The Trauma informed leader

I've been thinking and writing a lot about "Engagement" lately.  Improving engagement is at the top of a great many business leaders' concern lists these days. 

Engagement is a "big" topic.  It covers a lot of areas and can be difficult for managers to get strategically aligned around.  What I am referring to here when I say engagement is the degree to which employees are actively applying their best efforts to achieve an organizations' goals.

Poor engagement can show up in a number of ways: high rates of absence, undesired turnover, excessive complaining, lack of motivation and/or discipline being applied to agreed upon objectives, etc.  It goes on and on.  Missed deadlines, poor quality due to inattention and of course, lack of willingness to actively collaborate. 

It's important for you as a business leader to think long and carefully about how engagement, or lack of it, shows up in your organization. 

One rather complicated and misunderstood item which can have extremely negative impact on employee engagement metrics is what I call "Little T Trauma."  Its important to define terms here, because this topic is so relevant to our current context in our "post-Covid" work world. 

Trauma occurs when a living being is impacted by something which so disrupts the normal flow of productive activity that it causes difficulty in returning to a "normal" state.  Most of us have experienced events in our lives which made it difficult to resume our normal routines.  Common examples of potentially traumatic events include things like divorce, injury, loss of pet, and many others.  Trauma can come in many forms. 

Let me define terms here. I refer above to the idea of "Little T" trauma.  I think in terms of "Little T" vs. "Big T" trauma.  "Big T" trauma is the type of thing most of us would require extensive support in order to recover.  Examples might include an unexpected death or becoming a crime victim.  Big T trauma should be treated by qualified medical and credentialed therapeutic professionals.  It falls outside of what I am discussing here. 

"Little T" trauma and its impact on employee engagement is my focus here.  Common examples of Little T trauma might include:  being unexpectedly terminated from employment, adjusting to becoming an "empty nester" once your children all leave home, or experiencing prolonged difficulty in recovering from an illness. 

For a great many, the Covid experience was a traumatic event.  In fact it was a for many a series of traumatic events. 

Here are a few ways many people experienced some "Little T" trauma during or due to Covid:

• Fear of dying

• Fear of losing loved ones

• Feeling cutoff from social interaction

• Managing kids at home due to school closure

• Financial instability

• Lack of contact with co-workers

• Fear of vaccination impacts

• Fear of the unvaccinated

It goes on and on

Many managers report perceiving that their employees seem disinterested, less committed and distracted. Meaning, they are less engaged.

This can be the result of "Little T" trauma.  And if your managers have some skills which enable them to recognize and interact with people in this state, it can do wonderful things to positively impact the level of engagement your employees feel and display. 

Training your managers to recognize signs of trauma can prevent worsening existing issues.  For example, there are a great many managers out there who are attempting to use old "get tough" techniques to force results.  Rough communication, revocation of privileges such as working from home and other "get tough" measures can have the opposite of the desired effects.  An example:  revocation of all work from home options may drive some of your employees to seek employment elsewhere, as they have child care or other reasons to work from home. 

What about employees whom are now terrified to be around people who are not masked?  Laying down strict policies to force compliance is unlikely cause such employees to feel safe. 

I'm not saying to give up discipline or rigor.  Far from it!  I am suggesting that by providing your managers with developmental experiences which will help them elevate their understanding of how the traumatized psyche operates you can elevate the conversation, and the potentially workable solutions to engagement problems into far more creative space. 

Not long ago a great deal of management training focused on  how to deliver "tough" messages. 

I suggest you switch your management development effort to focus on growing up a generation of managers and leaders capable of nuanced messaging and creative engagement solutions. 

This is one place the Harrison Leadership Group can tailor programs to help your leaders become "Trauma informed."  And just plain better!