Trauma-Informed Leadership and Workplace Culture Insights

We’ve all heard it: “our team is a family.” Organizations across every industry use this language. From non-profits to corporate teams, the idea that our working relationships should be as close-knit as our familial ones has become embedded into cultural norms—and even some of our mission statements. But “The Corporate Family” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This news might be hard for some of you to hear: calling your work team a family is not a trauma-informed practice. I

Committing to trauma-informed work can be a real challenge. Most trauma-informed practices involve cultural changes and large-scale...

All human beings are born with a capacity for empathy, but ultimately, empathy is a learned behavior—much like language. Just as language...

Understand the four pillars of emotional intelligence and how they show up in real workplace behavior. Includes practical examples for leaders, supervision conversations, and team communication under pressure.

“ Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.” - Bessel Van Der Kolk Trauma-informed care is impossible without self-awareness. Anyone who practices TIC needs self-awareness, and most of us would benefit from greater self-awareness. In this complete guide to self-awareness, we’ll explore why self-awareness is core to the trauma-informed mode

Last week, we discussed how to recognize trauma states at work. The classic fight, flight, freeze, and appease trauma responses can reveal themselves in subtle ways, and other lesser-known trauma states can plague professional environments. Now that we know how to spot when someone is stuck in survival mode at work, it’s time to talk about how to help someone get out of that mindset. Today, we’ll explore the answer to the question: how can we respond to someone when they’re

Recognizing trauma responses is an important skill for trauma-informed leaders to learn—and knowing these common trauma responses is a great place to start. When we view the world with a trauma-informed lens, we can identify two distinct states of mind or headspaces. Of course, this is an overly simplified model that helps us understand the neurobiology of trauma —but it can help us easily identify when someone (including ourselves) is experiencing a trauma response. These t

If you asked me what the single most important aspect of trauma-informed implementation is, I’d say it’s much more complex than that. But then I’d say safety at work . To be fair, there are a lot of moving parts when we aspire to create safety at work. It’s not an easy task to undertake. From encouraging employees to develop individual safety plans to creating a comprehensive organizational safety plan , truly establishing safety at work can take years to achieve. It’s a lot

What's the difference between listening and hearing? We can’t control what we hear. Hearing is second nature. Listening requires focus....

If you’re familiar with the trauma-informed space, you know that we often talk about the experience of feeling seen, heard, and valued. We talk about creating space at the table for everyone, practicing vulnerability to strengthen relationships, and holding ourselves accountable when we make mistakes. These are all great topics to discuss, but it can prove challenging to distill these larger ideas into practice. But, when we talk about apologizing, we wrap all of these comple

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...

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

Download this newsletter as a printable PDF: Monthly Reflections July brought challenges for many as we collectively processed the trauma of the overturning of Roe v. Wade at the end of June and shortly after celebrated American "independence" on the 4th of July amidst the looming recession marked by high gas prices and bad interest rates. Now more than ever, having personal and individual safety plans is essential, and we created ours this month, outlining our crisis plans a

Most people acknowledge the close link between childhood trauma and social-emotional problems later in life. Studies have also shown that adverse childhood experiences contribute to a person’s risk of chronic illness—and the correlation between ACEs and various other issues is astonishing. In this article, you’ll learn: What are ACEs? How to determine an “ACE score” The correlation between ACEs and various problems Why learning about ACEs is important What are ACEs? The acron

Full implementation of a trauma-informed approach typically takes three years to accomplish, but many organizations are looking for more manageable solutions that require fewer resources. If you want to implement trauma-informed practices but aren’t ready for full implementation, here are some of the most important aspects of trauma sensitivity training that you can share with your team. Developing a One-Page Resource for Trauma Sensitivity Training Recently a colleague asked

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

There’s a common belief that some workplaces are trauma-free. While it’s true that some vocations—such as healthcare workers and first...

Most people will say that work stresses them out—but it’s possible that your job as a leader is causing chronic traumatic stress. If you suffer from leadership trauma, these five trauma-informed strategies can help you move forward and cope with your stress. 1. Recognize harmful symptoms through mindfulness. First, you need to know if you have leadership trauma. You might think that everything is okay or that you’re experiencing a “normal” amount of stress. But you may be