What Is Professional Grief? Why Career Loss Looks Like Burnout
Nobody sends flowers when you get passed over for a promotion.
There's no memorial for the project that got cancelled after eight months of your best work, and no casseroles show up after a layoff.
Something real is still lost in each of those moments. Most people handle it the only way work has taught them to. They get back to their desk and act like it didn't matter.
Then the motivation starts slipping. The drive that used to come easily is harder to find, everyone calls it burnout, and HR gets asked to fix the engagement scores.
There may be a more accurate name for what's happening.
Laverne McKinnon learned that name the hard way, and she has spent the years since helping professionals use it.
(00:00) The TV Executive Who Took a Decade to Get Over Being Fired
Laverne McKinnon, MCC, is a Grief Coach, Author, and Speaker. She works with ambitious professionals going through pivots, new leadership roles, and career disruptions.
Her own career looks like a highlight reel. She spent 10 years at CBS, climbing fast and developing series.
She went on to senior executive work at Epix, executive produced Netflix's Girlboss, and now teaches at Northwestern University and mentors in the CAPE Leadership Fellowship Program.
The résumé doesn't show the year she spent hiding in her bedroom after CBS fired her. It also doesn't show that a decade and several impressive jobs later, she still felt heartbroken and couldn't figure out why.
That question led to the research behind her coaching practice and her upcoming book, Showstopper. The book reframes professional heartbreak as a plot twist rather than an ending.
(03:30) It Might Not Be Burnout
Grief isn't reserved for death. In Laverne's work, grief is what happens when something you cared about is no longer available to you.
That definition covers far more of working life than most people realize.
A promotion that went to someone else. You lose the title, and you also lose the proof that your ambition and work ethic were paying off.
A project that never launched. At CBS, Laverne might buy 70 scripts in a season, and only a couple would become series. Each of the others left someone grieving.
A layoff or firing. The paycheck can be replaced. A sense of belonging usually takes longer.
Retirement. Even when it's welcome, a sense of purpose can leave along with the job.
Almost none of these get called a loss. They get filed under "part of the business."
When grief goes unnamed and unmourned, resilience is what suffers. That's often what's going on when a strong performer suddenly seems checked out.
(13:00) The Losses a New Job Can't Replace
What everyone can see
After CBS, Laverne landed on her feet by any outside measure. She had a new role, salary, benefits, and title, so on paper the loss was covered.
What nobody can see
Underneath were losses no offer letter could touch. "I was able to replace the visible loss of a new job, salary, benefits, title," Laverne explains. "Those invisible losses of identity, purpose, self-trust, I had to mourn."
Why this matters for your team
When someone moves past a setback and still seems off months later, the visible losses probably aren't the problem. Something underneath may never have been acknowledged.
(15:30) Nobody Holds a Funeral for a Cancelled Project
When someone dies, there's a clear way to mark it. There's a service and a gathering, a chance to say goodbye out loud.
What's the equivalent when a chapter of your career ends?
For most people, there isn't one. Laverne encourages creating a personal ritual, a deliberate good goodbye for the thing that didn't work out.
Hers wasn't elaborate. For ten years she kept two banker's boxes of old CBS files in her closet as proof that she'd done real work. One day she carried them to the recycling bin and threw them out, one box at a time, and stopped needing paper to prove she was capable.
A writer she knows printed out a script that was never going to get made, buried it in her backyard, and wrote it a eulogy.
It sounds small, maybe even a little strange. What would it look like to actually mark the end of something at work instead of pretending it never mattered?
(26:00) Four Steps for When Your Career Breaks Your Heart
This approach works whether the loss happened last week or ten years ago.
Say ouch. Give yourself permission to admit something hurt. It sounds basic, and it's the step most people skip.
Name what changed. Ask what you were attached to that you no longer have. It might be a job, a promotion, a project, or your reputation.
Look underneath it. Find the invisible losses, such as confidence, purpose, or a sense of belonging.
Mourn so you can rebuild. This is where a ritual comes in, because you can't rebuild what you haven't grieved.
None of this means "everything happens for a reason." Laverne has no patience for toxic positivity. The goal is to make the loss part of who you're becoming, not to pretend it was a gift.
(29:00) The Grief That Builds One Layoff at a Time
Some of the heaviest grief at work doesn't come from a single event.
Laverne worked with an HR executive whose industry had been badly destabilized. The executive was part of the team carrying out mass layoffs over 18 months.
She felt ready for it at first. Over time, the losses piled up. She lost stability and colleagues, and she watched people give up their hopes for where their roles would lead, including her own hopes.
That's cumulative grief, the death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind.
For anyone who spent the pandemic years furloughing and laying off people they cared about, this may sound familiar. Many HR professionals carried that weight without ever processing it. If you're grieving without a clear reason, a string of losses over time could be the explanation.
What If You Just Asked?
You don't have to become a therapist to help someone through professional grief.
Start by asking what's changed, and how it's been for them.
That question can turn "I'm failing" into "I lost something I cared about," and that shift gives people a way forward. It works for the employee who got passed over and for the leader who just left a company they spent a decade building. It also works for the HR professional who has been holding everyone else's losses for years.
Grief at work doesn't only follow bad news, either. A move you chose, a role you wanted, or a well-earned retirement can all leave something behind worth mourning.
Connect with Laverne McKinnon: lavernemckinnon.com | Substack | LinkedIn
Connect with Traci here: https://linktr.ee/HRTraci