A Leader’s Trauma; The 5 Keys to Leading Through Professional Trauma & Enhancing Your Leadership and Your Team in the Process!
Andre Young
Leadership & Work/Life Harmony Speaker, Author, Leadership Trainer, & Founder of You Evolving Now, LLC
As humans, when two or more people share space for a long enough period of time… feelings are going to get hurt, disagreements will be had, and tensions will arise. The workplace is no different! Unfortunately, emotions, disagreements, or workloads sometimes go too far and can cause “Professional Trauma”.
For some Leaders and Employees, “Professional Trauma” may occur due to being overlooked for a promotion or constantly fighting to be heard, seen, and validated. For others, it may be due to burnout… as doing more and more with less and less help, support, or protection has finally caught up. For some, it may stem from experiencing high levels of disrespect. Years ago, I conducted a Leadership Training at an organization and a woman shared with me her boss was frustrated due to her lack of speaking up to share ideas. After speaking for a few more minutes, the woman shared that at her last job, her boss frequently told her to “Shut the F up” when she shared ideas… can you imagine? As a Leader, I’m not suggesting you lower your standards or expectations… I am suggesting we up our curiosity as you never know what people have been through… in this case; their “Professional Trauma”!
Since we all have our own specific “Professional Trauma”, be mindful as it will lead you to do one of three things… attempting to avoid it, become it, or evolve through it! So, how do we Lead through our professional trauma and enhance our People and Teams in the process?
Identify It!
I’ve identified two of my major Professional Traumas… one was burning out of a career and the other was PAPERWORK, Lol! To my surprise and maybe to yours, my paperwork trauma was more severe and harmful than my experience with burnout.
Burnout was hard, but useful… as it allowed me to leave a career I had phased out of and prompted me to start my own business where I could develop an use my own concepts to impact people, be my own boss, and eventually become the type of boss for others I wish I had in a company that I run! However, my trauma due to drowning in paperwork and IT changes led me to eliminate paperwork to the bare essentials when I started my business. In the beginning it was just me, prospects were limited, and money was small… minimal paperwork and my old-school system of keeping prospects in notebooks worked. But as the business grew, individuals were hired, Teams were formed, prospects grew, and the money got bigger my professional trauma of little to no paperwork and resistance to a CRM system was in the way of growth, efficiency, and my vision of being as seamless as Amazon!
Not to mention, great Leaders hire people who are experts at doing the things they hate… and getting out of the way. Guess what… my Team loves paperwork, organization, and CRM’s… it’s their thing and their expertise. I’ll never forget the day I realized my Professional Trauma was in the way and finally granted a CRM… you would have thought I was handing out million-dollar bills! The Team was so excited… smiling, thankful, and eager to go to work to push the business forward… what a WOW moment!
“Identifying It” means you’ve focused on self-reflection to know what your professional trigger is, how it may be in your way, your Teams, way, or in the organization’s way… allowing you to make your “Yes’s” powerful and you “No’s” meaningful!
Accept Request & Feeback!
Remember, as a Leader, your trauma is your trauma… not everyone else’s. Your boss yelled at you, so now you struggle to have tough conversations with your people… or… you’ve become the hammer, and everyone you see is a nail. You burnt-out of your job, so now you protect your people from too much work… or… overwork them because you had to in the past. You weren’t granted access to the “Higher-Ups Club”, so now everyone gets a BIG Title and promotion and your Org Chart is a mess with unqualified managers… or… you’ve unconsciously promoted cliques at work, and yours is the cool one. I could go on, but you get the point!
To get out of your own way and defeat “Professional Trauma”, Leaders must request AND listen to the request of their People and view all feedback (solicited or unsolicited) as a gift! I can’t tell you how many times I said no to a suggested CRM system; only making the task of implementing it later on much more tedious. Don’t let your Professional Trauma make you deaf and blind to potential game-changing ideas, upgrades, and evolution!
Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!
Our trauma is our trauma… the great thing is, as a Leader, you may not always have to DO your trauma! We can delegate to those who have that specific Professional Superpower. For example, I’m not very good and very much dislike organizing and planning… I’m great at having Vision and Big Ideas; it’s the small details that frustrate me. However, Nichole, The World’s Best Executive Assistant is thrives in that space, loves it, and therefore organizes my emails, gets me to wherever I need to be, and is the Master of the details that is the MAGIC of making my ideas, videos, pics, travel, marketing, and everything better!
Another example, I’m big on making professional connections worldwide and marketing, but I wasn’t big on Email Marketing… another Trauma, but a story for another time. Andrea, the World’s Best Automation Specialist, changed my mind and brought my email marketing to life… to such a degree… I recently decided it needed to be the number one way we market moving forward!
The point is, it’s not your job to do everything and totally cancel things that hurt you or made you professionally cringe in the past. Some Leaders and Employees love what you hate… Who are they? Where are they? What will be the benefit? How will you delegate, and that leads us to Key #4…
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Level of Involvement!
After you’ve identified your “Professional Trauma”, accepted feedback and request, and delegated tasks… the questions become:
In the examples I shared, it was important for me to ask what my Team needed from me after their initial excitement to institute the CRM… what information, tasks, how do they plan to use it, what’s the benefit, should I be using it, and how so?
In regards to email marketing… what do you need from me (templates, pics, videos, product information, flow of email, etc.) Just because it’s off your BIG Plate… it’s still your job to make your “Yes’s” powerful and your “No’s” meaningful… Be Mindful! Therefore, although I have very little to do with our email marketing… there are rules that no one will ever receive an email asking for something without us giving something.
Perhaps your trauma affected you having or not having tough conversations with your People. Moving forward, what’s going to be your level of involvement? Are you going to seek Leadership Coaching to beef up your skills, attend conferences, or hire Leaders under you who are a bit more comfortable with it. Whatever you decide, here are a few questions:
Follow-Up to Follow-Through!
The funny but true thing is… Yes, it’s your “Professional Trauma”, you identified it, accepted feedback and requests, delegated appropriately, asked your level of involvement, made your Yes’s powerful and your No’s meaningful, and without your follow-up there may be no follow-through… WHAT!!!
Keep in mind, doing Keys 1-4 does not beat your People’s “Busy”! Therefore, maintain your regularly scheduled 1-on-1 Meetings and without micro-managing request check-ins and updates regarding the progress of the project. Will these be weekly, monthly, sporadically? Whatever you decide, share the expectation with your People to ensure vision, priority management, and focus; as follow-through leads to results… and results become your reputation as a Leader… Be Mindful!
“Don’t let your Professional Trauma make you deaf and blind to potential game-changing ideas, upgrades, and evolution… Be Mindful!”
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? – Andre Young
Written by: Andre Young
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