Hospice for Organizations

I spent many years working as a hospice chaplain and a bereavement counselor/coach. My job was to help people die well as a part of living well. I would make the dying as spiritually and existentially comfortable as possible, and when their time came to die, I would comfort the family and take them through a healthy process of grieving and acceptance.

Many palliative medicine doctors today are talking about the difficulty that we as a culture have with dying. Even doctors, who are charged with "healing and curing" patients, see it as a failure when a patient dies. The reality, though, is that nobody lives forever and we seem to forget that. Nobody has a set number of years that she is supposed to live. What's more important than ensuring people live to a particular "expectancy" (even at the expense of a good quality of life) is ensuring that they have a meaningful life and death and not to see the two as dichotomous. The next important step is to provide comfort for the survivors and see that they process their grief in a healthy way with story, discussion, and ritual.

I've come to notice that this type of grief and sense of loss shows up in many other places beyond physical death. It's interesting to me that we see the "personal world" and the "corporate world" as being so disconnected - especially when they both have the same common denominator: people.

In organizations, people retire, are laid off, fired, change jobs, quit to raise kids or care for aging parents, etc. Teams are formed for a specific purpose and when the project is complete or the powers that be discontinue the project, the teams are left scrambling for meaning. What would it look like if we were to recognize that the team's life is coming to an end and put it on hospice - a meaningful process toward a good ending? How would it be if we were to consider the grief of the "survivors" after a layoff or even for those who are transitioning into retirement? After all, any transition requires a time of healthy grief, even if the change is intentional.

Those who experience transition in the workplace go through a sort of ambiguous loss. There hasn't been a physical death, but psychologically there is a shift from what was known to an unknown new reality. The identity of the individual changes as they take on a new role in work and in life and this shift results in grief.

In her theory of ambiguous loss, Pauline Boss says that the following are needed in the grieving process:

- Finding Meaning

- Adjusting Mastery

- Reconstructing Identity

- Normalizing Ambivalence

- Revising Attachment

- Discovering New Hope

By creating a safe space and intentional process for transitional grief, we can create a healthier work environment that translates to more generativity and sense of belonging and meaning. If the organization is showing that it cares for those it is comprised of, this is a form of self care for the corporation or division. Perhaps by practicing a little vulnerability in the corporate setting, we can recognize and provide the right care for the parts that it is made of - living, breathing, feeling people.