No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Leadership isn’t rocket science, we just overcomplicate it. This podcast delivers real talk on building trust, tackling brilliant jerks, and developing leaders who coach and develop others with integrity, with practical insights for talent and HR leaders as well as external coaches and consultants.
No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Trauma-Informed Leadership: What It Is (and What It Isn’t)
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In this episode of No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership, Stephanie Licata talks with Stephanie Lemek, Founder and CEO of The Wounded Workforce, about what trauma-informed leadership really looks like in practice. They explore how leaders can build trust, avoid harm, support accountability, and respond more effectively to stress behaviors at work, without stepping into therapy territory. A grounded conversation for leaders who want to create safer, healthier, higher-functioning teams.
Host: Stephanie Licata, M.A. A.C.C. | Learning & Leadership Consultant
Contact: stephanie@stephanielicata.com
Guest: Stephanie Lemek, SPHR, MBA, CTSS, TIWP | Founder & CEO @ The Wounded Workforce®
Save 15% on Trauma Informed Workplace Certifications from The Wounded Workforce ® with the code: NOJERKS15
So, welcome everyone to this episode of No Jerks Allowed, Real Talk on Leadership. So, today's episode is all about trauma-informed leadership, what it is and what it isn't. So, some people may think this is about being a therapist at work, and that's not what it's about. So, leaders don't really need to know any clinical speak. They don't need to really know what it is to be a therapist. They don't need any of that. The goal is really about practical leadership behaviors that really help to strengthen team trust, performance, and create a safe environment. And we all want to work in safe environments. So I'm not going to tell you about trauma-informed leadership. I invited an expert guest, Stephanie Lemick, to share with you all about trauma-informed leadership because she herself is an expert in trauma-informed leadership. So, Stephanie, would you please join the podcast? Hi, Stephanie. Hi, Stephanie. I'm so excited. We are Stephanie spelling our name the right way with the PH. I know, Stephanie Squared. So, Stephanie, tell us a little bit about your background, what you do, who tell us all about yourself.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Thank you. I will try and do what I call the Cliff Notes version because our stories can get really long. But I'm Stephanie Lemmick. I'm the founder and CEO of an organization called the Wounded Workforce. We're focused on workplace mental health advocacy and trauma-informed workplaces and leadership. And how I got to this work is I spent almost two decades in-house as an HR leader, HR executive. And I found that mental health challenges, trauma is showing up for a whole heck of a lot of us, even if we're not realizing it. And at the same time, we're prioritizing workplace mental health, which is so important. We're also really creating a challenging dynamic for managers in that managers aren't therapists. They're not counselors. And we don't want them to be. And we also want to recognize their own mental health and capacity at the same time. And trauma-informed leadership, or the OG, as I like to call it, trauma-informed care really helps us get to a point where we're supporting everyone in the workplace and really creating structures that support human experiences.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. That's so great. So let's get really down to brass tacks. Let's help people understand a clear definition of what does it mean when we say trauma-informed in a workplace context? What does it mean like in a nutshell?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. It's scary. And a lot of times when I talk about trauma-informed workplaces, trauma-informed practices, trauma-informed leadership, people like, Stephanie, I don't want to talk about trauma in the workplace. Well, I can appreciate that. It's showing up for us no matter what, even if we're not talking about it. But really being trauma-informed, whether it is a trauma-informed organization, team, or leader, it comes down to four things. And it's actually pretty simple. The challenge becomes how we apply it with our own leadership style. You know, things with people are never super simple. But it's four things when we look at what it means to be a trauma-informed leader. We are informed what it what trauma is. And we understand that definition of trauma. Second is we have an awareness to the prevalence of trauma and how that may show up for individuals in life and in our workplaces. And to help you on that awareness pathway, statistics show that 70% of US adults self-identify. So they're raising their own hand to say that they have had one or more traumatic experience in their lifetime. So this is something that is quite prevalent. And then so we're informed of what trauma is, we're aware of its prevalence and impact. Those are the first two steps. Our third and fourth step are really those actions we can take as trauma-informed leaders. And the first is we're going to actively avoid re-traumatization. And so what that means is we want to make sure we are not activating or triggering our employees, our team members, our stakeholders. And we can use the principles of trauma-informed workplaces leadership to do that. But really, if we're doing the fourth thing, we can actually almost skip over that. And the fourth aspect of being trauma-informed, it's really we're actively avoiding harm. So if you know what trauma is, you're aware of its prevalence, which you are already. You're aware of how it shows up for people in their lives. And then we're actively avoiding harm. We're actively looking to avoid re-traumatizing survivors. That's what it means to be trauma-informed. So it doesn't mean asking your employees about past trauma or traumatic experience, doesn't ask people to disclose their mental health conditions, challenges, any of those things. It never requires us to diagnose or treat in terms of trauma or mental health conditions. It's just really about being a leader that understands that trauma is all around us and impacts almost all of us, either directly or indirectly. And how do we think about that? How do we, you know, lead from that lens as a way to actively avoid harm?
SPEAKER_00So let me just ask you a question because I saw this happen after the floods that happened at that summer camp in Texas. And it was so, so interesting. I watched uh there was they were interviewing some small children, I guess, who had witnessed children be literally washed away. And so there were tons of social media comments that talked that there were adults that were saying, Oh, I hope that the parents of those children get are able to get those children help. And then I saw all these adults saying, they don't need to talk to anybody. X, Y, Z happened to me when I was young and I'm fine. So what is the disconnect? Because I feel like there are some adults that have experienced trauma, but the way that they their family system dealt with it was to not discuss it. So their understanding of trauma is you don't need any special. There's no, you don't have to discuss it. It's no big deal. My family was fine. We didn't discuss it. So why should I have to be trauma-informed? Because I'm fine and I went through trauma, right? How do you account for people who have a misunderstanding of trauma's impact because of the way their family system dealt with it?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I really hope there are some people out there who have never had the impact of trauma. I don't super believe that, but I hope there are people out there. But I think the thing about trauma is, and I think that's what's a thing that's super tricky, is there's a lot going on. And what is a really kind of expansive definition? When we look at the current definition of trauma used by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, SAMHSA, which is the definition I tend to use. Trauma is defined as an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced as life-threatening, potentially life-threatening, or harmful, and has long-lasting impacts on our performance, our community, our ability to live in family and relationships. And that may appear in the short term. It may appear many years later, and the impacts could be short-lived or long term. So, first of all, trauma is this really big expansive thing where, you know, we often think of, you know, really significant traumatic experiences. For example, you know, the floods at Camp Mystic that you reference, that is absolutely something where someone, I think, pretty legitimately could say, yeah, that that would be a traumatic experience. But because it's such a unique experience to each individual and it's kind of informed by your past and your kind of social norms, how you're raised, some things can be experienced as traumatic for some person and not for another. So for example, or tornado could be experienced as traumatic for one person and not another, makes it really complicated. And so that kind of adds this like gray haze of like trauma, I don't know what it is, because it's not the super easy thing to spot, like Stephanie has red hair. Like it is really unique. On top of that, there is also, I would say, like a generational challenge. And I don't mean this as a negative. I think it's just a reality that when we were talking about trauma, when we were talking about mental health challenges 30 years ago, those were wildly different conversations. And those were wildly different conversations for a variety of reasons. They're different conversations because of our society. They're also wildly different conversations because of our understanding of the brain and our body and that connection and the connection between traumatic experiences and our amygdala and her sympathetic nervous system. We know way more now about trauma and its long-term lasting impacts on individuals. And so, yeah, there are a lot of people out there who did not have support, who did not have resources around potentially traumatic experiences they may have had in their childhood, they may have had in their lives. They may not have recognized traumatic experience as traumatic. It doesn't mean that it hasn't had those lasting impacts. And kind of the beauty of trauma-informed leadership, trauma-informed practices is we're doing what you have set out to do in this podcast, Stephanie. We we're making it so there are no jerks allowed. We are making it so your approach to leadership, you have tools and skills that have been tested for decades in clinical settings to how we actively avoid harm from what we know from science, from research around how people who have experienced trauma can have all these different capacities, how it can actually not harm them. And even if you're like listening to this podcast and I'm like, I don't know the Stephanie Squared situation, I'm not convinced, I'm not bought in, I haven't experienced trauma, I don't know that it shows up. All it is is that you take away that this is a tool to not do harm as a leader and to make it easier for you and your teams to show up in a genuine and productive way. I'm happy. I think that is the whole point of it. And I think that's where it gets really tricky is a word like trauma can really get people stirred up around how they feel, their own lived experience, all those things. But the truth is, it's just a tool for us to create better workplaces and better leaders.
SPEAKER_00And, you know, sometimes people, just because we have some a leader may have been through a personal trauma and they may have said, well, I went through X and that was traumatic, doesn't mean that someone else's traumatic experience may be to that extent or at that level of depth, right? We all, like you said, we all have our different relationship to it. So what are some everyday human reactions to things that leaders may misread as attitude or performance issues? Like what are leaders misreading that may be trauma responses?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. There's so many things. And I'll I'll ground it in a little bit of science and then jump into some specific examples. But as I mentioned, we know more about her body and her brains and that connection. And you may have heard of specific trauma responses. And there are specific kinds of trends we see in how the body tends to react, how our amygdala or our lizard brain, I just love to say lizard brain, our lizard brain starts to immediately jump into action to protect you. And this can depend on the type of trauma. It can again depend on the circumstance. There's all sorts of different reasons we may jump into these different types of trauma responses. And you're probably familiar with fight or flight. So fight is, hey, let's go, dukes up or argumentative, someone being really aggressive. You know, that could be a trauma response. Flight is peace out. I'm gonna get out of here. We're headed on our way. It's the run. Think about it. It is our evolutionary, like, oh crap, I better get out of here. I'm gonna run away from this predator. The lesser two known trauma responses that I actually think are much, much more common in the workplace. I know for me, one specifically shows up much more frequently, especially at work, are known as fawn and freeze. And so freeze is the shutdown. Freeze is the almost like, I am going to dissociate. If you've heard of someone kind of like leaving their body in a specific traumatic experience, that freeze, that shutdown is a trauma response because it is your body saying, I can't exit this harmful situation. So I am going to try and remove or separate myself from it so I can survive. And fawn is kind of the people-pleasing trauma response. And it does, it shows up as people pleasing. If you are a people pleaser, talk to someone, talk to your therapist, because it may be a trauma response for you. And fawning is making the threat, you know, feel safe, feel secure, feel supported by you, that people pleasing, that fawning, like everything's okay, let me make you happy, let me manage the situation. And fawning is really common, I would say, for women, for that to show up as a trauma response. It's also really common for people who have experienced adverse childhood experience, or some people refer to it as complex PTSD or complex trauma, where it is like a buildup of experiences. We don't have time to get into all of that, but bonning is really, really common. And so some examples you may see in the workplace as a leader. One that always would get to me is defensiveness. You know, when you give someone feedback or you want someone to do something a little bit different way, it's really not a big deal. And then all of a sudden they're overexplaining why they made their choices, or it seems like they're getting defensive. That actually might be a trauma response showing up. They want you to know, hey, uh, this is actually how I got here. And I don't want you to be mad. It could be that fawn. It could also be fight showing up, like, no, I did this right, you're wrong. Kind of that strong pushback can be that showing up as well. When you feel like someone is shutting down in a meeting in the workplace, that could be freeze showing up. And then someone hightailing it out of here. Um, you know, leaving a meeting, leaving the office, leaving an off-site, that could be that freeze response. And I will say, for me, I actually had a trauma response showing up for me in the workplace. And I did not make that connection. I spent, you know, two decades in house as an HR leader doing all the people stuff. And it took my therapist pointing out to me that I was responding in a way that seemed weird, did not seem like me, because it was coming up for me as a trauma response. And so that that is, you know, obviously we we don't need our leaders to be therapists, but if you want a clue, it is why is this person behaving in a way that seems abnormal to who they are? And then you can kind of peel back. Are they more aggressive? Are they more reserved or kind of, you know, exiting stage left? Are they, you know, moving into like people pleasing, maybe not not telling us the hard information, or are they kind of shutting down? Those are absolutely signs that it's potentially a trauma response showing up for you, or showing up for that individual. I will offer the caveat though, is when you see that the correct next step is not going, hey Stephanie, are you feeling activated? Are you feeling triggered right now in this moment?
SPEAKER_00That's what I actually want to ask you. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, so the people pleasing, the defensiveness, the shutting down, um, you know, the take my toys and go home, I'm not gonna be on this team, that kind of thing. What's the language? Let's get really specific. I like to be practical with people in case there's leaders listening. What's the language that leaders can use to be supportive, not clinical, to also not violate like privacy, to not be like, oh, tell me what happened in your childhood, right? So, what is the language that a leader can use when some of those responses show up to be supportive?
SPEAKER_01I love this question, Stephanie, because I think a lot of times, whether it's talking about trauma-informed leadership or just even mental health advocacy in the workplace, we make it really scary and hard sounding. But honestly, the right next step is to show up as a human being. And it is as simple as whatever that phrase is that is natural to you around, you know, hey, Stephanie, how are you doing? Is everything okay? Do you need a minute? And, you know, connect with people privately, respectfully, non-judgmentally. Just check in with that team member as soon as you can. Or if you know, you notice you're in a big meeting and things are going haywire for someone, call a break. And it's just having that awareness to kind of the the dynamic in the room you probably already do as a leader. And it's then taking that next step. It's taking that next step and really saying, hey, Stephanie, I just want to check in. You know, you should you showed up in a way you don't typically, and I want to make sure everything's all right. Do you need anything from me? Or is there anything we can do? And again, I love what you said. We we are not trying to get people to, you know, tell us all about their traumatic experiences. That was actually the first thing I thought of when I started doing this work was like, I have a song like a misuse that. Like I always tell this story that, you know, the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott. I always recommend I recommend it. Fabulous the time. Like I would only recommend it once a day. And it's like I always think about the leaders who read Radical Candor and then used it as an excuse to act like a jerk. And I love that Kim Scott has since come out with a very specific, like, hey, stop doing that to her book. But for me, it is how's someone gonna like find a way to be a jerk through the lens of trauma and from leadership? And to me, it is whether it's intentional or unintentional, that curiosity around someone's lived experience and trauma. I think there's a positive intent, I think, oftentimes with that. But the truth is, we never ask someone to share their story. It is always up to them when, how, if. So, in terms of just ask it's being trauma-informed means showing up with support and asking what someone needs. And it's really that simple. You're probably doing it already. The idea is how do we make that even easier for you and more impactful for your team?
SPEAKER_00No, absolutely. So I um I have um I'm part of a team. So I one of the best things about what I do is that I work for myself, but I also get to be part of several different teams as a subcontractor. So I'm part of a specific team. So I definitely have the people pleasing piece. And so I'm part of a team and I I work with a leader who definitely recognizes that about me. And she will, so she will ask me to do something. She will say, I don't need this tomorrow. She'll be like, I don't need this right away. Like, you don't, there's no rush on this. She'll be like, you can do this next week. There's no hard rush on this. And I'll be like, I know, I know. And she's like, I don't need to work on the weekend. You don't have to do this on the weekend. I was like, I know, I know. Like she knows that that will be my response. She actually knows that my automatic response will be to like, like, work the crap out of it, like and do it right away. Like, because that is my normal response. Now, I also remember connecting with someone else who had a similar response. And her boss actually said to her, Wow, you know, I'd like to. He's like, I actually feel bad that I'm getting the benefit of the jerk who did this to you. But my I'm getting the benefit of it because you're so always people pleasing. He recognized it. He recognized it. Like she was in this like bad marriage, and some jerk, like, you know, hid his money away and she was trying to get at it and she was traumatized by, and her boss actually said, like, I'm getting the benefit of this guy who like traumatized you because you're always jumping to help me. Like he recognized it and said it to her. So there are some people that don't even realize that they are trauma-informed because they are like, they are saying those things and they may not say, Oh, I'm a trauma-informed leader, right? But they are recognizing and they're trying to help their team members to take care of themselves. And they don't even know that they're doing it. Right. So even just reminding, if you do have those people on your team that are like, you know, kind of working themselves to the bone and you you want them to take care of themselves, even just reminding them, hey, take a break, right? Yeah, can just be simple things like that. Like, hey, it's okay not to work on the weekend. This is not an emergency. Things like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. When when I think about if if I could give like a few free tips to be a more trauma informed leader, clarity, communicating with as much clarity as possible, giving someone the details, giving them the space to ask questions. I am a big believer in the feeling that clarity. Clarity is kindness, that clear understanding, removing that uncertainty. Think about someone who is coming out of any kind of traumatic experience. Uncertainty is scary. Uncertainty is a place where we can launch into worst case scenario and catastrophizing. And many of us do. So the more clear we can be as leaders, the more important and more impactful that leadership is. The second one is my favorite. If you want to do one thing tomorrow and change the game for you and your team, every time you're interacting with your team members, think about how you can create choice for them. And this does not mean like, hey, go do carte blanche. This means like creating options. So do A or B or give someone a choice in how they prioritize their work or how they get their work done. Heck, if it is flexibility in terms of location of your work or work schedule, find ways to create choice for your team. Because at the root of every traumatic experience is a lack of choice. It is a feeling of powerlessness. That choice is taking away. And when we give choice back deliberately, it is incredibly empowering. And it's not only trauma-informed in the way that we're avoiding harm, we're also absolutely kind of helping support post-traumatic growth, which is this whole other amazing topic. And the last one's a little bit trickier, but I think it is super worthwhile, especially when we talk about leadership, is power dynamics are a really big, big, big deal when it comes to trauma. Traumatic experiences, it's that removal of choice. It's also often an imbalance of power, whether it's an imbalance of power between two people or two organizations, or an imbalance of power of you versus nature. There is this imbalance power that really is that core of that experience. And in the workplace, and as a leader, there is always an imbalance of power. And so taking that time as a leader to actually reflect on your own power in different relationships in different organizations can actually make you like we're never going to get rid of power imbalances. I wish we could, but we can't. We're never going to do it. But when we have awareness to how we may wield power, either directly or indirectly, we can do a lot in terms of mitigating those potential negative effects. And I actually have a couple of worksheets that I often share with leaders in terms of how you can actually do that. And then even to kind of explore how your own traumatic experiences may be showing up in how you're wielding that power or how you are kind of managing others either intentionally or unintentionally. Right.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you so much. And you know, it's so important, you know, if if the leader hasn't done, you know, I always say, and anytime I'm starting a leadership program, I always say all leadership starts with self-awareness. So the more when you really are trying to be a great leader, you have to explore different things about your own self. And sometimes that's hard work to do. It's often hard times, hard work to do for sure. Uh, you know, when we were preparing for this episode, we had an interesting conversation about psychological safety. And I want to hear your definition. How do you define psychological safety in a way that does not turn into avoidance? And so let's talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I love psychological safety. I love the work of Amy Edmondson, um, the fearless organization. If you're not familiar, she is really a pioneer around the work of psychological safety. I also kind of have a love-hate relationship as the term psychological safety at this point, which is what kind came up in our conversation, because I think it's like the hot new sexy term. It's the term everyone's using almost as a little bit of a catch-all, where it starts to like move oversimplified, yeah. Oversimplify or morph into things it really isn't. And a lot of that is because we learned amazing things from Google's Project Aristotle and the power of psychological safety and the impact we see in terms of overall team performance, productivity, profitability. So, of course, we want psychological safety on our team. It's like really hard to get. Psychological safety to me is a felt permission for candor, which is like the least like cool way to say it, I guess. But to me, that makes the most sense. But it's the idea that you are able to show up in your organization as a genuine version of yourself, and you're able to ask questions, disagree, make mistakes, you know, and not have any repercussions. And that means like any repercussions. So we always think of repercussions as like promotions, demotions, job opportunities, but it's also like, will people still sit with you at lunch in terms of the repercussion as well? And I always say that because a lot of times we talk about showing up at work as your whole self. I'm a firm believer in we're not bringing our whole selves anywhere.
SPEAKER_00Or different versions of ourselves that show different needs, different needs you're getting met, right? I always say you're not getting all your needs met at work. So don't bring everything to work.
SPEAKER_01And so I always say a genuine version of yourself because it's like I can be authentically me. And you want your team to be able to be authentically themselves and valued for not always agreeing. And I think the thing with psychological safety, it is beautiful, it is important. But as I look at it in the context of, you know, trauma-informed practices, it lives in a larger kind of principle of safety overall. And I kind of think of safety as this three-legged stool. If we're missing any of the legs, we're falling over. We're not actually accomplishing safety. And it's that physical safety, it's that good old occupational OSHA stuff, it's emergency preparedness. Are we keeping people's physical bodies safe? Next is our sexy friend, psychological safety, that ability to show up as a genuine version of yourself, be appreciated, be able to speak up and disagree and have that be welcomed. And last but not least, it's financial safety. And I think this is the one we actually talk about the least in the workplace. But it's actually a really big idea. Because when we don't have financial safety, how are we able to be physically safe? How are we able to be psychologically safe? If we're worried about paying our bills, putting a roof over our head, taking care of supporting our family in the short or long term, works how we do that. And so without that element of financial safety in place and thought around it, I think it's really hard to get to psychological safety. And so I think that's a lot of where, you know, folks miss out on that. It's like show up as your genuine self. That's great. If like Bob on the team doesn't like anyone's genuine self, though, and he never wants to like have a conversation over coffee or like chat at lunch, we're gonna have a really hard time actually creating and developing it. So I always recommend when you think about safety in general or psychological safety specifically, you gotta think about it as a journey, as an ongoing action rather than that destination. Right.
SPEAKER_00So there's always this pushback. So a lot of what I do is I train leaders in coaching skills. So I'm basically training leaders to use coaching as this development tool. And the idea is that coaching builds trust, creates this safety that we're instead of telling and training and explaining, we're using coaching to create this collaborative environment. And a little bit around halfway through the program, I start getting all this pushback. But I still have to hold these people accountable. They're supposed to come to work and do their job, right? So I get this pushback because they think that coaching is soft, right? That if I ask people questions or if I don't just start telling them what to do, right? It's I'm being too soft. So at the end of the day, people still do have to hold people accountable for certain things. So where are people getting it wrong? Where are leaders like, because leaders are like, oh, I'm either soft or I'm hard, right? There's no in between, right? So where do people get, what do people get wrong about accountability in trauma-informed leadership? And I realize that some of it, usually when people ask me that question, I go into the radical candor recommendation, right? So what where are people getting it wrong? How do people find people find so much struggle to be in that middle ground? Where are they getting it wrong?
SPEAKER_01I think it's this misperception, honestly, at the heart of it, is this misperception of trauma-informed leadership, mental health focused, well-being focused is soft when it's actually really strategic. It's a really strategic tool in our business. And we see that with some of the data around psychological safety. It's these terms that we kind of coin as fluffy, though. I mean, there are kids on TikTok making trauma bonding, you know, candy salad. So, like I get where there is that misperception. But I think the thing is, is I think oftentimes we think about one-on-one relationships when we think about trauma-informed leadership or kind of mental health awareness. And absolutely, we do. We want to think about those one-on-one relationships. Now, you're a leader of a team or you're a leader of teams, zoom out into that larger viewpoint you have. And if you are not holding your team accountable, you are not being trauma informed. Because if Bob over here is never held accountable for doing his work and Stephanie Squared over here is working hard, doing everything we need to do, we are showing a lack of equity, an imbalance of power, all of those things, again, that are not trauma-informed. They are not doing it. It is that zoom out. And at the heart of it, a psychologically safe team, a trauma-informed leader, a trauma-informed workplace is a team, is a workplace. And we're working together on a shared mission. And the idea is we're accountable because we have that shared mission and goal. So we should be inherently accountable to each other. But sometimes as a leader, you need to drive that accountability. Hey, you know, you need to get this done. We need to do that. Trauma-informed leadership helps us with choice, with coaching, which by the way, I love coaching because coaching is basically it's creating choice and how someone develops and receives feedback. We love that. But is really creating this environment where you're promoting accountability inherently in our behaviors. But I'm also a big believer that sometimes, even when it comes to mental health, sometimes what people need is like a swift kick in the butt. Yeah. And I mean, no jerks allowed. Sometimes someone is a jerk and it's not okay. Finally, the way that they get it is that swift kick in the butt. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes they also need to be let go. I always I also say that sometimes you're not serving anybody by keeping them on a job that they're not performing in, by not giving them the right feedback. Sometimes what actually is the necessary step is to let this person move on. You're actually not serving them, right?
SPEAKER_01We're giving people opportunities, we're giving tools to them and to ourselves as leaders. But at the end of the day, we are not giving them a free pass because that isn't fair. That's not trauma informed for everyone else. And so I think that's the best way I think leaders can really reconsider it is, and you can do it at a macro level, but also at a micro level. You know, someone is having some challenges, you're working with them one-on-one. Great. Absolutely do that. Now take that bigger picture that you have in leadership and zoom out and use a coach to help you. Use a mentor, use a peer to help you zoom out if you need to, but zoom out to the impact on the larger team because those both matter. And we have to balance those two things, the individual and the team. And that's that's one of the really tricky parts of being a leader. But it's also what I think is the magic of the strongest leaders is you find that perfect balance. And sometimes, sometimes someone is just not right for a role in an organization. There are kind and wonderful ways to transition that person. And we can do that. Also, someone's just a jerk, and sometimes they need to know that that's not acceptable.
SPEAKER_00And this behavior is not a match for exactly what we are and what we say our standard is. So I know when we were also when we were preparing, you spoke about seven principles of trauma-informed leadership. So I want us to just really think also about our audience. We might have talent leaders, we might have leaders, we might have individuals who are aspiring leaders. So, in a nutshell, really high level, what are those seven principles? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And I will give you super high level, and you can learn for free on my website if you want to dive into any of those more specifically. But safety, we already covered in more detail. The next is trust and transparency. The third is community. This is that idea of peer support and having connections in the workplace. The next is collaboration. And that one really gets to those power dynamics in the workplace and how we can overcome them. Empowerment is the next, and it's four components: choice, strengths, leverage, recognition, and growth opportunities. Our sixth is humility and responsiveness. This is the idea that no matter how hard we try, we're always going to get it wrong sometimes. And it's the idea that we recognize that valuability and we put into place actions, steps to get better, do better. Think of this as the continuous improvement principle of trauma-informed practices. And last but certainly not least is cultural, historical, and gender issues. Think of this as the lived experience lens is how are how all of us experience the world differently. How does that show up? And how are the systemic challenges that may show up for people in terms of how they experience trauma, how they're supported, how they're supported in leadership and workplace as well. Each of them is super robust. And I always recommend for people to connect with one of them and find ways to pull that into your leadership more deliberately. And you are going to see massive improvements in your style, but also in the impact for your team.
SPEAKER_00Excellent, excellent. So, you know, the same way when I'm training people on giving feedback or I'm training people on recognition, I always tell leaders, you know, the way you prefer feedback and the way you prefer recognition may not be the same way that your team members prefer feedback or prefer recognition. So in the same way that you won't make that assumption, even if you're a leader and you have experienced trauma and you've dealt with it in a certain way, do not assert or assume that everybody else has processed trauma in that way. Um or if you haven't experienced trauma and you won't don't want to assert or assume anything about anyone on your team as well. So it's this in the same way you just a lot of people assume that, okay, this is the way I work. So everybody works this way. And we don't want to make or you know, superimpose that, those assumptions on to anybody, anyone else. So anyone listening, and this again, you could be this could be a talent leader who's setting the stage for training leaders. This could be a leader who's trying to learn. What's a small change that a leader could make? And if you want, please share any resources that you have. You can share your website, share anywhere people can find you. What's a small change a leader can make this week to become more trauma-informed, besides listening to the podcast?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, absolutely. I go back to choice, find a way to create choice. There is so much we ask leaders to do. And it's this is such a simple one. And it is free, is every time, every day, say, How can I create choice for my team? Even if it's a choice between two things. And that will really make a huge, huge change. I also highly recommend if you are interested, you want to learn more, go and check out our website, www.thewoundedworkforce.com. We have tons of free resources around what the heck I'm talking about. Each of those principles, we dive into them a bit more specifically and talk about examples of how they show up at work. And we also have certifications. If people are really committed to this, this sounds like something they are passionate about. We have a trauma-informed leader, a trauma-informed executive, trauma-informed advocate, and a trauma-informed practitioner certification that is available on demand as well.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. So we are gonna put the link to your website in our show notes on Apple and Spotify. And so people will have the links to those things. We'll also put the link to your LinkedIn as well. So if you want to get in touch with Stephanie, please check the episode description and the links to all those things will be in there. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for joining us on No Jerks Allowed. Thank you for helping to educate leaders and organizations on a very important topic. Thank you so much for all you do and all the people that you've touched and inspired with all of your wisdom and inspiration. I really appreciate you and appreciate you being one of the good people out there, spreading likewise wonderful information.
SPEAKER_01So thank you so much. So thrilled and so thrilled to be able to underline that trauma-informed workplaces say no jerks allowed to.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Well, we're out there together uh doing the good work. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Rupre. So I hope you enjoyed this super valuable information from Stephanie. Uh, she has been super generous uh with us to offer you a 15% discount on all of her trauma-informed workplace certifications from her company, uh the wounded workforce. So she's at the woundedworkforce.com. She has a link on her website called Courses and Certifications. So she's given me a code NOJERKS to offer you 15% off her numerous certifications. So she has several certifications on her page. She has four programs. They are all on demand. And so she has uh a number of certifications. There is the trauma-informed workplace advocate certification, the trauma-informed workplace practitioner certification, the trauma-informed workplace leader certification, and the trauma-informed workplace executive certifications. Again, the woundedworkforce.com. I will put this link and the uh discount code of No Jerks15 in the description of this episode on Apple and Spotify. So if you want to check these out, you can get more training and development in this area. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for that. Okay, thanks everybody.
