Showing Up for People in Hard Times

Someone you work with is going through it. A parent in hospice. A marriage coming apart. A scan they're waiting on. A kid who isn't okay. Maybe they told you, or maybe you just noticed the lights going dim behind their eyes in meetings. And now you're stuck on the thing most of us get stuck on: you want to help, and you're afraid that whatever you say will land wrong.

So a lot of people say nothing. They tell themselves they're respecting privacy, giving the person space. Some of that is real. Most of it is fear. We stay quiet because the moment feels fragile and we don't want to be the one who fumbles it.

Here's the freeing part. The bar is much lower than you think. People in pain almost never remember whether you said the right sentence. They remember whether you showed up at all, and whether you came back.

The thing you're actually afraid of

Unpack the dread and it usually comes down to one belief: that there's a correct script, and if you don't have it, you'll hurt them. You picture yourself blurting out something clumsy and making a grieving person feel worse.

That fear has it backwards. The clumsy, heartfelt "I don't know what to say, but I'm so sorry, and I'm thinking about you" lands far better than polished silence. What hurts people in hard times isn't imperfect words. It's being met with nothing, day after day, by colleagues who clearly know and clearly look away.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, executive coach Sabina Nawaz draws a useful line between two kinds of support: the *doing* and the *being*. Doing is the casserole, the covered shift, the offer to take the client call so they can leave at three. Being is simply staying present with someone in their pain without trying to fix it or hurry it along. Most of us reach for doing because it's concrete and it gives our hands something to occupy. But being is the harder, rarer gift, and it's usually the one people are starving for.

Why is being so hard? Because it asks you to sit in discomfort with no exit. When someone cries in front of you, every instinct fires at once: cheer them up, find a silver lining, change the subject, hand them a tissue and a plan. Resist all of it. Letting someone be sad in your company, without rushing them out of the feeling, tells them the feeling is allowed. That permission is rarer than advice and worth a great deal more. You don't have to make it better. You just have to not flinch.

What to say, and what to skip

You don't need a script. You do need a few instincts, and a few things to avoid.

Start simple and warm. "I heard about your dad. I'm so sorry." That's enough. You've named that you know, you've named that you care, and you haven't demanded anything back. If you want to go a step further, try "I can't imagine what this is like for you." It honors that their experience is theirs, not a version of something you went through.

Now the part people get wrong. Resist the urge to compare. When you say "I know exactly how you feel, when my mom died..." you've quietly turned the moment toward yourself, and the other person now has to manage your grief on top of their own. Nawaz suggests skipping the interrogation, too. Avoid "How are you doing?" and "What happened?" as openers. Those questions force someone to decide, on the spot, how much to perform for you, and they may have nothing left to give. Offer your care without attaching a bill.

A few more that help:

• Say their person's name, if someone died. People often tiptoe around it, which can make the loss feel unspeakable. Hearing "I keep thinking about your sister" tells them it's safe to talk, and safe not to.
• Trade "Let me know if you need anything" for something specific. That open-ended offer sounds kind but quietly hands them a job: figure out what they need, find the words, and ask. Most people won't. "I'm bringing dinner Thursday, is six okay?" is easier to accept than to refuse.
• Pick your moment. A hallway hug as they're walking into a budget review can wreck them. Offer condolences in private, on a break, somewhere they aren't bracing to perform.
• When you don't know what to say, say that. "I don't have the right words" is honest, and honesty reads as care.

Why one conversation isn't enough

Here's where well-meaning people lose the plot. They have one good, hard conversation early on, feel the relief of having done it, and then quietly move on. Meanwhile the casseroles stop, the cards stop, the check-ins stop, and the grieving person is left alone right around the time the numbness wears off and the real weight settles in.

Grief and crisis don't run on a business calendar. Standard bereavement leave is often just a few days. The actual disruption to someone's focus, energy, and confidence stretches on for many months. The world expects them to be "back to normal" long before they are, and the gap between those two timelines is one of the loneliest places a person can sit.

So the most powerful thing you can do is also the simplest: keep coming back. Set a reminder if you have to. A short message weeks later, "Still thinking of you, no need to reply," can mean more than anything you said in week one, precisely because almost no one else remembered. Don't quiz them on their progress. "Are you feeling better yet?" turns their healing into a test they can fail. "It's good to see you" carries no such trap.

When you barely know them

Not every hard time happens to someone close to you. Sometimes it's a colleague two desks over, or a teammate you've never had lunch with, and you talk yourself out of saying anything because surely this is somebody else's place to step in. Someone closer should handle it.

That reasoning leaves a lot of people alone. The truth is that grief and fear narrow a person's world fast, and the friends they assumed would show up often don't, either out of the same fear you're feeling or because they don't know. A short, low-pressure note from someone on the edge of their life can land with surprising force. "I heard, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm around if you ever want company at lunch." You're not claiming a closeness you don't have. You're opening a door and letting them decide whether to walk through it. Most people remember exactly who reached out when they didn't have to.

The one caution: keep it light and let them lead. With someone you barely know, you offer presence, not pressure. If they keep it brief or don't reply, that's fine. You showed up. That was the whole job.

When you're the boss

If you manage the person, your warmth carries weight that a peer's doesn't, and that changes things. A direct report can't fully relax into your kindness if they're also wondering whether their honesty will cost them later. They are doing the math even when you wish they wouldn't: how much can I show this person before it follows me into my next review? So the support has to be backed by something real, or it reads as a trap.

The American Psychological Association's recent Work in America research found that workers who felt genuinely supported, who had a good relationship with their manager and believed they mattered to the organization, reported markedly less stress and far less of a sense that their work was toxic. Feeling valued isn't a soft perk. It shows up in how steady people are under pressure.

That steadiness is what the Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson calls psychological safety: the shared belief that you can speak up, admit you're struggling, or say "I can't take that on this week" without being punished for it. Her work has found that this matters most exactly when things are hardest, when budgets tighten and uncertainty climbs. The instinct in a crunch is to demand that everyone just push through. The leaders who do better are the ones who make it safe to be human while pushing.

In practice, for a manager, that looks like:

• Lowering the load before they ask. Take something off their plate, extend a deadline, cover a meeting. Don't make them perform wellness to earn relief.
• Being clear about the rules. "Your job is safe. Take the time you need. We'll figure out the work." Ambiguity is its own stressor, and you can remove it with a sentence.
• Protecting them from the well-meaning crowd. Sometimes the kindest move is fielding the questions so they don't have to retell the worst news of their life ten times.
• Following through on what you promised. A leader who offers flexibility and then sighs about deadlines teaches the team that the offer was a trap. Mean it, or don't say it.

You will get some of this wrong

You will. You'll say the comparing thing. You'll go quiet when you meant to reach out. You'll forget to check back. That's not a reason to opt out of the whole enterprise, it's just the texture of being a person trying to help another person through something genuinely hard.

When you miss, a small repair goes a long way. "I've been thinking I went quiet on you, and I'm sorry. I'm here." People forgive the fumble. What stays with them is the coming back.

It helps to drop the idea that there's a finish line where you've supported someone correctly and can stop. There isn't. There's just a long stretch of ordinary chances to be kind, most of them small and easy to miss. The good news in that is the pressure comes off. You don't have to get one big moment right. You get a hundred tiny ones, and you only have to take a few.

A last word for your own sake. Supporting someone through a long, heavy season can wear on you too, especially if it's someone you're close to or if several people are struggling at once. Notice that. Lean on your own people. And if someone you're worried about seems to be sinking past what care and patience can reach, hopeless, not sleeping, hinting that they don't want to be here, don't try to carry that alone. Help them get to a doctor, a therapist, or a crisis line, and stay close while they do. Showing up sometimes means walking with someone to the door of help they can't open by themselves.

The whole thing comes down to less than you fear and more than you'd guess. Notice. Say something plain and kind. Then keep coming back when everyone else has moved on. That's it. That's the work.

Sources

• Harvard Business Review, How to Offer Support to a Grieving Colleague (Sabina Nawaz)
• American Psychological Association, 2025 Work in America: Job security and worker stress
• Harvard Business Review, In Tough Times, Psychological Safety Is a Requirement, Not a Luxury (on Amy Edmondson's research)