How to Process Grief When You Depart Your CEO Role

“Until yesterday I was the CEO. Now all I am is this… this regular woman. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

My client was telling me this in a session the day after she left her office and her company. Even though departing was her decision, leaving her CEO career behind didn’t feel any lighter.

So we started talking about grief.

Let Me Tell You My Own Story of Grief

When Czech Business Weekly, the magazine where I worked since 2005 to 2010, was closed abruptly at the end of April 2010, I didn’t have time to grieve.

Upon layoff we got one month severance pay. Prior to that, my salary stood at 1 000 EUR per month, even though I was the deputy editor in chief of the only English language business magazine in Czechia.

Comparatively, my mortgage stood at 514 EUR – just my mortgage. So you can imagine I had no savings put aside. With the mortgage urging to be paid next month, I had to dive in and bring the next buck home. This is how my media training and crisis communications career started.

In a nutshell, I got so busy chasing clients, preparing and delivering training, and making ends meet that I never gave myself time to realize that I had lost not just a job, but also a title, a status, and… a profession.

I knew then and there that after what had happened I would never be a journalist again. I also knew I would never work for anyone as an employee again. But this is about all I knew at that time.?

And yet, every time someone would ask me about Czech Business Weekly, I would choke.?

I couldn’t go through the print archives. When we met with colleagues from the former newsroom, all we did was talk about how the magazine had been closed and what could have been done differently.

Slowly, we stopped meeting altogether.?

It was like something from each of us was still trapped in that cursed moment when we had been announced that we would be closed.?

Now, in the light of 15 years of experience and after tens of training programs and certifications in emotional intelligence and people development, I can recognize that what we were going through was work-related trauma and grief. But at that time I didn’t have the vocabulary for it.?

How did this end, you ask??

For me, grief ended in November 2018 when I published my first book.

When the package with the first copies of Vy jako zna?ka - Osobní branding pro kariérní r?st landed on my doorstep and I opened it, the scent of freshly printed paper invaded my soul.

I held the book close to my nostrils and I to my heart. This was my writing, published on my own terms. I could still write, the key skill I used as a journalist, but I was also empowered.

Launching my first book was my closure; handing over the Czech Business Weekly archive to the American Center in Prague in 2022 was just a beautiful aftermath.?

What Does Unprocessed Grief Do to CEOs? ?

Like love, grief is a complex emotion. It hits you when you expect it the least and it lasts for as long as it lasts. There is little you can do to about it except for mastering it mindfully.

What can happen if you don’t process your grief?

Here are a few examples:

1.????? Lashing out at your family for not doing something right. In the background you might expect them to give you the same sense of recognition, power and influence you experienced in your CEO role. But that’s not their job.

2.????? Deterioration of mental health to the brink of mental crisis. A CEO ended up in a mental health hospital for six months when the announcement he would be replaced came in.

3.????? Deterioration of your self-confidence, mainly if you’re lingering on the market looking for your next CEO role for too long. If you had no career management plans for yourself, you might be challenged when you land with your feet in the cold waters of recruiting CEOs from outside organizations.

4.????? Abrupt decisions to take on CEO roles that are not a good fit for you (guilty as charged here). These decisions will have less to do with money and more to do with your need to be recognized and emotionally compensated for your loss.

5.????? Abrupt decisions to start your own business with no long-term plan in sight. This can lead to you burning through your finances and hurting your reputation, mainly when you jump into delivering services you are not qualified to deliver (coach overnight, anyone? ??).

6.????? Abrupt decisions to take on a lower role (C-Suite or below) and risking becoming a mighty pain in the behind for your colleagues. If you do decide to go into the C-Suite after having been the CEO, you need a high degree of self-awareness and self-mastery to tap into your humble self and be a real part of a team again.?

As you can see, unprocessed grief will hurt you, but it will hurt those around you as well. What’s worse, it can and it will hurt your reputation if you refuse to recognize and embrace it for what it is – a major loss.

What’s the Way Out of Grief for CEOs? ?

Healing starts when you recognize and embrace your current reality: you used to be the CEO, and now you are not a CEO anymore.?

This is it. Nothing more, and nothing less. You are not an anybody, you have not lost everything, and no one says you will not be a CEO again tomorrow.

But right now you are not the CEO – you are just a woman or man grieving.?

Here are a few practical steps you can take to master your grief:

1.????? Give yourself time and space. Even though it is healthy to leverage the momentum of your departure to position yourself for your next role, make sure you do give yourself conscious time and space for the emotions happening in your system.

2.????? Ask your close circle for holding and support. Simply tell them what it is: “I am grieving. This will take a while. So if you see me sitting on the terrace with a cup of tea looking nowhere, know that it has nothing to do with you and also, it won’t last forever. But this is what I need now. And I need your support, patience and love during this period.”

3.????? Talk to other former CEOs. Ask them how they processed their own transition. Map when they reconnected with a greater purpose again after departing from their roles.

4.????? Slowly but steadily, start planning for the rest of your career and life. If you have been the CEO, hopefully you have been a good one. This means that you can be a visionary and you can serve from a place of high impact and influence. Ask yourself what the world needs from you right now. Ask yourself from what place and role you can serve best. And when it sits – when it really sits inside you – then move into action. And the grief will slowly let go of your hand.?

Of course, nothing compensates for you having planned for this phase in terms of your finances and next career steps. The more you predicted and prepared for your CEO exit stage, the easier you will navigate everything that comes your way in this unique phase in your life. And it’s tougher for first-time CEOs; the more you do this, the easier it gets.?

You know, grief is there for a reason. Usually, it is to prevent us from doing stupid things. We do them anyway, but still. Grief slows us down. Grief forces us to look inside. For many CEOs (remember Steve Jobs being fired from Apple in 1985?), this is perhaps the first time in their lives when they really have a reason to look inside. Grief is there for a reason – and that reason is to make you a better next CEO. Ignore your grief at your own peril.?

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