What is Trauma-Wise Leadership?

I would like to start with the end in mind. By that I mean, illustrate the observable evidence of someone with access to this insight, and what you would be hard pressed to find.

Trauma-Wise Leaders have:

1. Prioritise Self- Leadership and personal development

2. They are Co-Regulators; others experience co-regulation in their presence

3. Emotional Mastery and advanced levels of self-awareness

4. Resilience that is easy and free flowing

5. Bendy and Flexible with life's shenanigans

6. Presence that makes others feel safe around them

7. Maya Culpas that feel congruent, landing gently with themselves and others

8. A Daily Practice that deepens their Mind-Body connection

Trauma Wise Leaders don't have:

1. Urgency or need for speed. Their performance is more swan like.

2. Blame. They've swam the river of blaming others, before blaming self, to now be in a place where they no longer blame.

3. Inconsistency or chop/change behaviour. Their level of self regulation, clarity of vision, and ease of decision making has them managing their energy, protecting their focus, and easily saying no, yes, let me look into that.

4. Lone Ranger status dressed up as solitude or being a hermit. These individuals will have had their time for self isolation dressed up as solitude only to emerge from that place deeply appreciative of the role, medicine and power of community.

5. Hiding regardless of how it is dressed up. These individuals are lending their voice to the process that allows the growth to flourish, unvarnished, and real.

6. Polarised Conversations - all they can discuss is the same 1 or 2 core topics with no interest, ability or knowledge of other topics. Their opinions are often quite rigid and fuelled largely by high inexplicable emotion.

Trauma-Wise Leadership

Trauma-Wise Leadership is the practical application of psycho-somatic traumatology in the workplace.

Trauma in this case? Stress-Related Trauma. The evidence of long forgotten past experiences that have marked the brain the way a stroke leaves a lesion. This has our physiology dysregulated and in some instances locked into survival mode patterns that we bring into the workplace. That means our over reactions to seemingly normal situations? Symptom of stress-related trauma at a mind-body level. And that is not going away without deliberate mind-body intervention.

Psycho-Somatic in this context? This speaks to the Mind-Body evidence of long term exposure to stress that exists just outside of our conscious awareness. As it goes, this dysregulated 'life force' is what permeates every area of our life, thoughts, actions, decisions and choice of people. So in a nutshell, it is insidious, and we are oblivious.

In the Workplace? Often work is where we go to distract, avoid, and focus our inner conflict or use to fill voids. And trauma-related stress leaks all over the workplace. When there is enough of it, it turns the workplace toxic permeating the culture, contaminating things like: product, mission, vision, purpose, delivery, acquisition, retention, sales, and the board.

Coaches, Consultants, Trainers, Doctors, Therapists, and Leaders all have a role to play in the Mind-Body approach required to shift our people out of the Highly Functioning, Secretly in Despair states they find themselves in, and into a Trauma-Wise Leadership state that comes with the evidence of emotional mastery, resilience that feels easy, flexibility to any and all of life's waves, and a presence that co-regulates others.

Because the numbers are so high and the evidence so vast, the need is big.

1. Two thirds of High Achievers emerged from High Stress Childhoods, opting into High Stress Careers.

2. 50% of our C-Suite struggle with Mental Health issues.

3. 80% of our Tech Founders have at least one mental health disorder.

4. Over 50% of our Intrapreneurs have at least 2 mental health conditions.

By the time our workforce reaches their 40s, they are experiencing a convergence of psycho-somatic traumatology that can pull from:

1. a long forgotten childhood

2. ongoing exposure to a high stress career

3. family life

4. aging physiology (gastro focused for men typically, and uterine focused for women)

that will erode their ability to create, contribute and grow. Instead, we may find that we bear witness to their burnout, or to their public wipe out, a heart attack or get caught up in some unsavoury buffet of addiction.

In a post Covid world, the numbers get bigger, and the list of concerns gets longer as we buckle in for: uncomfortable political landscapes, economic upset, technological advancements dissolving jobs, and the ever increasing cost of living out pacing salaries.

Trauma-Wise Leadership is the Mind-Body approach that recognises the psycho-somatic evidence of ongoing exposure to stress.

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