Three Practical Tips for Trauma-Informed Coaching

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in March 2021, “When there is mass trauma, it affects communities for many years to come.”? While coaching isn’t a “treatment” for trauma, in the Emotional Recession we’re facing now, chances are, your clients, colleagues, and you are carrying more trauma than 4 years ago.

When I presented with Dr. Tedros to the WHO’s employees about emotional intelligence and wellbeing, one clear key takeaway was to counteract the heightened distress, we need to strengthen emotional skills. According to the new State of the Heart research, it’s even more urgent today. ?The pandemic era excised extraordinary demands on our workplaces, communities and classrooms – and the bill is coming due.

What do we do as coaches?

Confronting the Emotional Recession

The 2024 State of the Heart Report identifies that after four straight years of declining emotional intelligence scores, and reductions on every EQ competency, we’ve entered a global Emotional Recession. As I explained on LinkedIn , it’s easy to understand “Emotional Recession” by looking at the way economists define a financial recession: A prolonged contraction of economic output. Typical signs are reduced GDP, increased unemployment, and rising costs.

In parallel, the Emotional Recession means we’re facing a prolonged reduction in input to the economy – ie, people are less able to be productive. Signals include reduced emotional capacity, increased distress, and rising burnout levels.?

Reduced capacity: All emotional intelligence competencies have declined in the last 4 years, many over 10%.

Increased distress: Globally, wellbeing dropped by over 5% in the last 4 years.

Rising burnout: 65% of workplace sectors face higher burnout vs 4 years ago.

What Emotional Recession Means As a Coach

Statistically, the average client you talk to today will be experiencing the effects of emotional recession – and so will you. Consider this graph and excerpt below from the State of the Heart report :

Three of the largest declines all have to do with creating the energy to move forward. In a time of deep challenge, Exercise Optimism is the skill they need to see new options, but right now they feel helpless. Engage Intrinsic Motivation provides an inner drive to take action, but now they feel stuck. Pursue Noble Goals gives someone a sense of purpose, a vision of a better future – but right now they feel cut off from that deeper meaning.” -State of the Heart 2024 (6sec.org/soh )?

Now think about coaching where you’re frequently working with clients to explore new options (which requires Exercise Optimism), to step forward (which requires Engage Intrinsic Motivation), and to connect their choices with a larger sense of purpose (which requires Pursue Noble Goals). So our core work as coaches is going to be harder in 2024 vs 2019.?

What is “Trauma Informed” Coaching?

Again, in this context, we’re talking about professional coaching as a non-clinical intervention, part of community-based support within a continuum of care . From that perspective, we can learn from clinicians and use that to inform how we can better support people as they work with clinicians on “Capital T Trauma,” or for everyone grappling in their daily lives with “lower-case t trauma.”?

There are many ways people respond to trauma. Sometimes they become less emotional, but others become more volatile. Sometimes they become more withdrawn and risk-adverse, but others become more risk-prone. This complexity is another reason that as coaches, we are not in a position to diagnose. We can, however, prepare ourselves to be better coaches by learning more about the psychology of trauma. More on this at the end of the full newsletter here .

Three Trauma Informed Approaches for Better Coaching in the Emotional Recession

With the background on trauma in mind, and recognizing the depth of the current Emotional Recession… how can you be more effective as a coach using trauma-informed strategies? Three approaches:

For more details about each of these three strategies, and practical tips on how to use them in coaching, please visit the extended version of this newsletter .

Remember

Large-scale challenges create a form of trauma. For some, it's full-on psychological trauma that needs clinical care. For many, it's "lower-case t trauma" that can be addressed with community-based care such as coaching.

The State of the Heart research shows we're in emotional recession. The changes are deeply problematic, perhaps this is a trauma response.

We can, and need to, grow our emotional intelligence skills to become more effective as coaches, managers, parents, teachers etc as we support folks in these challenges. If you need tools and support for this, Six Seconds is here to help.