In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick applies Elisabeth Kübler‑Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—to business contexts. He first outlines each stage, describing its emotional function and typical duration. He then illustrates the model with two real‑world business scenarios: (1) a company losing a key employee, where the owner moves through denial, anger, bargaining, and potentially depression before reaching acceptance; and (2) an industry‑wide disruption (the COVID‑19 pandemic) that forced many professionals through the same emotional cycle. Across both examples, Brian emphasizes the importance of patience, recommending a two‑week “pause” to let emotions settle before making strategic decisions. He argues that decisions made from a place of acceptance—when data are clearer and emotions have cooled—lead to better outcomes. The episode concludes with a call to listeners to recognize these stages in their own business challenges, to allow the process to unfold, and then to act decisively once acceptance is reached.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's subject. Today I want to talk about the 5 stages of grief and actually how the 5 stages of grief apply to the business world, which might sound like a strange correlation, but stick with me. So what are the 5 stages of grief? The 5 stages of grief were proposed by a psychiatrist. Her name is Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, I think was her name. And she talked about it in a book that she wrote in the '60s called On Death and Dying. And she described the 5 stages of grief as Denial, anger, bargain— bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These are the stages that people work themselves through when experiencing loss, particularly loss of, of an individual, of someone important to them. So what's denial? Denial is when you initially have this sense of disbelief, this denial about the reality of the loss, right? So this, this stage is a protective mechanism and it's, it's really to absorb the shock or the magnitude of the loss. So people enter the 5 stages of grief by oftentimes going through denial. Now some people spend 10 minutes in denial and others may spend 10 months. Everyone's a little different. From denial though, people move into anger. Anger occurs as the reality of the loss begins to set in. People just have this experience, and oftentimes the experience is that of anger. It could be directed towards someone else or directed towards a situation or even directed towards themselves, but anger is felt. Again, like denial, this anger phase may last 10 minutes or it may last, you know, multiple months. But in the 5 stages of grief, it's, it's phase number 2. It's step number 2. Now stage number 3 is bargaining. In this stage, people attempt to negotiate with themselves or with a higher power in an attempt to mitigate or even reverse the loss. It's, it's probably not going to make any sort of difference, but this is just naturally what we go through. We start to bargain. It involves thoughts of things like, if only XYZ, or what if this happened, right? It's this act of bargaining, which leads to, unfortunately, a state of depression. And this really sets in as, as we're getting closer to the last stage, which, which is acceptance. We have depression in that the loss becomes very apparent, just the weight of it. You know, the feelings start to settle in as we've gotten through kind of that shock and denial and anger and bargaining. So the sadness, even regret, maybe despair, this comes about. This is just the stage where we're coming to terms with the reality. And then lastly, acceptance, which is the final stage, which is when people just begin to accept the reality of the loss. And they begin to kind of get back into motion, or into, into motion with respect to what they were doing previously. In other words, they start to maybe live their lives as they were in the past. Now the pain may still be there, it's likely still there, but it becomes more manageable and people could start to move forward with their lives. So again, everybody works their way through these stages of denial and anger and bargaining, depression and acceptance. The pace at which people move varies. Now, why am I talking about the 5 stages of grief? Well, recently, really in the past couple of weeks in, in my life, I've had a couple experiences in business where I actually saw these 5 stages, or I'm seeing these 5 stages currently play out. The first example, I have somebody that I work pretty closely with who runs a business, and someone really important to that business decided that it was time for him to move on. In other words, this super important person to the business said, I'm ready for my next opportunity. And that opportunity is not with you, Mr. Business Owner. And, and, and I was talking to the individual that, that was losing this individual from their business, this person from their business. And, and I saw, you know, the, the 5 stages of grief start to show up. And again, nothing wrong that he did. It's just a natural process as, as humans, as business owners in this particular scenario. He went through this denial, this sense of disbelief, like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would so-and-so ever leave? And then there was a moment of anger, like the reality was setting in and it was annoying. It created some anger. Then there was this bargaining phase. The sense of, gosh, if only we did XYZ, or what if I created this new role for this person? And that was the bargaining. Now, I'm not quite sure if we're out of bargaining yet. I don't know if we're to depression. I don't even know if he'll get to that stage. I wouldn't even call it depression because it's such a strong word. And you could see how it's applicable when losing someone, like literally losing someone, their life, is lost and then departing from this world. I don't know if he's gonna have the same sense of depression with respect to losing someone from his business, but the weight of the loss is going to become apparent. And ultimately, we will get to acceptance stage. The guidance that I gave him when he— when we talked, I said, here's, here's what we ought to do. Here's the steps I think you ought to take. Do nothing for 2 weeks. I want you to sit tight. I want 2 weeks to play out before you come back and revisit the action steps you need to take. And why did I say that? Well, I said that because I wanted him to be patient and I wanted him to get out of the emotional state because business people make better decisions when they're less emotional and they're able to be more objective. And I sensed that because he's human and this person was important, that there was probably some emotion tied to it. And so I said, let's take 2 weeks. And the idea here is he will work through these 5 stages and he'll come out to the, you know, the acceptance stage. And then we could have a real conversation that's not driven by emotion or anger or any of these things that are natural for us all to occur. Now, in a separate scenario, many in my industry have experienced or will be experiencing some significant change, right? There were some changes in the industry that are underway and will be partially or fully in effect in the coming months. And it's interesting to see the 5 stages playing out. People in denial and anger, people bargaining, even many in depression. Some have already gotten to acceptance, whereas others are still very much in the denial phase. My guidance for these individuals, for all of us, is the 5 stages are gonna play out for you. Some of you, it's already played out and you got quickly to acceptance. Others are still very much in denial and anger, and that is okay. My guidance though would be just like I told you in the first story, we gotta be patient. I think patience is the key when it comes to the 5 stages of grief, specifically in these business scenarios, which is where I'm applying this today. You're human. You're going to work through these 5 stages. How you work through them is going to be different than your peers. It's going to be specific to you. The key is to allow yourself to process. I think it's especially important knowing these 5 stages that you don't act like you're suddenly in a state of acceptance. That's not to say you're not. But I just want you to be patient and let certain things take shape. I'll tell you why I say this. 4 years ago around this time, the world changed a bit. We were faced with, with the pandemic, you know, breaking out. And, and if you recall around this time, if you're listening to this episode, when it's, when it airs, we're talking mid to late March. Uh, we really thought the world was shutting down. I mean, it was shutting down. My industry specifically for March, April, May, we actually wondered if it would ever still exist. And what did we learn? Well, we all reacted in some way. Some reacted quickly into denial or anger and bargaining. Others got quickly into acceptance and started building out models and systems and ways to combat things. At the end of the day though, what we thought was going to happen in the industry, what was not what happened. As a matter of fact, I would argue the The opposite occurred. Whereas we thought things were going to be impossible and challenging. They were for a moment. And then what happened? The market went, the real estate market went insane. The only way that we wouldn't have been caught up in those first few months of coming up with systems and models and pivoting and doing all this thing, all these things that frankly, uh, for many of those things turned out to be fruitless. The only way we would have avoided that is if we were a bit more patient. So my guidance, for everyone today. When you experience some degree of loss in business or some massive change in business, know that you're going to work yourself through denial and anger and bargaining and depression and acceptance. You're going to do it because you're human, but be patient and allow it to play out. If you're going through something right now, as many of my peers are, just hang on for a moment. Okay, let's work through this, these stages, and let's come to a period or a moment of acceptance when we have fair data, we have a good idea as to where the world stands, we know the paths that can be taken, and then you can aggressively pursue the route that you think that makes the most sense. So the focusing question for everybody today: how do these 5 stages, stages of grief apply in your business world? Okay. We know how they very much apply in the, in the, in the way that the, that Dr. Elizabeth had designed them, like in the, in the loss of life. But I'm talking about in massive change or loss in business, in coping with these various situations in the business world. How do you apply the understanding of these 5 stages of grief and how do you, how do you become a bit more patient or hold tight and allow you know, certain things to take shape before you get into action. That's what I want you focusing on today. That's all we have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
