One of our team members has just broken up with her partner. What can we do to help?

One of our team members has just broken up with her partner, we want to be supportive and we are finding it difficult. Ultimately we want her to get on with her job. What should we do?

Relationships ending are losses and impact people differently. A break up of a relationship would certainly impact on a person’s effectiveness at work and often impacts co-workers depending on how the person is coping. It helps us to have empathy for others who are experiencing this by reflecting back to times in our lives when we have experienced something similar.

There is a balance between being caring and supportive and also ensuring that you are all able to get on with your jobs.

You can support your co-worker by:

• Being empathetic, reflect on how hard it must be for them and let them know that you understand.
• Holding them as creative, resourceful and whole. There is nothing wrong with them, nothing broken and nothing to be fixed. If you can see that they are struggling on a deeper level then it’s important to encourage your co-worker to seek some additional support via your EAP program and a professional counsellor.
• Finding ways to remind them of their strength, resilience and capabilities both personally and professionally.
• Suggesting that they take some time off in order to work through their feelings.

With all loss the person will experience a period of grief, it will help to support them if they understands this process. Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed the five stages of grief model which primarily deals with change and loss.

You can be a caring colleague, however it’s important to ensure that the break up your colleague has experienced doesn’t become the focus of the team, it will also serve her to have a place where she can get away from pain she is feeling.

If you are finding this all consuming ask for help with the situation. If you are not the leader/manager of this team then you may wish to speak to your manager about your concerns for both your co-worker and the impact on the team.

Christine Miller a Clinical Psychologist at SOMA Health and Wellness advises:

“Acknowledge the personal loss, it is important to validate peoples feelings and it contributes to the culture of a caring workplace, but do not be overly gushy – it is the workplace and she has a professional role to provide. Allow her to maintain her autonomy and take control of her emotional state as it relates to work, ie. ‘I am sorry to hear about your relationship breakup… If you should require any support with workload during this time please come and discuss with me what your plan would be’.”

Business as usual

It is helpful that the status quo remains in other facets of people’s lives when one part substantially changes. Keeping the business as usual approach to work is supportive, provides normalcy and perspective and helps people cope. You often hear people say in such situations, “work has been good with regards to my coping, it’s a good distraction”.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). In this blog Pollyanna answers questions from our readers on issues they are experiencing leading or being part of a team.  She offers insights on teams and team dynamics. For support and information on team days run by Perspectives Coaching see here. Her previous Blog for SmartCompany, 2nd Time Around was about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round.

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