When a loved one dies, it’s expected that the bereaved may turn to a therapist, grief counselor, support group or another trusted helper. These professionals can help shoulder the daily burden of grief and offer support and guidance in an extremely vulnerable time.

But for an executive, decreased functioning in their personal life can have ramifications for the larger organization and on any dependent employees.

No two people grieve the same way. I’ve coached executives reeling from the deaths of their spouses — none have had the same path to healing.

Take, for example, a man I coached at the beginning of 2018. We’ll call him Gerald. Gerald had lost his husband in 2017. I was initially reluctant to begin coaching him. I assumed he would need a grief coach instead of my services — that he wouldn’t be ready to move on after so recent a loss. However, one conversation revealed that Gerald was ready for the next step in his career.

Gerald and I had four sessions together over the course of six weeks. The goal was for Gerald to be ready for a major business conference. We discussed which “next step” felt right for him, a senior executive with many years of deep experience. I helped Gerald regain his confidence, get over impostor syndrome and build steps to raise his professional brand and position himself for his current goals as he sought a position that didn’t exactly match up with his decades of experience. We even discussed how to handle awkward conversations at the conference (working under the assumption that many people don’t have fine-tuned emotional intelligence and are therefore clueless as to how to speak to someone in grief).

Even a short time removed from his partner’s death, Gerald was ready to take on a new career challenge. Contrast Gerald with another man I coached who was grieving the death of his spouse. We’ll call him Robert. Robert needed to take an entire gap year after his wife’s death. He needed that time to seek avenues outside of the workplace through which to process his grief.

Ultimately, no two grief journeys are alike. This is a fact that can be incredibly difficult for type-A, do-it-all, “just keep pushing” executives. Certainly, our culture rewards us for staying in the grind at all costs. No matter what form loss takes — whether it’s the death of a loved one, divorce, a major business failure, care of an ailing parent, a sibling dealing with addiction, etc. — we view grief as a major life disruption, not as a natural part of life. Grief is something to be “gotten over” as quickly as possible. It’s little wonder we are so ill-equipped to deal with the upheaval it brings.

I’m not a life coach or a grief coach, I’m an executive coach. I work with leaders, and my purview is leadership development career advancement and emotional intelligence advancement, not mental health. However, here is some simple advice for leaders currently grappling with loss.