My life has not been perfect, and I find that deeply annoying. For better or worse, I've faced crisis across every part of it. When it's personal, it's hard to know how to survive. When it's professional, suffering at work, not allowed. My boss used to say, "That big stall in the bathroom is for crying, because I don't want to see it." But what happens when you have to go back to the office after the death of a loved one, or in the middle of a divorce? More taboo, what if something bad happens at work? Bankruptcy, layoffs, a failed startup.
Here's the thing. Our brains don't actually know the difference between grief at work and grief at home. It's all grief, all of it. Pop culture tells us, be resilient. Gritty. I don't know about you, but I'm more likely to show up with dirty hair a hangover in a bad, juicy jumpsuit.
(Laughter)
Thankfully, managing crisis is a skill set. It's something we can learn. But it takes tools. Practical tools, not toxic positivity.
I'm the CEO of a crisis management firm. We work on capital C Crisis: fraud, scandal, industrial accidents, workplace fatalities. I'm also a hospice chaplain and a death doula. A couple months into my MBA, I was on the phone with my mom when she found my 23-year-old sister dead from an accidental overdose. This is a strange format up here, because then I have to say that a lot of other people died one after the other, and can't really go into the years I spent laying in the ashes of my life. I was in childbirth when a doctor cut my artery. Every time my heart beat, blood pumped into my abdomen for eight hours. Apparently, the human body holds 11 units of blood, and they replaced eight of mine.
So suffice it to say, I had a few unanswered questions in my life, and I did what I thought every reasonable person would do in this kind of a setting. I got obsessed with death and dying. I read the Tibetan Book of the dead, did grief yoga, wrote my own obituary, laid like a corpse to see what it would feel like. It makes me very weird at cocktail parties.
(Laughter)
Professionally, I met crisis when I was the COO of a hedge fund. I was getting a root canal when I got the call that our largest investment had been raided by the FBI. It was a half-a-billion-dollar global Ponzi scheme. Painful investor losses. Bad guys went to jail for decades, and our firm went out of business. It was freaking out to one of my lawyers, like sobbing, when he said to me, "Get over it. It's not like someone died." I was like, I'm going to refute that point. It felt like someone died. I lost my job, my reputation. I lost friends. I lost my identity. I grieved.
Crisis taught me that we live in two worlds. Our inner world is this loud, crowded place that's totally invisible to others. That's where we grieve. Our outer world is where we problem solve. I call it the land of logistics. That is what goes into chaos. The art of managing crisis is to give each world what it needs. Grief needs support. Chaos needs order.
So let's start with our inner world. Crisis is catalytic. Think of it like a nuclear chain reaction. The first thing it triggers is our biology. We flood with adrenaline, cortisol. This is super useful if you've ever had to run away from a bear. But the thing in crisis is you're running away from a bear for years. That messes with your brain. Memory, cognition, impulse control. In hospice, we call this grief brain. It's that foggy feeling. Grief brain.
So how do we cope? Turns out, not that well. Most of us take what's already hard about grief and just make it harder. We do this by either burying the grief, like nuclear waste, or by detonating it, like a bomb. And it's tricky to see these things in ourselves. So consider this. When all hell breaks loose, are you more likely to simmer in resentment or fire off a flaming email?
(Quietly) Flaming email.
(Laughter)
Barriers. Barriers avoid messy emotions. But the grief leaks out like poison. At the times when we most need empathy, barriers, they're pretty mechanical. They're robotic. Barriers. Feelings are not weaknesses. And phrases like "stay positive" are not that motivating.
Detonators. Detonators are volatile, excessive: overspending, overeating, overworking, over-everything. At the times when we need stable leadership, they just barf their feelings on everyone. My fellow detonators, I see you. Get a therapist, somewhere to put your big emotions.
And when all else fails, just learn to say self. Self. The best tool for managing our inner world is self-awareness. It's not only about coping. It's strategic. These skills are leadership superpowers. All honed by grief. Now what about our outer world? Let's say someone's died. You have grief brain. Then you have to negotiate with the insurance company. Call the coroner. Cancel their mail. A doctor I work with in hospice calls this bureaucratic suffering. These are the times, either personally or professionally, where we need an operating system to organize the chaos. That operating system begins with four questions.
First, what is the crisis? You'd be amazed how often people try and solve problems they can't define. Imagine you're in your conference room. Go around your team, "What's the crisis? What's the crisis?" You will get different answers from everyone. That's your starting point for building alignment and identifying conflict.
Second, what are the tradeoffs? In grief, we go into denial. Wishful thinking. Use management frameworks, timelines, decision trees. Map it out. There are no easy choices and bad choices. There are no good choices and the right choices. There are only hard choices, so make them concrete and map them out.
Third, what are your priorities? You cannot control the outcome of crisis. You can't. But you can control who you want to be. As a brand, in your company, be the best version of your brand. As a person, choose. Choose to grow. Try. See if you can prioritize things like adaptability, discipline, kindness.
Finally, what is the next right thing? It's a Buddhist concept that orients us to the present moment. When things are in chaos, make a list and just do what comes next. That's it. Just what comes next. And sometimes you'll spend a lot of time. What's next, what's next, what's next?
Crisis happens to everyone. It will happen to you. If you're brave enough, it will teach you lessons you can't learn anywhere else. Crisis has not always been my best look. But it brought out the best in me. There is, I promise you, a path from grief to growth if you choose it.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Rachell Morris: Thank you so much for that, Meredith. You know, before you leave us, you talk about managing crisis as a skill set, which is so smart. In a work setting, when you learn that a colleague is experiencing a crisis in their personal lives, what is the best way to support them through it?
MWP: I think step one is to remember that work setting, personal setting, doesn't make any difference. We are all humans everywhere we show up. One of the challenges of work is that we believe we are supposed to just fix things. The problem with grief, it's not fixable. So turn the fixing mind off, and turn on the idea of bearing witness and companioning someone. If you feel like, "Oh, I'm too scared to show up and say something wrong," just say something kind. Often people will say, "Well, I didn't want to bring that up because it might make you feel sad." If someone's going through something hard, they're already sad. They know it's going to happen. So just show up, walk with them, sit with them in the darkness. Even if they're your colleague, it doesn't take much to just say, "Hey, you're on my mind. How are you holding up?" That's it, be human. We are humans everywhere. RM: I love that, such an important talk. Thank you so much.
MWP: Thank you for having me.
(Applause)
