What to say when you don't know what to say

How to show meaningful support in times of grief

'In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends'. Martin Luther King, Jr

In this article

Times of loss, times of grief, often shock and terrible sadness.

These times will come to us all in life and business, repeatedly so. Therefore, it makes sense to pause and consider how effective we want to be during the most difficult of times offering our condolences.

Not if but when

Dark times (and equally dark emotions) will brush against us all in life and business.

The death or injury to a loved one, a hate crime that affects your community, a cancer diagnosis or similar life-threatening life-damaging illness, the sickness of a child or elderly parents, or the loss of life caused by the passage of time alone.

There will come a time when you will want to express your professional (or personal) condolences to a friend, colleague, or family member.

So what do you say, when you don't know what to say?

Perfecting condolences

During such times, there are usually at least two key parties involved in a grief conversation.

• You - the Speaker and hopefully supportive party
• The Other - the Listener and grieving party

How to ensure your intention is expressed by your actions

Don't let this be your excuse for avoiding maintaining your professional relationships during times of great stress and grief. The expression of professional and personal condolences is a key part of life and business.

Having the perfect words to say during the most difficult of times is not as important to the Listener as it is to you

Seven steps to help you be effective in expressing condolences

Here are 7 steps you can follow to improve your preparation for such times and to help ensure your good intentions are not ambushed by muddied expressions.

1. While it should go without saying, the clear reminder is, ‘It's not about you'

While the reality is sometimes from the best of motives, when expressing their sympathy nervous people can miscommunicate their intentions; remember it is not about you.  Don't offload about how terrible you feel, how it keeps you awake at night, and how you can't understand how such a terrible thing would happen.

Your intention should not be to convince the Listener that you were hurting but to acknowledge that they may be hurting.

2. Make sure your intention is not to steer the interaction towards an expected ‘thank you’

Do not seek an obligatory acknowledgment of how brave you must have been to step up and say something.

It is not about you.

3. Let go of your need for affirmation

Offering condolences is not about your braveness in speaking up during a difficult time or your taking time out of your busy day to say so.

When expressing sympathy, regardless of the response you may receive (or the response you may not receive) from the Listener, move on without judgment.

It is not about you.

4. Resist our society’s urge to constantly try and create redemptive stories out of every hardship, loss and disaster

Do not say, 'God won't give you more than you can handle' - this is just a stupid comment, at best an ill-considered statement of appalling selfishness and at worst low-grade theology.

This will set someone up for isolation and failure by encouraging them against the good sense of actually reaching out for professional help when they may need it most.  (If God wanted to get my attention, they would choose better ways to do that I'm sure).

It is not about you.

5. Embrace any feedback

Embrace comments, anger, or criticisms received.  Resist the natural urge to protect yourself by participating in Trauma Olympics - where a person hearing difficult conversations automatically seeks to outdo the speaker by citing a past event of their own where you too were hurt/surprised/devastated/berrieved/etc.

It is not about you.

6. Do not ever say you ‘I know exactly how you feel’

Because you don't, you can't and you won’t ever - so move on. Do not try to re-educate the speaker and don't try to move them to a sunnier disposition or offer helpful platitudes or critique on how ‘if they just didn't catastrophise this event ... life would be better…’.

It is not about you.

7. Resist the urge to say, “if you need ‘anything’ let me know”

Such a broad open shopping list is unhelpful - and at worst can be seen as careless meaningless chatter for the benefit of The Speaker (remember rule #1 it's not about you). If you're going to make an offer of help, be precise. If you need ‘somebody to pick up the kids after school this week’, if you ‘need someone to find and contact a particular person’ or ‘get more information about x, y or z’ - be precise.

This removes the stress on the Listener of having to frame a request for assistance ‘for anything’ and allows them to know for a particular set of needs, there is a particular person who is able and willing to step in.

The key is to understand that silence is often heard as a lack of support. If your intention is to be supportive, silence is rarely the key to achieving that.

So how does this work in a commercial world?

The guiding principles are the same regardless of the occasion because grief is suffered by people and sympathy is offered by people.

A simple practical example

On the morning of the 12th of June 2016, the world awoke to the news of yet another mass shooting in America - this time at Pulse, a LGBT-friendly nightclub in Orlando, Florida where 49 patrons were slaughtered by yet another gunman motivated by hate. At that time it was the worst mass shooting in U.S history.

One of our commercial brands, Unusual Risks Insured Australia, has a high proportion of clients who identify with the LGBTQI+ community and its Allies.

• When we heard the breaking news, we were gravely aware many of our clients may have been equally shocked and traumatised by the news of yet another hate crime inflicted upon an important and vibrant part of an already marginalised community.

We wanted to be able to communicate our sympathy to those who may have been affected in any way by the news of this terrible targeted event.

Putting the 5 steps into practice

We wanted to discreetly indicate our support to our clients

• We were careful to acknowledge it wasn't about how we felt, but how our clients might have felt hearing the news of yet another hate crime
• We didn't prompt a social post to be acknowledged in any way with a call to action.
• We didn't use this moment to further arguments about American gun laws, systemic homophobia, and hate crimes.
• Nor did we seek to provide a commentary on the facts to diminish or embellish the news as was available or try and redirect the feelings of our clients to a more sunny disposition.
• We simply wanted to acknowledge the terrible event and that our clients may be upset, grieving, or even traumatised by the news of this targeted attack on a marginalised community.
• We wanted to offer our support by speaking up first so that they did not have to.

Below is a copy of our simple social post.

The last word

Remember in times of sadness and truly supportive conversations, it's not about you.