When the World Feels Like Too Much to Bring to Work

Some weeks, the news doesn't stay outside the office door. It walks in with your team on Monday morning, sits down at the table, and waits. Leaders who pretend otherwise are not protecting their people. They are just leaving them alone with it. This edition was written in response to a week of deeply unsettling events, when Rob found himself reaching out to friends and colleagues in the Twin Cities and hearing the same thing over and over: work is a welcome distraction, and also very hard to focus on.

The challenge for leaders right now is that their teams are not all feeling the same things. Some are frightened and grieving. Others are processing events through a completely different media lens. And some simply do not want to bring current events into the workplace at all. None of that means the moment can be ignored. It means it has to be navigated with care, honesty, and a willingness to meet people where they actually are.

The good news is that leading through this does not require having the right political answer or knowing exactly what to say. It requires something simpler and harder at the same time: showing up as a human being. Rob shares three concrete approaches that leaders can use right now, drawn from his own experience leading a team through the summer of 2020 and from a conversation with a c-suite executive at a national retailer who recently did exactly the right thing when ICE raided one of their stores.

In this edition of Reading Between the Lines, Rob Volpe sets aside the planned topic to offer practical, empathy-grounded guidance for leaders trying to support their teams when the weight of the world makes it hard to get the work done.

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