Leaders and Managers: Want to take better care of your people, but don’t know where to start?
Businesses face so many challenges. Even though our world is facing more trauma than ever, trauma-informed business practices might seem low on the list. It would be easy to blow it off, thinking, “We’ve got so many things going on. We can’t possibly try to tackle anything else.” As an entrepreneur and a community leader, I beg to differ.
Empathy…while it may seem like a foreign concept in business, it’s actually quite the opposite. Empathy can be described as the ability to sense what others are feeling and react with patience and grace. In business and in life, the ability to have patience with people around us makes us a better leader, a better employee, and a better person. We can learn and grow in our patience for others if we understand more about what makes them tick. This is where understanding trauma comes in. Knowing the general concepts of how our brains and bodies respond to trauma helps me adjust my attitude and my behavior towards others.
“We don’t need to know the details of each others’ stories to know that we need some basic empathy and patience for one another. Understanding how past trauma has affected us creates opportunities for patience and grace in a context of work…”
You’re a leader, and I get it. You want to be on the leading edge of innovation, and here it is! It is the integration of trauma-informed practices into the culture of our workspaces. We’ve seen the importance of understanding personality traits and how they work together. This is what team-wide assessments like the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, and the DISC profile are all about. Trauma-informed business practices are the next-big-thing in this dive. The key is this: we don’t need to know the details of each others’ stories to know that we need some basic empathy and patience for one another. Understanding how past trauma has affected us creates opportunities for patience and grace in a context of work. We are more likely to be focused, on task, and present, when we are not distracted by feeling alone, unworthy, and afraid.
Gone are the days of “pull up your bootstraps” and “toughen up.” As a child of the silent generation, I can easily see the short-sightedness of the “suck-it-up and move-on” mentality. Emotions are a fundamental part of the human experience, and tied so closely to our physical selves. Ignoring them will drive us into isolation, fear, discontent, depression, anxiety, and worse. Prioritizing best practices means creating a work environment that understands this, and desires to create a healthy team approach.
Caring for the environment = caring for the work environment. Environmental sustainability…a growing change in business best practices towards caring for our planet. Yet we often haven’t considered the emotional environment. Is it sustainable for our businesses to continue in business-as-usual without considering the cost of ignoring the mental health of its employees? It is possible that by understanding one another in a safe community, we can create a more sustainable environment for our emotions and challenges.
If you are ready for the kicker, here it is. Growing workplace-awareness around trauma helps employees know that they are not the only one facing challenges. When we don’t feel alone as people, we are better equipped in community to release the embarrassment that comes with not having it all together. When we let go of shame and fear, we can actually handle more of what life hands us…from a stack of reports due by Monday, a difficult customer, to even family life. When we handle these things in safe communities, we make better employees, parents, spouses, and leaders. Our differences make us stronger, but understanding them makes us better.
