced and enacted. “The unconscious at work… influences how people take up their roles.”

We can describe feeling split: outwardly competent, inwardly fragile. Decision‑making becomes heavier, and confidence can dip, with narrower emotional bandwidth. This is emphatically not a failure of leadership but a predictable human response to grief.

Role enactment during crisis

Across coaching conversations, I notice that several patterns recur:

• A temporary loss of self‑authorisation (the inner permission to lead decisively).

• Heightened sensitivity to conflict or feedback.

• Boundary shifts: becoming overly defended or overly permeable.

• A pull towards familiar, much older identity roles that compete with the organisational role.

• Difficulty sustaining presence (a challenge Siminovitch and Van Eron identify as central to intentional leadership).

These changes matter because being a leader is not simply a set of tasks; it is a role taken up in relationship with others. When the internal world is shaken, the relational world inevitably feels the tremor.

What helps (and what has limits)

No article I write can resolve grief or reorganise a life in upheaval. But it can offer a few practical ideas drawn from systems‑psychodynamic work – I’ve personally been drawing on these recently:

• Name what is happening: Menzies Lyth’s work on anxiety in organisations shows that unacknowledged emotional strain often leaks into behaviour. Naming the impact, privately or selectively, reduces unconscious displacement.

• Hold boundaries with care: Long’s framework emphasises the importance of containment. Small adjustments such as shorter meetings, clearer expectations and protected thinking time, help to stabilise role.

• Re‑authorise yourself: Authority is both granted and taken. In crisis, leaders often lose sight of their legitimacy, but a simple daily practice can help – articulate one thing only you can bring to your role today.

• Create reflective space: Obholzer and Roberts highlight the value of reflective practice in separating person from role. Coaching, supervision or trusted conversation partners help leaders regain perspective.

A closing thought

Those in leadership positions often fear that a personal crisis will make them less effective. In reality, once the initial shock softens, many become more attuned, more prepared for the ups and downs of team members lives and more capable of leading with depth. Identity may be shaken, but it does not collapse. Authority may wobble, but it can be reclaimed.

You are allowed to be both a leader and a grieving child or partner. The work is not to choose between them, but to navigate the space where they coexist.

And one last important point - coaching can help you navigate the impact of grief on your identity and role at work, but it cannot address the deeper emotional work of bereavement. If you need support with the grief itself, please reach out to a qualified mental health or bereavement professional. Reaching out is an act of strength.

Sources:

Long, S. (2016) Transforming Experience in Organisations: A Framework for Organisational Research and Consultancy. London: Routledge.

Sher, M. and Lawlor, D. (2022) An Introduction to Systems Psychodynamics: Consultancy, Research and Training. London: Routledge. (Chapter 5: Working with Individuals)

Obholzer, A. and Roberts, V. (2019) The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organisational Life. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Menzies Lyth, I. (1960) ‘A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety’, Human Relations, 13(2), pp. 95–121.

Siminovitch, D.E. and Van Eron, A.M. (2008) ‘The Power of Presence and Intentional Use of Self: Coaching for Awareness, Choice and Change’, International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, 6(1), pp. 1–20.