From Grief to Advocacy: Don Ryan on Suicide, Empathy, and Healing at Work

Episode Description:
⚠️ Trigger Warning: Suicide, grief, and trauma.

In this deeply human episode of The Elephant in the Org, we confront one of the hardest workplace conversations: suicide, loss, and mental health at work.

Our guest, Don Ryan — author of The Secret Struggle: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One and veteran social worker — brings both professional expertise and personal experience, having lost three close family members to suicide.

Together with Marion, Danny, and Cacha, Don explores:

• Why grief can’t be treated as a “policy issue” with one-size-fits-all leave.
• Equity vs. equality in crisis support — and why flexibility matters more than fairness.
• How peers often notice warning signs first, and what leaders can do about it.
• The role of postvention: planning before tragedy strikes.
• The long-term impact of grief on trust, performance, and psychological safety.

Top Takeaways:

• Grief doesn’t end after a week of leave — it changes people for the long term.
• Psychological safety depends on trust built before a crisis hits.
• Empathy and equity are essential leadership skills, not “nice to haves.”
• Workplaces need a toolbox of supports, not blanket policies.

Guest Bio:
Don Ryan manages violence-reduction programs for Hennepin County, MN, and co-coordinates a veteran-specific suicide-prevention initiative. He is the author of The Secret Struggle: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One (2024), written to help others feel seen, heard, and less alone.
🔗 Connect with Don: LinkedIn | thesecretstruggle.com

Link to Shownotes

Resources:
If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out:

• U.S.: Dial 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline)
• U.K./ROI: Samaritans 116 123
• Canada: Talk Suicide Canada 1-833-456-4566
• Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
• 🌍 Global directory: findahelpline.com

Because grief doesn’t clock out — and silence in the workplace is never the answer.

🐘 Connect with Us:

🚀 Follow The Fearless PX on LinkedIn: The Fearless PX
📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email Marion, Cacha, and Danny at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🎧 Catch every episode of The Elephant in the Org: All Episodes Here

🚀Your Hosts on Linkedin:

🐘Marion Anderson

🐘Danny Gluch

🐘Cacha Dora

💬 Like what you hear?
Subscribe, leave a ★★★★★ review, and help us bring more elephants into the light.

🎙️ About the Show

The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024.
Get ready for even more fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits

🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Transcript

Season 3 Episode 5 Transcript

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Danny Gluch: Welcome back to the elephant in the org, everyone. I'm Danny Gluch, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host Cacha Dora

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Cacha Dora: Hello!

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Danny Gluch: And Marion Anderson.

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Marion: Hello!

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Danny Gluch: And today we are diving into mental health at work. So we have the lovely Don Ryan joining us. Don, introduce yourself.

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Don Ryan: It's not often I get introduced as lovely, so I appreciate it.

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Marion: You are lovely.

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Don Ryan: Be really happy.

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Don Ryan: It's truly an honor to be here. I so appreciated being part of one of the the Rethink Series podcasts a couple months ago, and I'm a firm believer that this is a really important topic. So thank you very much for having me.

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Danny Gluch: Absolutely. It's just an honor. And one of the things that we wanted to be sure to bring, you know, an expert on you is that mental health in the workplace is so complex and

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Danny Gluch: so impactful and so personal and difficult to talk about, that we really thought that our audience and ourselves personally would benefit from hearing from you. But I wanted to start with

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Danny Gluch: what brought you here? What? What brought you to this place? How did you get here? How did you build your expertise? What made it personal.

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Don Ryan: Yeah, thank you. I'll try to be concise and give you as much information as possible. But it is interesting how life brings you down a path, and you don't know where it's going to bring you. For example, I dealt with some

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Don Ryan: significant grief and loss, and I didn't know at the time that I'd be able to use that later to help other people. So you know, you just have to kind of take things as they go. I think I got here with you in this conversation for 2 reasons. One, I've been working in the human services area for more than 30 years.

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Don Ryan: maybe half of that time I have been doing either supervision or management of programs. I manage a number of violence reduction programs in my 9 to 5. So this is a this is a conversation that not only do I want to come to as a subject matter expert of somebody who went through it, but also somebody who's managed people who have seen this.

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Don Ryan: this problem of the the we called it the unseen diagnosis before right, the unseen disability, because people don't really know what's happening at home sometimes. So that's 1 part of me. The other part of me is a personal aspect, and I've had unfortunately.

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Don Ryan: Well, I don't think we've mentioned yet that we're going to be talking about suicide in this episode. So just a trigger warning for everybody, because I know sometimes this is a difficult topic for some people.

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Don Ryan: but unfortunately I've had 3 members of my immediate family die by suicide. It started 34 years ago with my father when I was a senior in college.

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Don Ryan: almost 20 years later, I lost

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Don Ryan: my cousin, who was closer than a cousin for family dynamics, and the godfather to my oldest son, and then in 2022, I lost my brother Brendan, my youngest brother, to suicide. So those 3

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Don Ryan: moments in time help me develop a a passion that goes beyond

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Don Ryan: being just professional. This is a a personal and professional drive that I have to try and to try and work on this issue.

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Marion: I think that's something I can definitely identify with. I think there's

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Marion: there's something very healing about being able to channel that experience and that pain and all of the stuff that goes with it, and once you work through it, being able to channel it in a way that not only helps you process and continue to process.

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Marion: but also helps in the service of others. And I think you know, from my own experience of having fairly difficult spells of mental health issues.

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Marion: there can be nothing more isolating, particularly when it's maybe in a stage where you're you're not ready to talk about it, or you don't understand it, or you're just so overwhelmed.

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Marion: and sometimes just being able to listen or read, or just observe someone else's experiences can just help you navigate your own.

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Marion: Yeah.

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Cacha Dora: Yeah, I'm I. I'm with Marion on that, too.

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Cacha Dora: you know, we live really complex lives. And there's really dark things that happen in our lives. Whether it's to ourselves or the people around us, and I think, being able to take those moments and not only empathize with others right like on their experience, but also, like you were saying, like like helping to guide people through it. And sometimes it's it's as simple as seeing signs that people are exhibiting.

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Cacha Dora: whether it's you know, verbal or nonverbal behavior, and then helping people be seen like

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Cacha Dora: just having that sense of value can help someone so much, and it

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Cacha Dora: not everyone has that sense of self to be able to see it in other people. And I think that that's a wonderful way to take something painful and turn it into something that helps.

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Don Ryan: I thank you for both of those comments. I think you're spot on on both of them for me.

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Don Ryan: Just going to those comments, Kasia. I hid

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Don Ryan: the fact that my father died by suicide for more than 25 years, and I kept that inside because I was a part of that

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Don Ryan: story of his death, and it led to an enormous amount of guilt and shame.

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Don Ryan: And

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Don Ryan: So I I didn't tell anybody, so I bring that up because nobody knew what I was really going through for a long period of time.

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Don Ryan: and and this led to it took me over a year to kind of get through the hard stuff with my brother Brendan's death.

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Don Ryan: But 2 years after his death I published a book

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Don Ryan: in an attempt to try and help other people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

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Don Ryan: I realized, after getting some positive feedback from people that I

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Don Ryan: wasn't sure. You know your friends and family. You know, they're always gonna

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Don Ryan: give you positive feedback. They love you. They're my, they're my people. But when I get messages from people who I've never met, and I will never meet, and they tell me that they feel, seen and heard. And you know that's that's really what it matters

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Don Ryan: for me. I needed the book to be a catalyst for these conversations. I think the book is

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Don Ryan: fine, it's good, but being able to come out and have these conversations, and apply what I have in the book to Hr. And and real life, and people who are going through work every single day, that to me is the most important thing.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah, we go through a lot as a team and in work, and we bring, you know, grief, and we bring isolation and shame. And you know we can be surrounded by people in our office and feel completely alone, and one of the things I hear quite often is like, I feel siloed. I feel like you know I'm sitting here, and I'm surrounded by people, but I feel siloed.

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Danny Gluch: and I think oftentimes those are, you know, very work related terms. But they're feeling isolated. And we have all of these very complex emotions that we're bringing to work. What are some of the ones that you find maybe difficult, right? They're the elephants on the team, the elephants in themselves that they're not really able to talk about and bring to the team. What are some of those emotions that you think like?

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Danny Gluch: You know? I'm I'm sure that it's scary, but people need to work on talking about those. You know what one of the 1st ones I thought of that you brought up was grief.

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Danny Gluch: You were going through a lot of grieving is that something that people should should bring up is that something that people should talk about with their teams? What are what are some of the important ones not to just leave inside.

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Don Ryan: I think it's a great question for all 4 of us, but I would say that it starts with the person who is going through that

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Don Ryan: some people are going to need to talk about it, and some people are not going to be able to talk about it. Some people are going to need a week off of work or a month off of work, and other people are going to want to go to work the next day, and and it's going to be difficult for people at work to understand.

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Don Ryan: Those really complex dynamics.

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Don Ryan: And so

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Don Ryan: for me, it always starts with where the the person we're working with where do they stand? How are they doing? What do they need?

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Don Ryan: And that has to come after? There's a trusted relationship, professional relationship that happens in the workplace. Right? So you can't have those conversations unless you're working with someone already. But once you do, and you have that that trust laid out, then

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Don Ryan: you can have that conversation and say I'm here to listen if you want.

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Don Ryan: I'm also going to respect your boundaries if you don't want. But I want to. I want to help you make the best decision you can about what you need for work. Now, how we can help you personally, etc.

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Marion: Yeah. And and I think, like, when someone's in crisis, they don't always know what they need, or I can speak for myself when I've been in crisis.

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Marion: I think I've thought what I've known

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Marion: or what I've needed. But really I've just been in fight or flight, and I've just been trying to like.

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Marion: Get through the next 5 min the next 10 min, and

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Marion: you know, when our adrenaline and everything else is so high it can be very difficult to

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Marion: just take that breath and be able to really understand and articulate what it is that you need. And so I think.

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Marion: having people around that you know. None of us are experts. None of us are, you know, like

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Marion: fully trained grief counsellors, counselors, therapists, whatever. Right? Well, Don, you are to an extent, but the rest of us are.

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Danny Gluch: Just gonna say one of us on this.

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Marion: Donnas donnas but like.

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Don Ryan: Long time ago. I haven't. But yeah.

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Marion: Yeah. But but doing the jobs that we do. And we talk about this a lot, you learn a lot of these skills on the fly whether you're learning them correctly or not. That's another question. But, you're learning a lot on the fly, and I think that when you know you can create a space which is psychologically safe. Here we go again. But when you create that space where people can be

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Marion: in any given moment

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Marion: themselves, how they, the only way that they know how to show up when you really can create that environment. I think that that just goes a long way.

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Marion: And so it comes back to that, investing the time, investing the energy into building relationships.

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Marion: You know that as a 1st step is just so powerful.

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Don Ryan: I love that so much. So

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Don Ryan: what you're describing is supporting people when times are good, and that's exactly what you want. That's when you can gain that trust. Right? Yeah. So

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Don Ryan: in case that really horrible thing happens to a team member that they lose a child or a spouse to suicide.

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Don Ryan: When that horrible thing happens, then all of a sudden, you're you're able to say that

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Don Ryan: I have 10 examples of how my Hr. Business partner or my management or my company supported me

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Don Ryan: as time went on, and then I trust that I might be able to work with them, even though there's so much social stigma around mental health and suicide that it's very difficult to talk about. For example, if we're good, if you have a good management team, you realize that

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Don Ryan: if you could support your employees to be as healthy as they can be.

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Don Ryan: they're going to be more creative. They're going to be happier. They're going to bring people onto their team. They're going to be more productive. And at the end of the day, depending on what your business model is, you're going to make more money.

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Don Ryan: And and that's what people want, right? So there's a huge investment

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Don Ryan: in in taking care of your employees before something happens, and then it allows you to deal with those crisis moments.

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Marion: Yeah, and also.

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Danny Gluch: Oh, I was. Gonna say, it's both building something towards productivity and team health, but also laying the groundwork that foundation that you were talking about that's absolutely necessary, so that when something does happen they trust that they can open up and share and be supported.

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Marion: Yeah, the Delta isn't as wide to cross like if you're if you don't have that baseline, if you're kind of below the baseline, and then something happens. That's a huge leap of faith for someone to be able to say, Hey.

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Marion: Danny, I know that, you know we probably don't know each other that well.

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Marion: but I'm going through this, whereas if Danny and I already have a good collegial relationship day to day, and

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Marion: you know then, if something really awful is happening. It's not such a big leap for me to be able to kind of take him into my confidence. Is it so? You know, we talk a lot about stuffing things right? And stuffing things was a gorgeous activity that these guys really kind of pioneered within a company that we all used to work in together, and it was really just

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Marion: a set time for bonding, and we would get people together, and they would either talk about stuff or talk about things right like. And it wasn't business related necessarily. But it what it did do was build, bond, build relationships, build, trust, build, psychological safety. And I think

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Marion: you know the relationship.

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Marion: Speaking for myself, but I'm sure you guys probably agree. But the the longitudinal impact of that is now extremely powerful, and the fact that you know I can tell Danny and Kasia anything like anything. And the trust is there. So like, you know, when you're able to just cultivate a solid relationship through the day to day. You can't underestimate the power of that.

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Cacha Dora: Especially when what you're going to be expressing and talking about is so difficult just to say, to begin with, right? Just to get the words out of your mouth and out of your brain, out of your body, then to have to add on that extra factor of the audience that's going to be hearing it, and you have all these extra mental

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Cacha Dora: weights on the audience. Right like this is my boss, and like do they are. Do I already not trust how they think about me, to begin with, or like, it's going back, not just to that safe place, but also just the corporate pressure that people feel at work. To then have to also express weakness to some degree, because that's what they're being told. This is, it's not a weakness. This is just life happening. But the way that corporate will

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Cacha Dora: not just corporate. Let me rephrase that. The way that

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Cacha Dora: your professional life tends to frame things like that is that it's a weakness.

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Don Ryan: When it's not. Oh, I'm sorry, Kasha, go ahead.

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Cacha Dora: Oh, no, I was gonna say, when it's not, it's not a weakness.

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Don Ryan: I've heard Danny talk about this in a previous, podcast.

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Don Ryan: But the difference between inclusion and equity is really important in this conversation.

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Don Ryan: So it's 1 thing to say. Of course we're going to support employees, and if they need time, we're going to give them time. It's very. That would be inclusion, right?

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Don Ryan: Or excuse me, that would be equity giving everybody the same thing. But we have to go back and look and say

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Don Ryan: in some of these traumatic situations at home.

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Don Ryan: They're all different because our family dynamics are different.

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Don Ryan: The aspects of the traumatic experience that's different. And

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Don Ryan: we're not going to know what some of those things are until that employee chooses to share that, and they may never.

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Don Ryan: for example, if I was in your workplace, and you found out that my father died

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Don Ryan: immediately. You're going to have some sort of sympathy, and everybody has a father, and you're going to realize that's going to be difficult

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Don Ryan: if you find out that my father died from suicide. Well, then, it's completely different. Then it's a much harder situation, and you realize that I'm dealing with different things.

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Don Ryan: but nobody is going to know the fact that

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Don Ryan: my father never took care of me as a child, so my mother was a single mother took care of all of our kids. I never had a relationship with my father ever

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Don Ryan: when I say never I mean he would

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Don Ryan: take us out once every 6 months to the exact same pizza hut, and you know, but there was no real relationship there. Right?

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Don Ryan: So when it comes to not confronting somebody in your family, because that's what good Irish Catholics do.

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Danny Gluch: And finally doing that when you're a senior in college, because there's an appropriate moment to do that.

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Don Ryan: And I was on the phone with my father, having this conversation, and literally 2 h later I find out that he died by suicide after I confronted him for the very 1st time.

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Don Ryan: That is something that employers will never know.

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Don Ryan: And I I bring it up because most of the time. We're getting a small part of the story

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Don Ryan: most of the time. We don't realize

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Don Ryan: the things that are happening behind the scenes, and in a lot of ways. It's none of our business.

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Don Ryan: Our job is to support this person personally, because we're all human beings and professionally, because that's what we're supposed to be doing.

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Don Ryan: We want to get this person through that really difficult time. So they can continue doing that job that they have passion for right. But we always have to remember that we're only going to know a portion of that story.

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Marion: Yeah, that's it. So.

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Danny Gluch: Wow! That's such a powerful reminder. And and I think it it was the difference between equality and equity where equality is. Hey? People need help. Let's all give everyone, you know.

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Danny Gluch: 16 h of leave. If they're, you know, grievance leave versus we're gonna give people the amount of leave that they need and and what a great example of we're we're just. We're never gonna know everything. So

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Danny Gluch: we need to

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Danny Gluch: have flexible policies that are, you know, able to shape into the needs of the team as opposed to trying to force the team into the shape of the policy.

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Marion: Yeah. And I think this is where empathy

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Marion: really comes in. And and one of the it might actually have been, I can't remember now they're all blurring into one. But I think it was maybe the episode that we did with you. Don and Leah was on it, and one of the things that she said was.

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Marion: you know, empathy as basic as it is, is probably a leadership skill that needs to be taught.

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Marion: And you know, when I you know, I thought a lot about that. And I'm like, How do you teach empathy? Right? You know it's that's a really like, how do you teach that? It's not like, you know, learning to drive.

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Marion: But

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Marion: you know, reflecting on that and thinking about your story, I have a very similar story. Where I had a close family member who attempted suicide.

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Marion: It was probably more of a cry for help than anything else, but it was in the depths of a time where I was already dealing with, you know a terminally ill, Dad, and that kind of piled on top, and you know I broke.

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Marion: and I remember that happening, and then turning up for work the next day, 6 Am. Early shift

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Marion: and and slipped was just

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Marion: like I don't know how I got there. I don't remember the journey. I don't, you know, I just I and and

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Marion: I I think I managed to get through the 1st couple of hours at work, and then I was like, I have to leave. I have to leave, you know, like.

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Marion: And

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Marion: people have. Obviously, there's certain people that you would disclose some of that to, and some of it that you wouldn't. And I

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Marion: I didn't feel comfortable disclosing it to a lot of people. I was really struggling to comprehend it myself. I was, you know. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

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Marion: People have sympathy, but they struggle with empathy, I think, and

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Marion: that's not a criticism, because it's really damn hard. It's really hard, and you can only work with what you've got, and you can only work with what you know, and you can only work with any form of life experiences that you've had. And if you've never had a life experience of that nature. It can make it very difficult in that moment to know what to do or what to say or how to help. And I think you know, people have a lot of

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Marion: people are good at their core. Most people are good, and they have good intentions, but sometimes, in those

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Marion: of the gravest moments. It's almost like a paralysis, because you just don't know.

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Marion: And I remember at the time feeling

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Marion: adrift because nobody knew how to help me, and I didn't know how to help myself either.

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Marion: And so I think we have to recognize how hard this stuff is.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah.

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Cacha Dora: And.

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Marion: Give ourselves the grace to know that

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Marion: you probably aren't going to know how to handle it.

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Marion: Even you can go through lots of training. I think. You know, there's all sorts of initiatives, you know, mental health, 1st aid, and all of that which is good stuff. But until you're really in that moment

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Marion: you don't know, and I think that

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Marion: going back to thinking about Leah's comment of training and empathy.

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Marion: That is a thing I don't know what it looks like. I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you bring out those essential skills in a way in a

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Marion: that would help in this situation. But

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Marion: it's the most important thing, I think.

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Don Ryan: Another thing we talked about in that episode was empathy from a peer, too. It's not a peer's responsibility, but your peers in the workplace have a great impact on you. So how can you give some sort of training for empathy for those folks, too?

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Cacha Dora: Yeah.

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Cacha Dora: And I think

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Cacha Dora: when you are struggling, you want to look around and see where to help. And sometimes you just feel like you're drowning.

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Cacha Dora: And the people who tend to see it more are actually those peers, not your manager, because they're the ones that are

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Cacha Dora: doing the day to day with you a lot more than your manager is, and I think that it's hard because you don't like Marion said right. You don't even know what to ask for and and how, and and so it does kind of go back to like. How are you observing your your friends at work.

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Cacha Dora: or you're not even your friends at work right like. Maybe it's just truly a colleague, but you're starting to notice that things are different, and

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Cacha Dora: you might, as a peer, you might not even be able to pinpoint what the difference is.

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Marion: Here's a really weird emotion about that that just occurred to me when, as I was reliving this experience, I remember at the time, my my boss

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Marion: new.

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Marion: What was going on with me, like, you know, had a vague understanding. You know it's not like I didn't communicate it.

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Marion: but he was very uncomfortable about it, so he just didn't.

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Marion: Yeah, he did. He wouldn't talk to me. He he would just acknowledge me like politely, but there was No, how are you? What do you need?

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Marion: And

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Marion: I remember, months and months and months later that it obviously like built up in me. And this was my dad had died by this point and I'd been off work for a while, and I'd come back to work.

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Marion: and I lost my shit because I was so angry at this leader because

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Marion: he I felt like he wasn't there for me, and I couldn't even tell you what that

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Marion: needed to be.

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Marion: And now, with a different, you know, sort of lens, I realized that

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Marion: that's a very difficult situation for someone to be in, just because he's my boss doesn't mean he's gonna know how to handle the situation and and know what to say or what to do.

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Marion: But I remember I just exploded at him, and I

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Marion: called him for everything because I was so.

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Don Ryan: Yeah.

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Marion: Pointed, and how he didn't support me.

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Don Ryan: Yeah, that this is a really tough one, because we expect people to do the right thing.

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Don Ryan: The truth is that the best therapists and the best doctors have a difficult time talking about suicide.

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Don Ryan: It's scary. It's unclear. People are worried about contagion, which is a real thing, and something when you have a small team

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Don Ryan: and they're really close.

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Don Ryan: We we're talking about a family member who died. But let's just say you have a team member that dies by suicide.

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Don Ryan: People have to worry about everybody on that team and how everybody's doing.

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Don Ryan: So

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Don Ryan: I think it's really important just to 1st recognize that this is a difficult thing for professionals who who deal with this stuff more than the everyday people

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Don Ryan: to have those conversations. The second thing that I think is important is that our parents

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Don Ryan: in general, of course, I'm generalizing.

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Don Ryan: never talked to us about suicide. It was something that in that generation they tried to hide because they were worried that we, as

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Don Ryan: children or teenagers, may think, hey, this is an idea that I can take on so we don't. We don't know how to have these conversations. We

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Don Ryan: we have never been taught by our parents how to have these conversations, and then we come into the workplace. And it's a completely natural thing, Marion, to say.

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Don Ryan: but you know we don't. We don't know if that manager had somebody dying their family from suicide, and it's gonna bring too many hard things up for them. So I I just think those 2 aspects of knowing how to have those conversations are important to mention.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah.

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Marion: Yeah, absolutely. And and something else that just occurred to me as well when you were talking. When you mentioned the Irish Catholic guilt.

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Marion: I lived and worked in the Middle East for about 5 years.

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Marion: and what I learned when I lived there relatively quickly into my tenure was that

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Marion: suicide under the Islamic faith. Sharia law is illegal.

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Marion: So I had situations where we had employees again think about it very expat. You know, big companies that are just

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Marion: staffed by expats, right low, skilled, low paid labour in many cases.

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Marion: and there would be situations where people would take their lives or attempt to, and

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Marion: if they attempted to and didn't you know it? They didn't pass. They were still alive.

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Marion: Not only would. Obviously they're going through the the anguish, the mental anguish of of whatever's triggered this. But then

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Marion: they're arrested.

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Marion: yeah, and and taken to to jail, or, you know, institutions or whatever. And I think that to me was, you know, growing up in Western society where you know.

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Marion: suicide is awful, but it's a thing that we know of, and it happens, but when I

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Marion: had to try and wrap my head around this additional layer of shame and and fear, and all the other things that came with it, especially as an Hr. Practitioner, because in situations like that again, expats right companies are sponsoring visas. So

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Marion: if someone, if this happens to someone. You know.

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Marion: you're often the person that's then coordinating with

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Marion: family members and and local government and the police, and you know, medical professionals. And

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Marion: that was probably one of the many things that

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Marion: made me exit working in the Middle East, because it was after sort of 5 years of dealing with these situations kind of episodically as well as young ladies, unmarried ladies getting pregnant and getting arrested. I mean you name it. I've dealt with it right, and it was

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Marion: mentally, mentally scarring. So like when we add in cultural layers and things like that into something which is already

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Marion: really hard, it just brings a whole different level of of anxiety to me.

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Marion: Hmm!

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Danny Gluch: Yeah, and what organizations?

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Danny Gluch: They're just not structured to deal with this stuff.

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Danny Gluch: And and I think that's 1 of the

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Danny Gluch: what I like about you know the stuff and things is is that it gives space for whatever's needed. And I think one of the things that

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Danny Gluch: you know when when you are just spending time together, whether it's hey, you know, asking for help, or collaborating, or just playing a game and and working with someone.

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Danny Gluch: It provides that opportunity to say something

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Danny Gluch: and share right with your peer that otherwise might not be shared.

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Danny Gluch: And because you're just there, you're in proximity, and they finally feel the courage and the the space to say, Hey, you know what I'm dealing with something.

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Danny Gluch: and

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Danny Gluch: Hr. Is not built for that, like the the corporate structure, is not built for that. You don't schedule a 1-on-one to say, hey? I need to talk to you about this thing. I'm going through like that. Just that ramps up the anxiety and the

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Danny Gluch: the I have. No, there's so many emotions to that they would just be so hard. It just makes it very, very intense. So

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Danny Gluch: what is it because, Don, you were talking about organizations

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Danny Gluch: who are providing this groundwork that is trying to help them. What? What are some of those things? Because we we have the employee assistance programs? We have.

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Danny Gluch: You know, pizza parties, we have things that that organizations try to do to support. And we have wellness programs. And you know, there's all these things of like. If you take your steps you can do this, and you know you'll get points and you can redeem them, for you know, Jack, in the box gift cards. I don't know what you do with those but like, what is it that organizations who are doing it? Well, what what are they doing to sort of build that foundation? Because.

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Danny Gluch: you know you, you can't structure in

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Danny Gluch: the the right time to talk about this with Hr, so what is it that that Hr teams and organizations can do

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Danny Gluch: to start building that groundwork of. We're helping you take care of your wellness. This is a safe place.

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Don Ryan: I talked about this social work principle last time. Person-centered thinking that I think is really important. When we look at this question.

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Don Ryan: those things are going to be different for everybody. You know what's gonna make feel someone be more productive and creative on the business side and feel psychologically safe as Marion brought up.

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Don Ryan: It's gonna it's it's just going to be very different. Because we're all human. We're all different.

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Don Ryan: what I want to go back to is something that Marion said earlier, and talking about coming back to work. And then all of a sudden realizing that you're really having a difficult time

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Don Ryan: for me.

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Don Ryan: I felt like my IQ. Dropped 20 points

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Don Ryan: for 2 months after my brother's death.

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Don Ryan: but I was fearful of letting anyone know that.

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Don Ryan: because I didn't want this to affect my professional relationship

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Don Ryan: with other people. I didn't want it to

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Don Ryan: make my reputation change in any way.

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Don Ryan: I was also having flashbacks of different things that happened, that that were happening in the middle of a meeting. I was having horrible sleep

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Don Ryan: and these steep disturbances. So sometimes I was exhausted at work.

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Don Ryan: All of these things are really important, because

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Don Ryan: that person centered thinking concept and applying it to developing that strong professional relationship again, not personal but professional relationship at work allows people to tell us what they need.

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Danny Gluch: So yes, eap programs are great.

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Don Ryan: I mean all you, as Hr. Professionals, are going to be able to give more details about what organizations can do than I, but I do firmly believe that we need to look at people as individuals, and this is where the equity inclusion piece comes in.

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Marion: Yeah.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah, there, there's no one size fits all I really do think. And I mean, that's part of the the problem is the

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Danny Gluch: the products, the the things that Hr teams go out and source, and they find vendors, for they're very much a 1. Size fits all like, hey, this is going to be a thing for all of your people. Give everyone access to this, and it's I think maybe that's missing a little bit of the mind shift where or mindset shift, where

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Danny Gluch: organizations need to think. Oh, well, this tool is going to cover

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Danny Gluch: 12% of the organization. You know this people that needs it. We need another tool for this 20% or 5%. And there is no percentage that is too small

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Danny Gluch: because it's it goes down to the individual, and I think.

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Marion: Yeah, it's a toolbox, Danny. That's the thing. It's like, you know.

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Marion: I think it's wonder. I mean, eap, I think, is a great resource right? A lot of people, you know, don't trust it because they don't necessarily understand it. But, you know, used correctly communicated correctly. It's a wonderful resource, especially when it extends beyond the employee, because quite often these programs can be accessed by family members as well.

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Marion: So that's wonderful. There's only one modality, though, and I think that again, different strokes right? And I think that as Hr. Professionals.

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Marion: we need a curated toolbox of lots of different things that we can access

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Marion: depending on what that person needs to be person centric.

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Marion: The problem is is that we don't know what we don't know, and

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Marion: I'm going to call it because we say this all the time. Hr. Professionals for the junk drawer of the organization. Right? Anything loosely related to people? Oh, it must be hr, so let's go see them, and

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Marion: we're winging it. Half the time we've talked about this in rethinkability. You know, Hr. Professionals are constantly winging it when it comes to accommodations and things like that because they don't teach us this stuff in Hr. School, right? There's no training for this, which is why.

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Marion: you know, we really all wanted to to build the movement about rethinkability in the 1st place, to to help our our peers.

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Marion: Firstly say, I don't know and feel psychologically safe to say I don't know, and to give them a curated list of tools. The thing is, we don't even know all these tools, and that's why I guess we're all trying to do the work and build the community to to learn and and build these toolboxes. And I think

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Marion: yes, a lot of those things are things like eap or access to counseling. Or you know, Fmla, or whatever you know, those more formal programs are.

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Marion: I do think that there's a huge piece in there around the investment in training our people. And I don't mean training our people to be therapists. That's not what we're doing.

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Marion: But we do need to train our managers to be able to recognize signs and to be able to

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Marion: confidently and competently have those types of conversations to say, Hey, I've noticed that you're not yourself at the minute.

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Marion: How can I help you? What do you need? Right? And it is as simple as that, but for some

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Marion: like in my experience.

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Marion: some people find that very, very difficult, and and the ramifications of that can be significant. So I don't think that we can underestimate just how important curating that that toolbox is. And

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Marion: you know, reflecting on that, and having this conversation makes me very grateful for the work that we are all supporting, as well as a bunch of amazing other people that are on this journey with us for rethinkability, because it's time that we had that toolbox available for everyone.

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Don Ryan: Marion, so many great points that you just brought up there. That. There's your there's your hook for this meeting, you know the little video hook. It's it's Marion, those last 2 min you said so many great things. I just appreciate you so much.

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Marion: Oh, thank you, I I had a a stream of consciousness. I'll be quiet now.

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Don Ryan: So I I know we always have a certain amount of time. So if I can

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Don Ryan: change gears and talk, not just about developing this psychologically safe space.

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Don Ryan: Which which in turn makes employees more creative and productive, and everything that we want happier right to

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Don Ryan: this unfortunate traumatic incident that could happen. I want to like switch it to a 3rd area which is planning for the future

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Don Ryan: and planning for the future is really difficult, because nobody wants to assume that something traumatic can happen. But here, here's why I think it's really important

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Don Ryan: when you have

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Don Ryan: someone who experiences something that is unique and difficult and has, you know, a unique grief about it. Maybe it's not a family member. As I said before, maybe it's somebody on your team who dies by suicide.

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Don Ryan: I think it's really important to plan ahead for those things, not knowing

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Don Ryan: that it will ever happen. Because if you try to plan after a tragedy happens.

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Don Ryan: the emotions come into play.

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Don Ryan: and we're not able to think clearly, because this is somebody we've known for 10 years in our workplace. And they just went through this horrible experience.

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Don Ryan: Our our response is going to include an emotional response.

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Don Ryan: My argument to businesses is you have to make the investment in time and policies and procedures. For when something happens, this is how we're going to do it. And then we're not talking about Bob or

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Don Ryan: Felicia, who went through this horrible thing, and how it affects the the time we're looking ahead of time about what's the best thing for all employees? What's the best thing for the business. What's the best thing for the workplace, environment, etc.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah, so what are what are some of those?

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Danny Gluch: you know you you have the term postventions. What are some of those things that we can do, for after a traumatic loss by suicide or otherwise, what are some of those best practices or things that people can have in mind? I know you've you've mentioned before about it being relationship agnostic for the leave where it doesn't have to be, you know, family member. And I know even large corporations and organizations are

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Danny Gluch: are being really flexible about that. And that's kind of a newer thing. Is that a good step in the right direction.

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Don Ryan: It's great. Marion gave a great example of her father passing away. She might need to need. She might have needed to take those 2 weeks, or whatever the timeframe, it is a month after his death. So that is exactly right. That's really important.

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Don Ryan: I think the way I'll answer that question. I'll try and do this quickly is, I was asked to present at an East Coast university, a small school where they had a

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Don Ryan: baseball player died by suicide, and because it's a small environment, the whole community had a really difficult time players on his team, obviously his friends, but also the the community as a whole, including faculty that felt guilty, and coaches that didn't know how to support them, etc. So

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Don Ryan: to answer your question, I think it's important to say that

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Don Ryan: all of these different areas have different needs. So

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Don Ryan: I found that the administration was really focused on not having another incident of a young person taking their own life. So that was their focus.

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Don Ryan: The the professors were thinking about how they can deal with this in the classroom, the coaches something different. The students wanted to talk about grief and loss, and how it affected something that happened to them 5, 10 years ago.

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Don Ryan: So what am I saying? I'm saying that depending on your role is going to effect

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Don Ryan: how you need to deal with this. And it's gonna be unique. And you're gonna have to take 3 or 4 different perspectives to try to figure out how to support different parts of your organization.

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Danny Gluch: I love that.

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Cacha Dora: I really I I agree with you, Jenny. I really love that. I think it's so important because we do forget that there are so many different audiences within an experience like this, whether there are people who are close people who are adjacent and then adding in different layers of

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Cacha Dora: from a a work or thought process of seniority management, etc. But then also on the flip side, like looking at it even from a school based environment, right? Like, you've got different people looking at it through. A completely different lens. And people who are more open to talking about things. And I think that that's so important because our audiences are gonna either want to talk about it. They're going to want to

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Cacha Dora: find a resource to not talk about it at work. But talk about it elsewhere based on how safe they feel. I think it's so important to remember that not just that toolbox that Miriam was talking about of

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Cacha Dora: all of these different things that we can either add up together or individualized to the person. But then also remember the people, and the groups that we're talking to are have different segmentality to them. And that's we have to kind of like cater. Cater. What's the right word customize how we would want to have our conversations.

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Danny Gluch: Yeah.

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Danny Gluch: yeah, there's no one cause for suicide. There's no one response to suicide or any traumatic loss. And I think that's really important to keep in mind that that's such a great

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Danny Gluch: last thing to end on there, Don, was there? Was there any other final thoughts that was such a good one any last recommendations or or thoughts, words of wisdom for our listeners on this very difficult topic.

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Danny Gluch: You're muted sorry, I think.

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Don Ryan: Maybe I'll just end with a reminder that someone who goes through a loss

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Don Ryan: of a loved one to suicide often doesn't

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Don Ryan: think that life is ever going to be the same

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Don Ryan: that's going to change their personality a little bit. That's going to change who they are at work a little bit.

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Don Ryan: And my experience is that things get better over time.

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Don Ryan: But they're never really the same.

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Don Ryan: So this is not something that is, gonna be a hey? I'm gonna support somebody for a month, and then we're gonna move on because that employee is gonna be dealing with this issue, whether they want to show it at work or not

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Don Ryan: for the rest of the time that they're with your company.

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Don Ryan: So this is a a long term

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Don Ryan: thing. Just keep in mind, and only to talk about if the employee wants to talk about it. But.

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Don Ryan: The other thing that I'll tell you is that people don't feel like anybody understands. Really.

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Don Ryan: I went through these 3 deaths with 2 other siblings.

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Don Ryan: and I felt like nobody could understand what I was going through, even though my siblings went through the exact same thing.

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Don Ryan: It's a it's a very odd feeling, and really it was the biggest

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Don Ryan: momentum to write the book, because I wanted people to know that they're not alone.

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Don Ryan: and that other people are going through the same thing that they have or are going through, even though it doesn't feel that way.

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Don Ryan: And I just think, from a Hr or management perspective.

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Don Ryan: I think, remembering that long term is going to be really important for everybody.

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Danny Gluch: It really is.

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Danny Gluch: Well, thank you so much, Don. Thank you. Marion and Kasha. Thank you. All of our listeners. Everyone be sure to check out Don's book. You can go to the secret struggle.com, and check that out.

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Danny Gluch: Please leave a 5 star review subscribe. Leave a comment on the Linkedin post be sure to share, because this is one of the elephants that organizations really

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Danny Gluch: don't

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Danny Gluch: like talking about, but need to and need to be prepared for, and I hope this conversation is a step with helping organizations. Get ready to support all the individuals. If anyone is experiencing this right now.

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Danny Gluch: I apologize, reach out, find help, know that

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Danny Gluch: you know you might feel like no one understands, but others do find that support.

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Danny Gluch: Thank you all so much.

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Danny Gluch: See you next time.