The Building Blocks to a Trauma-Informed Leader, Workforce & Workplace (Part 2 of 2)

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Missed Part 1, The Hurt Leader? Read here #1Mby2031

The triangle is one of the most commonly used symbols for illustrating points of importance, strength, stability, and equal power. It’s no coincidence that my Power of 3 framework is designed with these attributes in mind. The Power of 3 framework intentionally integrates a "Do No Harm" mindset into all aspects of the leadership, management, supervision practices and decision-making. The Power of 3 framework doesn't start or stop with building trauma-informed leaders. The Power of 3 framework recognizes today's workplace requires both individual leadership reflection and healing and the mitigation of harmful systems that may be facilitating errors, fear, burn out, staff resistance, drama triangles, or even stress responses in the workplace.

Here’s another way to better understand the Power of 3 framework.

The first block of 3 in the Power of?3 framework (points of importance)

• Trauma-informed leadership (Safety, Trust, Peer Support and Healing, Collaboration, Voice and Choice, Cultural, Historical and Gender)
• Trauma-informed systems (Governance, Policy, Physical Environment, Change Management, Quality Improvement, Finance, Talent Acquisition and Development, Metrics)
• Organizational environment (Strategy; Environment, Social, and Governance)

?The second block of 3 in the Power of?3 framework (the heart and compass of an organization)

• The organization’s structure
• The organization’s vision/values
• The organization's strategy

The final block of 3 in the Power of 3 framework (strength, stability and equitable/shared power)

• People
• Process
• Program

Changing the Paradigm

We form leadership paradigms and organizational culture through a set of concepts we accept, ideals we tolerate, and actions we decide to take and repeat them--over and over and over. Today’s organizations have been repeating and rewarding employees using the same old motivation models such as Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Method

FROM ----> Incentive + Reward = Production         

It’s time for a paradigm change. A change from a production-focused paradigm to Power of 3 Framework aka Trauma-Informed Leadership & Workplace Method.

TO ------> Self Determination + Safety + Do No Harm = Production         

Creating a paradigm shift in your organization requires a fundamental change in the way we lead others, our company values, systems, and our actions over a period of time. The Power of 3 framework assists leaders and their workforce to:

• better understand what a trauma-informed leader and workplace is and is not;
• assess and engage their workforce to better understand and measure the current employee experiences and standards of trauma-informed practices- over time;
• Identify internal influencers [and invest in them] to be cultural ambassadors for the organization;
• develop, implement, and evaluate a horizontal and vertically designed work plan.

Know Before You Go: Assessing Your Organization

Now more than ever, organizational assessments are critical. Given the increasing mental health challenges, burnout and dysregulation occurring in the workplace, launching major decisions, quality improvement efforts, or enterprise change without reliable data, information or engagement is problemsome and irresponsible.

Enterprise-wide assessments or engagement activities are rarely used by executives prior to rolling out small or large strategic plans or other change projects. In fact, it's not uncommon for organizations to skip over this step all together before pushing down yet another new change without warning or engagement.

News Flash: A communications plan is not a substitute for engagement.

This absence of engagement and information gathering raises many questions:

• How do leaders effectively guide their organizations and their workforce through change if they do not assess their organization first?
• How do leaders know if staff are ready for change?
• What are the levels of trust between leadership and staff?
• Do staff have the capacity to take on additional work associated with change?
• What are the underlying social and emotional needs presenting in the workplace?

Would you walk across a tightrope, blindfolded above the Everglades to meet your change outcomes or KPI's? Of course, you wouldn't. You would more than likely fail and become an afternoon snack for the alligators and crocodiles below. Still, some leaders guess or assume staff needs by taking shortcuts, making assumptions, and minimizing their input.??

The?Employee Experiences Questionnaire?confidently measures the degree to which change readiness, trust, capacity, and a trauma-informed principles – over a period of time -- influence an employee’s work experience. Instead of asking staff one question, once a year like the Net Promoter Score, the Employee Experiences Questionnaire?collects data and takes the pulse on change readiness, trust, capacity, and trauma informed principles every quarter to measure the organization's progress, setbacks, and behavior change over a 12-month period.?

Read More About the Employee Experiences Survey in this 2022 LinkedIn Article

People-centered leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of their organizations. Why? Because people and culture are the soul of their organization. Assessing how employees "feel" through the?Employee Experiences Questionnaire can help leaders meet their teams where they are during small or large transformational change efforts, set them [and your KPIs] up for change success, build emotional safety-nets, and promote change resiliency both vertically and horizontally in the workplace-- without the fear of the gators and crocs below.?

Power of 3 National Standards

In addition to the Employee Experiences Questionnaire, the Power of 3 framework also includes a set of national standards of practice for trauma-informed leaders and their workplace. The standards are based on my 20 years of experiences as an executive leader, a group of diverse advisors, nationally recognized research and principles of trauma informed practice, as well as cited leadership theory and organizational design literature.

These standards are intended to provide additional benchmarks for planning transformational change, monitoring progress, and a means to highlight accomplishments.

Leveraging Cultural Ambassadors

Community Health Workers are trusted members of their community and have a wealth of understanding of how to support and link to social needs within their communities. They help build capacity by increasing knowledge and behavior change through trust building, training, informal counseling, and advocacy.?

Cultural Ambassadors are what I consider to be the business community's version of the Community Health Worker and are in my opinion the backbone of an organization. Creating a Cultural Ambassador program has always been one of my favorite and most fulfilling engagement efforts in the workplace. In the Power of 3 framework, Cultural Ambassadors are nominated and selected by their peers, not their supervisors. Like Instagram or Tic Tok influencers, they possess significant social capital and influence among their peers in the workplace. People listen to them and trust them. Within the first 3 months of their onboarding, Cultural Ambassadors are trained in Mental Health First Aid, stages of grief, motivational interviewing, systems change and change management theory.

Their value is seen and felt when they are able to observe behavior and feelings that underpin the Employee Experiences Questionnaire responses. Cultural Ambassadors possess all of the key ingredients for influencing change through a Do No Harm lens.

The Power of 3 Work Plan Development and Implementation

A well-developed Power of 3 work plan provides clear and specific guidance pertaining to resources needed, strategic actions, tasks, timeline, and costs associated with the implementation of actions. A work plan also lays out how an organization will implement the paradigm change, monitor progress, establish outcomes and hold each other accountable for meeting the national standards. The Power of 3 work plan includes:

• Identifying of specific action steps that need to be done to be a trauma informed leader+ workplace (e.g., re-distribution of the Employee Experiences questionnaire and national standards assessment);
• Defining “who” will be responsible for each action step;
• Determining when each action step will take place and be completed;
• Developing a communications plan;
• Developing a change management plan;???
• Estimates of resources required for each action step;
• Revisiting and revising the work plan during monthly;
• Deploying the Employee Experiences Questionnaire quarterly to measure process, outcomes, and accountability for changing the paradigm.

A Path Forward

If we want to retain and attract talent, businesses must retrain current and develop emerging leaders to embrace trauma-informed principles, provide?psychological safety?in the workplace, take responsibility for their own unresolved personal trauma, and do the mental health work necessary for healing themselves, the workforce, and the entire organization.

About Dr. Dawn Emerick

If you have been following Dr. Emerick's journey, you would know she doesn't sugar coat or side-step how her own unresolved collective trauma and lack of self awareness contributed to how she showed up as an executive leader, as a peer, as a friend, and as a mother. She owns her story and helps leaders do the same. There is nothing more powerful than learning from and sharing space with people with these authentic lived, learned and recovery experiences, stories of massive errors, growth, and self-awareness. This journey of becoming more trauma aware and informed has fundamentally changed the way she approaches her relationships and her leadership responsibilities.

Dr. Emerick is motivated as hell to start a new leadership paradigm today, right now. A paradigm that starts with creating 1M Trauma-Informed Leaders in America by 2031. She is a trauma-informed and responsive leader, TEDx speaker, trainer, coach, and?podcaster. You can now add a?LinkedIn Learning Instructor?to her portfolio. She recently had the pleasure of working with the University of North Florida to lead a cohort of leaders from across the country through a Trauma-Informed Leadership and Workplace Certificate Course. It's only one of three [known] certificate courses on trauma-informed leadership in the country.

Visit?Dawn Emerick Consulting?for more information on upcoming free and credentialed?trauma-informed leadership and workplace training.?

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