A colleague had a stroke. Here is how to do this well.

Someone on your team, often a senior person, has had a stroke and is coming back. You want to support them properly, you are aware there are legal obligations, and you are quietly worried about getting it wrong. This page is short and practical on purpose. No inspiration, no platitudes. Just what actually helps.

What you will, and will not, be able to see

If your returning colleague walks in looking well and speaking normally, your instinct will be to assume they are recovered. Resist it. Physical recovery and cognitive recovery run on completely different clocks. The person in front of you may look exactly as they did, and still be dealing with fatigue that arrives without warning, difficulty holding several threads at once, slower processing under pressure, or a shorter fuse than they used to have. None of this is visible in a corridor. All of it matters in a meeting.

Looking fine is not the same as being fine. Plan for the gap.

The five mistakes well-meaning employers make

• Framing the return as a favour. A capable person coming back to work is not being done a kindness. Treat it as a normal return of a valued colleague, not an act of charity.
• Removing responsibility to be kind. To a driven person, quietly taking the demanding parts of the job away reads as being written off. Adjust the load, not the ambition.
• Assuming visible recovery means cognitive recovery. The most common and most costly error.
• Treating fatigue as a motivation problem. Cognitive fatigue is neurological, not attitudinal.
• Waiting for the person to ask for what they need. High performers are the least likely to ask. Build the check-ins in.

What to do this week

• Ask the person, directly and privately, what would actually help. Then listen more than you talk.
• Involve occupational health early, as a genuine partner in planning.
• Agree a phased return with real milestones, and treat the plan as a living document.
• Protect their standing in how you talk about their return to the team.
• Put a recurring, low-key check-in in the calendar so no one has to ask for one.

My team were great. They stepped up and took on the different parts of my role. But they are not me. They didn't hold the founder-level view of how everything fitted together. That is the part a returning leader is uniquely there to hold.

The document that makes this easier

The single most useful thing for both sides is one plan you are both reading. The Return to Work Playbook is being built to sit on the table between you and your returning colleague, so you are working from the same page rather than guessing at each other. Subscribe below and you will get it first.