You're still there. How are you doing?

This has been coming up a lot lately, in coaching sessions, and in a cross-sector workshop I ran recently with coaches working across very different fields. Different organisations, same patterns. So it felt worth exploring.

I've written before about what it means to leave well, and to be let go with dignity. But lately something else keeps surfacing.

What about the people who stay?

And if you are considering joining a team that has been through this, read on. Understanding what the room is carryingbeforeyou walk in is its own kind of preparation. The skills that will serve you: awareness, empathy, the capacity to lead from wherever you are sitting, are exactly what we explore in our nextPurposeful FuturesDeep Dive workshop on the 9 April.

Something happens in organisations after people leave. Not the leaving itself, the aftermath.

The awkwardly silent team meetings. The longer to-do lists. The meetings that carry on as if the shape of the team hasn't changed.

And underneath all of it, team members are 'moving forward' hoping that time will heal.

You might be carrying guilt, relief mixed with something uncomfortably close to shame. You might be grieving colleagues who are gone, often without realising it's in fact grief, because after all, at least you still have a job. You're exhausted in the way that only comes from absorbing more work while also being asked to show up for strategy conversations and workplans that may or may not mean anything by next quarter.

And you are watching. Watching how your colleagues were treated on the way out. Watching to see whether anyone is going to say something.

Most of the time, no one does.

Why the silence spreads

As a leader, you may want to create honest space, but there is fear underneath that impulse. Fear of maybe being blamed. Fear of opening something you won't be able to close. So you hold another meeting, talk about the path forward, and stay careful.

And the team reads it as indifference.

As a team member, tired of performing engagement in a space that has not yet earned your trust, you're quieter than normal, go through the motions, and the things that once lit your fire are missing. Another hollow meeting. Another room where feelings are just sitting there unacknowledged.

The gap between what is felt and what is said widens.

Fear and frustration, unacknowledged, don't stay still. They calcify into something harder to recover from than the original loss.

I'm not saying all this to paint a doom and gloom picture but rather just share what I'm hearing, so YOU can reflect on whether there are signs of this you may have been turning a blind eye to, or if there's something else that requires your attention.

How you treat the leaving matters to those who stayed

The people still in the room watched every detail of how their colleagues left. Whether there was dignity and honesty or whether it was managed quietly to minimise discomfort.

That sends message that is difficult to undo:this is what we do when things get hard.

Handled with care, even a difficult departure restores something. Enough to signal that the organisation takes responsibility for what it asks of people. And the people who stayed are filing that away, whether they realise it or not. a

A question for whoever is holding this

You may or may not agree that leadership doesn't just sit with the person with the top title. And in situations where you have felt disempowered to show up in the way you would have liked to, it may no longer feel like leadership is a choice available to anyone in the room.

If you are leading a team right now,what would happen if you just listened?Not explained, not defended, not steered toward a constructive outcome. Just listened, and acknowledge what you heard. (Note down what comes up for you when you read this, this is good information for you.)

If you're carrying something unsaid:what would it feel like to share it and actually be heard?What more do you need, and would you ask for it? What kind of space is needed for your team?

None of this is easy. Entering a space openly when so much has happened takes something. The guardedness is not irrational; it is an understandable response to what everyone has been through.

That said, it IS also a decision point.

You can stay where you are, feeling what you are feeling. Or you can do something different, something more aligned with the kind of person, the kind of leader, you want to be. Both are choices. Only one of them opens a door.

Writing what comes up for you here is key, it's a totally different experience from justreadingthe questions and have a few thoughts pop into your head without really exploring it. What have you got to lose?

What becomes possible

I worked recently with a team leader who genuinely wanted to create that space. The intention was there. But he felt so much time had passed since the loss that he wasn't sure how to approach it, or whether the team would even be open to it. The history in the room felt too heavy to shift from the inside.

He said what helped was having someone come in from outside. It wasn't because the leader had failed, but because a fresh presence without the weight of what happened, was received differently. The team could hear things they hadn't been able to hear before. The leader could lead without also having to carry the room.

What followed was a process of recalibration. Rebuilding trust, slowly and deliberately. Creating the conditions for the team to find its footing again, and for the leader to feel confident they were moving forward together, not just hoping time would fix things.

That is what becomes possible when brave spaces are created.

Two things worth trying

For yourself:Before you walk into any room this week, ask yourself one question:what am I bringing in with me?Not your agenda. Not your role. What are you actually carrying, and is it serving you or the room?

For the room:Ask someone how they are doing with all of this, and don't move on until you have actually heard the answer. No pivot to the agenda. Just:How are you doing with all of this?

It's not a solution. But it's a beginning.

If you try something this week, I'd love to know what happened. And if this landed differently for you, as a leader, or as someone walking into a new room; hit reply. I'd really like to understand more about what you're carrying.

With you,
Linda

Founder of Touching Distance

PS.If you want to go deeper Patrick Lencioni'sThe Five Dysfunctions of a Teamand Simon Sinek'sLeaders Eat Lastboth sit close to what this newsletter is about.