Bereavement-related support entails a complex and demanding set of tasks and processes, and so the staff involved need to feel safe, supported and valued if they are to achieve the best results (and not be emotionally harmed by the huge challenges involved).
This places a major burden of responsibility on the managers of bereavement support services. They are required to be effective people managers in how they relate to staff (Thompson, 2026a), but even that is not enough. They also need to be skilled leaders, able and willing to shape and sustain a positive culture that is supportive, nurturing and empowering.
That is no easy feat, and so much depends on the quality of the training they receive in relation to management and leadership. Leadership development programmes are not in short supply, nor are books and educational resources to support learning. However, what I have found is that the vast majority of such provision is generic. That is, it covers the areas that are common across all settings and contexts. So, whether you work in industry, retail or financial services, your training will teach you what is common in leadership across all working environments.
That’s really good as far as it goes, but what it does not do is address the specifics of particular aspects of leadership practice. For example, I recently wrote a critique of a Skills for Care standards document for leadership in children’s social care (Thompson, 2026b) in which I pointed out that, despite its strengths and usefulness, there were significant gaps in terms of preparing leaders for the specific and distinctive challenges that social care professionals face (moral distress, for example).
Leadership development that stops short at the generic level is therefore telling only half the story. There is so much more that needs to be considered in relation to the particularities of the setting, its distinctive challenges and, of course, its strengths.
For some time now I have been arguing that managers in the caring professions need leadership development opportunities that go beyond the generic commonalities and seek to take account of the major professional challenges in areas such as palliative care and grief support. It is questionable how fit for purpose neoliberal commercialism-focused leadership development is for such emotionally charged and existentially demanding work. Yes, there is much about leadership theory and research that will apply and be informative in such areas, but it is not enough on its own.
Surely the time has come to recognise that traditional business-oriented leadership development does not provide the understanding needed to equip leaders in bereavement support services or indeed in the caring professions more broadly to do their vitally important work. It is time to rethink what is needed.
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