A colleague is struggling, and you’re unsure how to support them
Something has changed in how a colleague seems, and you do not know what it is or how far it is your place to ask.
A colleague is not themselves. They may be quieter, more irritable, less organised, or absent from things they used to be part of. You do not know the cause, it may have nothing to do with work, and you are weighing the risk of intruding against the risk of noticing and doing nothing.
Presenting symptoms
- Something specific has changed: they are quieter in meetings, later than usual, or no longer doing something they always did.
- Colleagues have mentioned it to you, or have quietly started covering for them.
- When asked how they are, they say they are fine in a way that closes the subject.
Possible causes
- Something outside work may have changed, and may be nothing you will ever be told about.
- A specific and fixable pressure at work may have built up: a timetable, a class, a deadline, a relationship.
- Their health may be affected, which is not a matter for you to establish.
- They may be managing perfectly well and simply having a difficult few weeks.
A specific change you could name, such as a routine they have dropped or a meeting they have stopped contributing to.
Your most useful next step: Find a private ten minutes this week and open with that named observation rather than a general enquiry about how they are. A named observation invites an answer; a general enquiry invites reassurance, and you will get it. If you cannot yet name anything specific, the first action below applies before this route does.
Lead behaviours
A specific pressure at work that has built up.
Your most useful next step: Identify one pressure that could realistically be reduced. Where it is within your authority, reduce or adjust it this week and tell them you have. Where it is not, help them reach the person who can decide it rather than leaving them to raise it alone. Check that the pressure has genuinely gone rather than moved quietly to a third colleague, and come back to ask whether it made any difference.
Lead behaviours
Their work has started to be affected.
Your most useful next step: Do not ignore the effect on the work, and do not let a wellbeing check become the vehicle for delivering it. Be explicit about the purpose of whichever conversation you are having. Say plainly that the support is not conditional on the work improving, and where expectations also need addressing, decide whether a separate and properly signposted conversation is the better route. How far to take that depends on how serious the concern is and on your school’s or trust’s own arrangements.
Lead behaviours
They need support beyond anything you can personally provide.
Your most useful next step: Say plainly that you are concerned, that support is available through your school or trust, and that you will help them make contact. Where their health may be affected, suggest they speak to their own GP. Seek advice yourself through the appropriate school or trust route rather than carrying it alone, and do not attempt to establish or investigate what is wrong. If at any point you are concerned about somebody’s immediate safety or wellbeing, that has left the scope of this scenario and your school’s or trust’s own procedure takes over straight away.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
You can only notice a change if you knew what usual looked like. This behaviour is what makes the whole scenario possible, and it is why a leader who knows their team well arrives here months before one who does not.
The instinct is to work out what is wrong and then act. The discipline is to ask, and then to listen to an answer you had not predicted, which is also the only way to establish whether there is anything to act on at all.
You do not have to solve this. Listening properly and pointing somebody towards the right support is a complete and sufficient response, and a leader who believes they must fix it will either overreach or, more commonly, avoid the conversation entirely.
Where a practical pressure can genuinely be lifted, lifting it is worth more than any conversation about wellbeing. Service here means using whatever authority you have, or helping them reach somebody who has it, rather than absorbing another person’s workload yourself. Quietly taking it on, or passing it to a third colleague who was never asked, turns one struggling person into two.
How the first approach is made affects whether the colleague feels able to say anything at all. Asked carelessly, in a corridor or with somewhere else to be, the easiest answer is that everything is fine, and a second approach is harder than the first because it now has a history behind it.
Secondary behaviours
Use this where the work has started to be affected. Ignoring the effect is not kindness, and it becomes harder to raise the longer it goes unmentioned. What matters is that the purpose of each conversation is visible to the colleague: a wellbeing check used to deliver performance feedback reads as a pretext, and the support stops being believed. Say plainly that support is not conditional on the work improving, and where expectations need addressing, signpost that separately.
Use this on whatever you offer. An offer of help that is not followed by something actually changing does more harm than not offering at all, because it confirms that saying something was pointless.
Use this at the limits of your role. You are not qualified to establish what is wrong and you do not need to be. Accepting that is what keeps the conversation useful rather than intrusive.
A useful first action
Write down what you have actually noticed, as observations rather than conclusions. If it amounts to a vague impression, keep noticing for a short while until you can name something specific. If a pattern is developing, have the private conversation this week. If anything concerns you about somebody’s immediate safety or wellbeing, act on it now through your school’s or trust’s own route rather than waiting for more evidence.
Suggested approach
- Write down what you have actually observed rather than what you have concluded, unless something concerns you about immediate safety or wellbeing, in which case act now through your school’s or trust’s own route.
- Find a private ten minutes and open with one named observation rather than a general enquiry.
- Listen to the answer without trying to establish a cause, and ask what would help rather than offering what you assume would.
- Where a practical pressure can be reduced, reduce it if that is yours to decide, or help them reach whoever can, and check it has not simply landed on somebody else.
- Come back in a fortnight, whether or not anything was said the first time. One conversation is a gesture; a second is a pattern they can rely on.