Trauma-Informed Leadership and Workplace Culture Insights

Establishing safety at work is one of the most important aspects of creating a trauma-informed workplace, but creating safety is easier said than done. When we discuss trauma-informed beliefs, practices, and values, we often explore big-picture concepts and systems. While this is an essential piece of the work, sharing specific, actionable steps can often improve our understanding better than big-picture ideas can. Here are some concrete and relatively simple ways to create s

Trauma-informed leadership is crucial if you want to accomplish trauma-informed change in your organization. Here’s some expert advice on how you can become a trauma-informed leader. 1 Acknowledge that cultural change is just as important as technical change When we talk about organizational change, our problem-solving brains are often focused on technical change. We ask, “ What processes can we put in place to prevent this issue?” when we should be asking, “What cultural

Download this newsletter as a printable PDF: Monthly Reflections As the end of summer approached, many of us prepared for the incoming...

When we discuss implementing trauma-informed change, the conversation largely surrounds how we live trauma-informed values. How does our behavior reflect our values? What about our lifestyle choices, how we engage in relationships, or our attitude toward life’s challenges? When we reflect, we recognize that there are many ways we live trauma-informed values, but there are also many areas where we can improve. So, once we’ve identified the areas we’d like to change, the questi

Throughout our last several blogs, we’ve explored the broader themes of how to accomplish trauma-informed cultural change. We’ve also discussed how embodying trauma-informed values is essential to accomplishing that change. But what does embodying trauma-informed values look like in real-time? How are we practicing the values in our personal and professional lives? How do the concepts we discuss become embedded and embodied in our work? Today, we’ll give you concrete examples

If you take a look at history, it’s obvious that cultural change happens slowly. Many of the changes we experience hardly feel like changes at all. They happen gradually over the course of a lifetime, and they elude our attention. But when we shift our perspectives and take an intentional, measurable, and trauma-informed approach to cultural change, we discover that it is not only larger and faster than we initially believed—it is also more impactful, more achievable, and mor

A trauma-informed framework for shifting toxic workplace culture. What leaders must change in norms, communication, and accountability to build trust and safety.

An organizational safety plan is a simple, shared playbook for preventing escalation, responding consistently, and supporting staff and clients during high-stress moments. Safety plans serve as a great resource for individuals to practice healthy coping skills and develop a sense of safety and security that can carry them through a crisis. Last week, we discussed the basics of creating your first personalized safety plan . Now, it’s time to discuss how an organizational safet

Last week I spent 3 days with a room full of exhausted yet engaged teachers, who were eager to learn about trauma and not only how it applied to their students, but how it was showing up for them. In the process of the training, we spent considerable time talking about Maslow's Hierarchy. Later that night, I was invited to the school board meeting, to share our progress and the important work being done in the district. Unprompted, their board president started talking about