Trauma-informed leadership, strategy and culture
A trauma-informed approach to strategy, culture and leadership can be the first steps to creating a more inclusive, safe and motivating workplace for your teams, one where people feel seen and heard and able to do their best work.
When you take a trauma-informed approach to leadership, you can:
➡ enhance wellbeing
➡ improve productivity
➡ add to your equality and diversity strategy
➡ build psychological safety
➡ create a workplace where people feel safe, seen and heard, and able to give their best.
Let’s find out how.
What is trauma?
Trauma is a catastrophic event that results in an inner psychological wound.
Physician Gabor Mate, a specialist in compassionate inquiry, trauma and addiction, describes trauma in terms of the effects of war on a soldier. He says, “Trauma is not the war…trauma is the wound that they sustained as a result.” He goes on: “Trauma is an invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds.”
Dutch Psychiatrist and author Bessel van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, helps us understand the effects of trauma within the body further. He talks about how ‘exposure to trauma, such as abuse and violence, fosters the development of a hyperactive alarm system and moulds a body that gets stuck in fight/flight, and freeze’. He goes on to describe how trauma affects the brain: trauma “interferes with the brain circuits that involve focusing, flexibility, and being able to stay in emotional control. A constant sense of danger and helplessness promotes the continuous secretion of stress hormones, which wreaks havoc with the immune system and the functioning of the body’s organs.”
Trauma can occur at any time in our life, from infancy to adulthood. Once experienced, trauma can be re-experienced.
The majority of people exposed to traumatic events experience some short-term distress, but eventually, their trauma fades to a memory – painful, but not destructive. Chronic (repeated and prolonged exposure to traumatic incidents) and complex trauma (exposure to varied and multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive, interpersonal nature) are different and can make situations in work, such as relationships, challenging.
Why should we be trauma-informed in our workplaces?
Trauma must be considered within workplaces regardless of the work being undertaken or sector.
Why?
Because trauma is common:
It’s estimated that 50-70% of people will experience a trauma at some point in their life [PTSDUK].
Around 20% of people who experience a trauma may go on to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (this equates to 10% of a population) [PTSDUK].
People bring their whole selves to work and that includes the impact of trauma on the brain and body. What’s more, trauma can have a significant long-term impact on people’s health and wellbeing. As a result, people experience an inescapable lived reality with trauma in their everyday.
Trauma can make changes to the brain and the nervous system, affecting a person’s ability to self-regulate and engage with experiences that may ‘trigger’ or take them back to a past traumatic event or experience.
What’s more, post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be classified as a disability, meaning that employers must make reasonable adjustments.
We’ll explore in the example below how trauma can impact performance, confidence and relationships, and we need to be prepared for that in order to be ethical, fair and supportive employers.
What else?
Where we work with people or clients who have experienced trauma there is an increased risk that ‘secondary’ or ‘vicarious’ trauma may be experienced by our teams. Vicarious and secondary trauma occur when people are exposed to the trauma of others, often by hearing their stories and experiences of first-hand trauma. Examples of this might be for people working in some purpose-driven organisations in health, the women’s sector, social care and justice services, homelessness, and some charities.
What about EDI?
In order for our organisations to really ensure equality and diversity for everyone, we need to broaden our perspectives on what equality and diversity consists of. For example:
diversity of mental health, and
equality of access and opportunities, such as to promotion.
And we need to consider trauma-informed practices through the lenses of:
wellbeing strategy
equality and diversity
corporate responsibility and duty of care.
Organisations can be excellent at considering psychologically-informed and trauma-informed approaches for clients, service users, people who access services; but often fall short in considering the needs of the ‘people who hold the hands’ of those people. And indeed, consideration must also be given to the ‘people who hold the hands of those who hold the hands’ (often the supervisors, managers and leaders).
So we need to consider the systemic aspect of being a trauma-informed organisation.
Trauma-informed culture and leadership starts with an effective strategy
Considering your trauma-informed approach to strategy, culture and leadership can be the first steps to creating a more inclusive, safe and motivating workplace for everyone, where people feel seen and heard and able to do their best work.
When you take a trauma-informed approach to leadership, you can:
➡ enhance wellbeing
➡ improve productivity
➡ add to your equality and diversity strategy
➡ build psychological safety
➡ create a workplace where people feel safe, seen and heard, and able to give their best.
Check out this case example from recent work I undertook with a client.
CASE EXAMPLE
A member of your team informs you that they've experienced past traumatic events. They exhibit stress-like behaviour and errors in the work. They tell you that when they feel stressed they can’t help but make errors.
➡ Missing deadlines and avoiding certain tasks
➡ Mishandling money or petty finances some days
➡ Mistakes made in scheduling clients
➡ Unable to receive feedback without becoming upset, tearful and defensive.
What do you do?
How do you balance the needs of your people with the needs of your business?
How do you help your employee stay in RESPOND rather than REACT as far as possible?
How do you stop yourself from over-reacting and worrying about how to approach the situation?
It can feel like a minefield.
SIMPLE STEPS
Here are simple steps I shared with a client recently who's experiencing a similar challenge:
STRATEGY
💠 Be strategic: be clear about how your organisation will be trauma-informed: what does it mean at all levels of strategy: corporate to operational.
💠 Zoom in and zoom out: Take a case-by-case approach but also be systematic: consistency is key in establishing the overall norms of your organisation’s trauma-informed approach and how you will approach this with and for people who’ve experienced trauma.
💠 Operationalise your strategy: Be clear on how will you make your trauma-informed approach visible and ‘liveable’ - ask yourself: how will our teams know that they work in an organisation that is trauma-informed?
💠 Consider your values: How does being trauma-informed inform your values? To support managers - be clear about behaviours, attitudes and actions that fulfil as well as compromise a trauma-informed approach. Know what steps and approaches will be taken to address behaviour that is not in-line with your values of being trauma-informed.
💠 Get a roadmap: The National Trauma Transformation Programme has this helpful guide. Roadmaps can help you navigate alignment of culture, strategy and behaviour more clearly.
CULTURE
💠 Establish psychological safety: being able to make mistakes and learn without fear of humiliation or condemnation supports our development and wellbeing*.
💠 Develop a feedback culture: normalise feedback and performance conversations. Behaviour that impacts performance impacts the business and need to be addressed as any other values-compromising behaviour would, regardless of whether it is unconscious or deliberate.
💠 Enhance your wellbeing and equality & diversity offers: update policies and processes to ensure your trauma-informed approaches are clearly laid out in relation to wellbeing, as well as equality and diversity (diversity of experience, of mental health, and equality of access to opportunities). Ensure people managers know how to and ARE HAVING conversations with staff about these areas, and are confident in establishing responsibilities around internal wellbeing offers and external routes of support that employees can explore themselves, such as therapeutic and wider health services.
LEADERSHIP
💠 The human touch: remember that we are humans who come to work; all imperfect; all trying our best: 95% of the time, 95% of people are trying their best.
💠 Educate yourself: learn about trauma's effect on the brain and body, how trauma re-activation affects a person's executive function and how that may manifest in work.
💠 Trauma is common: Around 70% of people globally will experience a potentially traumatic event during their lifetime (WHO).
💠 Level-up your mindset: It's not deliberate - trauma and stress responses are automatic and not within our conscious control.
💠 Work on your emotional intelligence: build an understanding of your behaviours and emotions, and reflect on how you self-regulate. Consider how you are in workplace relationships and learn to treat people how THEY want (or need) to be treated. Do THE WORK on yourself - know yourself to know others.
💠 Get support for you: it can be confusing, stressful, frustrating and challenging understanding and tackling some of these challenges. Find a mentor, a coach or other avenues for reflective practice.
💠 Be hopeful: emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-regulation can be learned by many people.
💠 Be pragmatic: it is possible to balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the business. We can have: wellbeing with performance standards; empathy with clear expectations; and autonomy with accountability.
💠 Be objective: remember that giving and receiving feedback isn't personal - invite it - don’t mistake it for a personal attack. If you do - that’s an invitation to look at what might be going on more deeply.
💠 Be curious and ask: get to know people's needs and have quality conversations about how trauma affects them from their personal lived experience and what they need from you as a manager. Do what you can to meet their needs, but where you can’t, manage expectations clearly around that.
💠 Don’t conceal the impact: don’t shy away from performance impact conversations and actions about mistakes that are occurring. Be clear about the improvements or changes required. Work together towards solutions, where possible, and be transparent where possible throughout.
💠 Empower: create opportunities for power sharing, choice and trust.
💠 Be realistic and collaborative: work with people to set objectives that feel realistic, and then review.
💠 Share responsibility: Have open, intentional conversations about managing personal wellbeing for work. Get specific about what works for people and what helps them. Both workplaces and individuals have a responsibility to their health and wellbeing, and accessing internal and external avenues of support.
💠 Acknowledge the power of relationships: workplace relationships can be therapeutic and healing, they also have the power to be damaging.
💠 Lead better: Develop your trauma-informed leadership.
💠 Be strengths-based: play to people’s strengths to build motivation, expertise and morale. If you can reduce exposure to tasks that cause stress, do so; but if you can’t be clear about that and be intentional about building confidence, ability and capacity.
Final thoughts
➡ Trauma affects everyone differently.
➡ Everyone needs different things from trauma-informed approaches.
➡ People with lived experience are often the ones with solutions to problems, issues and challenges.
*In certain sectors, mistakes may not be permissible because they may result in risk to life, damage to health, or even death. It is critical therefore to consider the context of work and how psychological safety is applied and created in and around the confines of operations in your context.
Does this resonate with you? Let’s begin the conversation about how we can support you in your business or leadership practice. Contact me today to get started.
Sources
Examples of trauma, from SelfLoveRainbow.