Building grief-literate workplaces.
Grief doesn’t wait for permission, and it doesn’t stay at home. Every year, hundreds of thousands of working-age Australians experience significant loss , and at any given time, around one in four people across an organisation may be carrying grief of some kind. They’re sitting in your meetings, answering your emails, serving your customers.
Yet most of us, leaders included, were never taught how to respond. We worry about saying the wrong thing, so we say nothing. We offer a card and a casserole, then expect business as usual. The grieving person learns to hide it, and the hidden cost shows up in wellbeing, connection, judgement, performance and turnover.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Grief literacy- knowing how to be with loss, in ourselves and others is a business issue. And workplaces that build it create cultures where people feel genuinely seen and supported through the hardest moments of their lives.
Registrations are now open for a one day Grief First Aid Training on 31 August 2026 (Public Program) where we practise exactly this: how to witness grief, and how to accompany it.
We’ll be on zoom so you can join us from anywhere!
We hope you can join us.
Grief First Aid for the Workplace Public Programs
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
The third story from the mountains – about grief, presence, and what becomes possible when someone can hold silence without rushing to fill it.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can offer someone who is grieving isn’t more words- it’s fewer.
In my first story from the mountains, I shared how Rita, a stranger on a bus, met me in my grief with one gentle question: What was your husband’s name? Rita’s open questions and her kind, generous nature were a teacher for us all. But that wasn’t the only way. This is David’s story.
David was our guide on the Tour du Mont Blanc- an Englishman married to a French woman, living in France for over twenty years. Guiding was more than a job for him; what he loved most was the connection that unfolds on a trail. He was around my age, and as a father and husband himself, he understood loss from that vantage point too. But it was more than shared circumstance. David had a quality of presence about him, a capacity to sit comfortably with long stretches of silence as we walked, step by step. And somehow, held in that, I found myself dropping further into the layers of grief within me, one layer softly giving way to the next.
What Rita and David shared was presence, and a willingness to hold space. What differed was what they did within that space: Rita with more words, though never a rush of them, David with fewer, and a seemingly natural ease with the tension that silence often brings.
I felt met and being met was what made it feel safe to keep going. On a trail you don’t walk side by side; you walk one ahead of the other. No eye contact, nothing to read on the other’s face, just the rhythm of our footsteps helping to hold the container, and the mountains themselves holding it too, the wildflowers emerging from winter in splendid colour all around us.
My learning was this: someone who is grieving never needs a barrage of questions. Often one is enough to open the door and then it’s about holding the silence that follows, fully present, not rushing to fill it. That discomfort you feel? It’s usually the very sign that you’re giving the person something they need.
And here’s what surprised me. As I shared more of my own story with David, it created fertile ground for him, in the days that followed, to share deeply about his own experience of life and loss too , mirroring exactly what he had offered me. I was able to be there for him, the way he had been there for me. Real conversations. Deep care, moving both ways.
I want to name something important here. Sharing your own story is not the role of a Grief First Aider in the workplace when you’re offering grief first aid, the focus stays with the person who is grieving, and turning to your own experience can pull attention away just when they need it most. But David wasn’t there as a first aider. He was giving me something different, and equally precious: the companionship of a fellow traveller who had known loss himself.
From both Rita and David, I felt witnessed and accompanied, her questions and his silence were simply different doorways into the same care.
If someone you care about is grieving, remember that you don’t need to find the perfect words. There may not be any. A walk, a silence you don’t rush to fill, a hand on the back if you’ve asked and it’s welcome, your simple willingness to stay, these can say more than any words could. Of these, the silence is the hardest. It takes courage to stay in it rather than interject and most of us aren’t wired for it. We want to fix, to soothe, to fill the gap. But that urge to rush in is often more about our own discomfort than the other person’s need.
I am so grateful to all the humans who were able to meet me on that mountain in those early months, who didn’t shy away, and who each showed up in their own unique way. This is how we integrate loss, not in isolation but through connection with others.
Never underestimate the power of simply being there.
This story is part of why I now do the work I do. Through Evolving Leaders, I guide people through life’s hardest transitions with 1:1 coaching and registrations are now open for my first public Grief First Aid for the Workplace program on 31 August, where we practise exactly this: how to witness grief, and how to accompany it.
I would love for you to be there.
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
The second of three stories from the mountains – about what often happens when grief is spoken aloud, and why it isn’t unkindness.
Before I ever set foot on the Tour du Mont Blanc, there was Croatia and Slovenia.
It was the first, solo leg of nine weeks I spent in Europe in 2025, hiking my way through grief, or so I thought at the time. My husband Jeff had died the previous October. It was a real leap of faith, the courage to walk that part of my own grief path, alone. It wasn’t only the boldness of venturing out alone. It was doing so without knowing what emotional state I might find myself in from one moment to the next and, doing it without Jeff, when every holiday we’d ever taken had been together or with our family. It brought its own anxieties. (That courage, and what grief does to us on the inside, is a story for another day.)
My first contact in the country was a young Croatian man who collected me from a pre-arranged taxi pick-up. He was generous with his stories, told me about his culture, and offered to be available if I needed transport elsewhere during my stay. He reassured me how safe Croatia was, and that I had nothing to worry about as a woman travelling on her own. My anxieties quickly eased.
He had no idea I was grieving. I hadn’t told him, and he didn’t ask why I was travelling alone. He was simply being kind to a traveller.
I spent that first week touring on my own, through Split and Zagreb, before making my way to Ljubljana, where the walking would begin. Slovenia stole my heart. The mountains were like no other, exquisite, almost too beautiful to be real. In the photo above I had a full “the hills are alive with the sound of music” moment, surrounded by mountains on every side. (Wrong country, I know, but the feeling was pure Julie Andrews.)
There is a particular kind of grace in walking through beauty like that while carrying grief; the two don’t cancel each other out, they sit side by side, and somehow the landscape made room for both. I would soon learn that not everyone could.
Over the eleven days that followed which was a long time to spend in the company of the same twelve people, the conversation turned, as it does among hiking companions, to who we are and why we’ve come. Jeff’s death was so central to my story then that I couldn’t avoid it when people asked about my life and I certainly didn’t want to. Yet it was never easy to say. Each time, I felt it afresh, often keeping tears at bay as I spoke his name to someone new. And each time I shared that my husband had died, I watched something happen.
Ten people looked away.
Not cruelly. Not obviously. It was subtler than that – a change of subject, a chosen seat further down the table when the group sat down to eat, a slight increase in the distance between us on the trail the next day. The warmth that had been there a moment before quietly cooled. The landscape had made room for my grief; these fellow walkers could not.
Two, though, did.
One was a GP. The other was a nurse who was, herself, a widow. They stayed. They asked. They let me speak about Jeff, and when the tears came, they didn’t look away.
There was a flow-on effect I only noticed later. When I asked the ten about their own lives and journeys, they stayed a little guarded as though closing the door on my grief had closed something in them too. I sensed that if they let their own guard down, if they were vulnerable with me, it might invite me to be vulnerable in return and that could bring Jeff’s death back into the room, the very thing they were trying to avoid. So, they kept themselves at a distance, and in doing so kept me there too. But the two who could meet me shared just as openly in return, about their own lives and losses. Real connection formed. It turns out that meeting someone in their grief doesn’t only help the griever; it can be powerful medicine for deepening human connection.
The ten who looked away were not unkind people. They were ten people with their own stories, their own lives, their own hearts and minds – each carrying who knows what themselves. I had already met that same ordinary human warmth in a taxi driver in Split, from a stranger who knew nothing about me. That warmth exists in almost everyone, or that’s how I choose to see people, anyway. It can however simply stop at the edge of grief because grief is the one thing most of us have never been taught how to meet, let alone hold.
When someone tells you they’ve lost a person they love and you have no idea what to say, the fear of getting it wrong can be overwhelming. So, people change the subject, thinking they are protecting you but really it is their own fear at work, and a quiet belief that saying the wrong thing is worse than saying nothing at all. They can avoid mentioning your loss so as not to remind you as though your grief were somewhere in the background and mentioning it would be what brings it forward again. They give you the space they imagine you want, and what you actually receive is isolation stacked on top of loss.
Grief can only be integrated through connection, never in isolation.
And the two who could stay? Look at who they were. Both had been trained by their work to sit with people at the hardest moments of their lives – one a GP, the other a nurse. And the nurse had been trained twice over: she knew the loss of a husband herself.
And here is the part worth pausing on – in a group of twelve, over eleven days, only two could meet grief with any ease and both had been trained to, one by her work, the other by her work and her own loss.
It should not take a medical career or a bereavement of your own to know how to be present with someone who is grieving.
This is what I mean when I say we live in a grief-illiterate world. Not unkind. Illiterate, untaught.
What I saw on that trip, I now see everywhere. It plays out every day in workplaces and communities.
Grief First Aid training points to a striking figure: on any given day, around one in four people in Australian workplaces is carrying grief or loss of some kind. Yet when a grieving colleague returns, whether from a death, a diagnosis, a separation, or any of the countless losses being human can bring, even those who deeply care might find themselves avoiding the desk, the topic, the name of whoever or whatever has been lost. And so, the griever carries it alone, unspoken, through the working day.
The good news is that grief literacy can be taught. These two kind humans didn’t get there overnight, one had years in medicine, the other had her own loss alongside it. I’m not claiming Grief First Aid training hands you that. What it does teach is the starting point: how to stay, how to ask, how to not look away. That’s the part most of us were never shown and it’s the part that makes the difference between someone carrying grief alone, and someone who isn’t.
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I kept walking. And a few weeks later, on another mountain, a stranger at a bus stop asked me my husband’s name.
The final story from the mountains is coming soon.
This is why I now do the work I do. Through Evolving Leaders, I guide people through life’s hardest transitions with 1:1 coaching, and Grief First Aid education for workplaces is now available so that meeting grief well becomes something we all know how to do, not a matter of luck. My first public Grief First Aider program is starting soon and bookings are now open to bring Grief First Aid training into your workplace starting in a few weeks.
I would love for you to be there. You can find out more here, lets talk or drop me an email nicola@evolvingleaders.com.au
Photo: Nicola in Slovenia June 2025 having a ‘hills are alive moment’ after a special dinner when we were invited out the back of the restaurant to find oursleves fully immersed in mountains on all sides
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
The first of three stories from the mountains about grief, loss, and what it means to truly meet someone in theirs.
Never underestimate the powerful impact you can have on someone who is grieving simply by being curious and asking a few gentle questions.
I want to share a personal story.
After my husband of 33 years died in October 2024, I took my hiking to a whole new level — a level I never thought I was capable of. It was a grief response: nothing else made sense in those months, but putting one foot in front of the other did. Alongside many hikes here in Australia, I was fortunate enough to travel to Europe to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc.
As I sat waiting for the bus transfer from Geneva to Chamonix, I started talking with the woman next to me. It turned out that she and her partner would be my walking companions on the very same trip. Rita asked why I was travelling on my own. I immediately dissolved into tears and shared that my husband had died seven months earlier.
Rather than turn away or shift to another topic, Rita stayed right there with me. She asked:
“What was your husband’s name?”
I was taken aback. Here was a complete stranger who cared enough not to shy away from my pain, but was prepared to witness me in my grief. Rita continued with other questions about Jeff’s life.
Over the next seven days, as we traversed massive elevations amid awe-inspiring, iconic scenery, held by those incredible mountains, Rita would find moments to ask me more about Jeff. She kept referring to him by his name.
And as we navigated our final descent, she looked at me and said, “Nicola, Jeff would be so proud of you.”
Rita, without even knowing it, was a natural Grief First Aider.
She didn’t try to fix me or rescue me. She offered genuine compassion, care, concern and interest. She asked gentle, curious questions that invited me to speak about who Jeff was. She validated my feelings and reflected them back to me. I felt actively attended to.
And Rita’s care didn’t end at the mountains — she followed up more than once after the walk finished and I had returned home.
Rita wasn’t the only one who held me on that mountain — but that’s a story for another post.
Rita became my teacher as well as a caring human. I have continued to pay this forward to others, and I can tell you the reaction is often the same: people are initially a little taken aback — and then they quickly soften and open, knowing it is safe to talk about their loved one.
Never underestimate the impact you can have by meeting someone in their grief. If you ever find yourself in that moment of not knowing what to do or say, I hope Rita’s story will give you a place to start.
This story is why I now do the work I do. Through Evolving Leaders, I guide people through life’s hardest transitions with 1:1 coaching, and deliver Grief First Aid education for workplaces — helping people learn to meet grief the way Rita met mine. If either of these speaks to you, I’d love to hear from you: nicola@evolvingleaders.com.au
The second story from the mountains is coming soon.
Photo: Nicola and Rita in Chamonix at the end of the Tour Du Mont Blanc hike about to have a celebratory drink!
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
The generous response to ‘Coming back, changed‘ touched me deeply. I am grateful for your caring words and gentle encouragement to get on with this important work. Thank you.
In the three weeks since, I’ve been walking through the Kimberley, where every sunrise and sunset seemed to bring a new colour and new experience, and the landscape quietly got under my skin. I’ve returned home refreshed, inspired, and ready.
So today, I begin.
While I was caring for my husband, I undertook a Diploma of Developmental Coaching through the Vertical Development Institute. If you don’t know Alis Anagnostakis’s work yet, do yourself a favour and check it out. It sharpened my coaching practice, and it’s deepened how I work in ways I’m still discovering. While I have been coaching leaders for many years, to attain my ICF accreditation on the other side of this diploma, I need to complete 100 hours of coaching practice. This is a milestone I want to approach very intentionally.
So, as I refocus my coaching offering into guiding people through transitions, I’m bringing the two together: deepening my own practice and attaining my ICF accreditation while walking alongside you through yours. I’d love for you to be part of it. And I’d like to mark the beginning with something:
Book a “Let’s Talk” conversation in July to receive 50% off 1:1 Transition Guidance & Coaching (6 session package).
Every engagement begins with a no-pressure Let’s Talk conversation, so we can explore what you’re navigating and whether this is the right fit.
You can book yours here.
If you’re in the messy middle of a transition, or you know someone who is, I’d welcome a conversation.
With warmth and gratitude,
Nicola x
Nicola Vague is a leadership coach and transition guide, and the founder of Evolving Leaders. She walks alongside leaders navigating unexpected life events, and helps organisations support their people through the line-in-the-sand moments that turn life upside down.
Photo credit: Martin from my Intrepid tour, July 2026. Indigenous birthing pool (no longer used, photographed with permission of a local Elder), Purnululu National Park, The Kimberley, Western Australia
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
After three years away, I’m coming back to work (July 14th 2026) and I want to be honest about what this return looks like.
In 2023, my husband Jeff — my life partner of 33 years, father to our three daughters — was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He died 15 months later. Shattered. Our lives ripped apart and turned upside down.
I am not the same person I was. What matters to me now is different. And my mission is clearer than it has ever been.
Here’s what I’ve learned, living it: time doesn’t make grief go away but time doesn’t take love away either. We can grow around our grief. And, with the right support, it’s possible to grieve fully and live fully, often in the same moment.
Here’s what else I know. One in four people in our workplaces is carrying a loss right now. The diagnosis, the divorce, the death of someone they love. Work keeps going, and before long we expect them to do the same. We are, most of us, grief and loss illiterate — not because we don’t care, but because nobody taught us.
I have a role to play in changing that.
So from 14th July 2026, Evolving Leaders begins the first step in a new chapter: Guiding transitions for people, organisations and a changing world. The first step is walking alongside leaders navigating unexpected life events, as a transition guide and coach and, helping organisations truly support their people through them via Grief and Loss Education.
You can read more about that here.
This isn’t a polished re-entry. My website is still finding its new shape and there’s no glossy brochure. I could spend months waiting until it’s all perfect. But life is messy and imperfect and so is this work. I’m taking the first step and trusting the rest will unfold.
You can read about my new beginnings here.
Perhaps you are in the messy middle of a transition yourself, or you lead people who are? If so this next focus might resonate for you. My diary is open to book now with first available times from 14 July. You can book a conversation here.
In the meantime I have one more hike to do before I am full back and focussed. This time, I’ll be walking off-grid in the Kimberley until mid-July. I will respond to any messages when I’m back.
Thanks for your care and support and for following along as this new chapter unfolds.
Nicola Vague is a leadership coach and transition guide, and the founder of Evolving Leaders. She walks alongside leaders navigating unexpected life events, and helps organisations support their people through the line-in-the-sand moments that turn life upside down.
www.evolvingleaders.com.au
When you arrive at graduation day and can’t get into the room because participants are getting everything set up for the presentation of their learning it’s a good indication that our job was done!
What an absolute privilege it has been to work alongside my dear friend and colleague Hamish Riddell to support leaders with taking the next step in their own evolution through our Leading Change Program. We were blown away at the level of commitment of these leaders to learning, living and embodying the Six Keys to Leading Positive Change. To work with these leaders and to witness the growth that happened over our eight months together was nothing short of exquisite!
‘Not many times we are offered the opportunity to reflect upon self as strategy to develop your leadership skills. Nicola & Hamish Evolving leaders program is a great example of how sustainable change can be embedded by knowing self first before bringing others into any potential corporate change. Highly recommended!’ – Vitor Rocha (Palliative Care Lead)
“I cannot speak highly enough of Nicola and Hamish – it was privilege to participate in the Leading Change program that they facilitated within our workplace. They are a dynamic duo with the extraordinary ability of being able to balance an abundance of knowledge and expertise in leadership development, with a genuine humility and an honest kindness capable of drawing the best out of program participants. Thank you Hamish – Thank you Nicola.
– Sue Wilson RN PhD Evaluation and Data Management Lead
Bookings are now open for 2023. You can find out more about Leading Change here.
Well, while it;s fair to say that 2020 has been nothing like any of us anticipated, one of the gifts for many was finding ourselves with a little more time and space on our hands.
What was the favourite thing you created this year?
Well for me there were two things: The expanded vegetable patch to now include passionfruit, kiwi fruit and more silver beet and celery than the kids would ideally like; and, the writing of a little book about what I’ve discovered about self- leadership derived from over a decade of personal and professional learning and practice.
As it turns out – both creative projects continue to be works in progress – as I battle with the birds and the possums and slugs, while also enjoying the flowers on the strawberries and tomatoes in the vegetable patch; and, simultaneously re-shaping and renaming of my little book – thanks to a dear friend and colleague who helped me to see a better way forward. I am forever indebted to the creative process with its insights and blocks and lumps and bumps until clarity finally beckons!
I can’t wait to share my little book with you in 2021.
What is clear to you now?
One of the gifts that can also come from tough times, is that we get clearer on what matters to us most and if we listen to that we can make more conscious choices about where we want to put our precious time and energy. Does that resonate for you in any way from your experience of 2020?
During this year, for me, it became even more apparent that we all have a responsibility to listen to that little voice inside of us that is saying ‘something needs to change’; to explore and connect with self around this ‘invitation’; and to take conscious action. Rinse, repeat. This is the practice of self-leadership.
Some of what I have also ‘crystalized’ this year about self-leadership is that;
– We are responsible for our own evolution and growth. Period.
– Learning about ourselves and growing our effectiveness as leaders is a lifelong process that takes focus, commitment, and a clear intention.
– Unless we carve out space to do our own personal learning, life will continue to drive us rather than enabling us to shape our own reality.
Building on all of that, what is super clear to me now is that the number 1 focus of my work in 2021 is bringing The Practice of Self-Leadership to a wider audience. This is work that we all have to do – irrespective of whether we are in a leadership role or not.
The Practice of Self Leadership will be made available to a wider audience in 2021 through:
– 6-month individual coaching programs commencing in February 2021 (I’m opening up six new places only – get in touch soon if one of those is for you),
– Self as Leader – Leadership Development Program – (in house) Continuing to facilitate our 3-month core leadership program
– Self as Leader – Leadership Development Program – (public program) – Dates for 2021 will be posted soon (via remote learning)
The good thing is that it wherever you are in the country (or in the world) The Practice of Self-Leadership – individual coaching and leadership development program can come to you. Please get in touch to register your interest or to find out more.
A moment to pause…
Conscious leadership is not possible without carving out – literally quarantining space to reflect, reset and do our self-work and there is no better time to do this than at the end of this year of 2020! So grab a piece of paper (or audio or video record it on your phone if that’s your thing) and take a few moments to reflect on these questions:
Fill in the blank: This year, I feel proud of myself because ___________.
Which six ‘feeling’ words describe your experience of 2020?
What was the favourite thing you created this year? (a project, a fabulous meal, a garden, space for you….)
Can you remember a time in 2020 when you thought you couldn’t do something (“This is too hard, I’m overwhelmed, I can’t do this”), but then you surprised yourself and you did it?
What is something you want to leave behind in 2020 and not carry into 2021?
What’s your intention for the festive /holiday season? (I wish to experience…….)
Take a big breath out …. you deserve it
A special thanks to the wonderful leaders I have had the privilege of supporting in 2020. It’s been a massive year. To those of you in the world still in the thick of the pandemic sending love and healing to you.
To my fellow Victorians well done – we did it. Sending love and light for the festive season wherever you are.
See you in 2021.
With love
Nicola x