Every September 11th, something shifts in the room for a lot of people, even those who rarely talk about it. As a leader, you will not always know who is carrying what, and that uncertainty is part of the job.
Maybe someone on your team lost a family member that day, or maybe they were a first responder, or maybe they were just old enough to remember watching it unfold on a television in a school hallway and it left a mark that never fully faded. What matters more than knowing every story is knowing how to show up when someone’s grief surfaces in the middle of a Friday afternoon at work.
This is not really a piece about September 11th specifically, though the date is a good occasion to think it through, because the same skills apply to a staff member grieving a parent, a peer going through a divorce, or a colleague with a family going through challenging times far away. What we are really talking about is how to hold space for someone’s emotions while still being the person responsible for the outcome, the deadline, and the team’s performance. That balance is not natural for most people, and it takes practice to get right.
The Difference Between Being a Leader and Being a Friend
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make when someone on their team is struggling is trying to become their therapist or their best friend in that moment. It comes from a good place, but it usually backfires, because it blurs a line that both of you actually need intact. Your staff member does not need you to fix their situation or to sit there trading personal stories back and forth until the boundary between manager and confidant disappears. What they need is steadiness. They need to know that their emotion was seen and accepted, that it did not make you uncomfortable enough to rush past it, and that you are still someone they can trust to lead the ship even while they are hurting.
You can offer real warmth without collapsing the distance that makes leadership possible. Saying something simple like “I can see today is heavy for you, and that makes complete sense” does far more work than launching into your own memories of that experience or trying to match their emotional intensity with your own. Empathy does not require you to feel exactly what they feel. It requires you to notice it, name it gently, and let them know they are not alone in noticing it either.
Receptive Does Not Mean Rattled
A lot of people confuse emotional receptivity with fragility, as if being open to someone’s pain means you have to absorb it and carry it around for the rest of the day. That is not what strong leadership looks like. Strong leadership looks like being able to sit across from someone who is crying or shaking with anger or just staring blankly at their monitor and staying calm without flinching away from it or rushing to shut it down.
If you feel yourself getting uncomfortable, and you probably will at some point, the instinct is often to either overcorrect with cheerfulness, change the subject as fast as possible or offer suggestions to try to ‘fix’ the challenge. These responses tell the other person that their feelings are too much for you to handle, and that is the opposite of what builds trust. Instead, let there be a pause. Let the silence sit there for a moment before you respond. You do not need to fill every second of quiet with words, because sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is simply not look away. A steady presence, a few empathetic nods or smiles, leaning in and staying steady can do more than words will ever do.
Holding the Line on Expectations
Here is where a lot of managers get nervous, because they worry that showing empathy means expectations have to disappear along with it. That is not true, and in fact, treating someone as fully capable, even while they are grieving, is often a form of respect rather than a lack of compassion. People do not want to be pitied at work. They want to be seen, supported, and still trusted to do their job, even if the day’s version of “doing the job” looks a little different than usual.
This means you can ask questions like, “Would you like to take the time you need this afternoon? Could we touch base tomorrow morning about where things stand on the project?” This way you can convey both compassion and structure at the same time. You are not ignoring their pain, and you are also not letting the entire team’s output collapse because one person is experiencing a personal challenge. Give people room to feel what they feel, and give the work room to keep moving, because both of those things can exist together if you are willing to hold them at the same time.
What This Looks Like in Practice
If a staff member comes to you visibly shaken on a day like September 11th, the first move is simply to slow down. Close your laptop, put your phone aside, step away from your screen, because body language communicates whether you are truly listening long before your words do. Ask an open question rather than a leading one, something like “How are you doing today?” instead of assuming you already know what they need.
Let them talk without immediately jumping to solutions, because most people who are grieving are not looking for you to solve anything. They want to be heard, seen and felt. Once they have said what they need to say, you can gently ask what would help, whether that is stepping away for the rest of the afternoon, having someone else cover a meeting, or simply being given a lighter workload for the day. Then follow through on whatever you agree to, because broken promises during someone’s hard moment cut deeper than they would on an ordinary day.
Why This Matters Beyond the Anniversary
The reason this skill matters so much is that grief and hard emotions do not wait for convenient timing, and they will show up in your workplace whether you are ready for them or not. Leaders who can hold both compassion and expectation at the same time build teams that trust them completely, because people know they will not be abandoned in their hardest moments, and they also know they will not be babied or underestimated because of them.
September 11th is a hard day for a lot of people, and it will keep being a hard day for a long time to come. The best thing you can offer as a leader is not perfect words or a perfect process. It is your steady presence, your willingness to sit in the discomfort without needing to escape it, and your quiet confidence that the people in front of you are strong enough to carry both their grief and their work at the same time, especially when you are willing to walk beside them while they do it.
How to be Prepared
This is where roleplay can be really helpful, practice with a peer, or an actor who is trained in realistically presenting emotions. Practice sitting, not saying, and just being present. Then when the real situation arises, you will be able to sit with your own feelings and be fully present with the person in front of you.