Over the last several weeks, we have been doing a deep dive into the “Four Pillars of Trauma-Informed Leadership.” Over the next three weeks, we’re going to focus on the fourth and final pillar – Autonomy. As a leader, one of the profound tensions that we experience every day is trying to balance between supporting our staff to do their own work and micro-managing their work.  This tension can reflect the interplay between a leader’s own style, and preferences for the type of work that needs to be done, with an employee’s own sense of agency in the job.  Undoubtedly, we’ve all led team members who represent either of the far ends of the continuum.  On the one hand, you might have team members who are highly autonomous and like to work on their own. On the other hand, you might have other team members who are less autonomous and like to work closely with you as their leader to make sure that they are doing the job correctly. Neither is better or worse than the other as there are pros and cons to each type of work style. Those team members who are highly autonomous might be self-starters and “impact players” who are highly motivated to do an excellent job and your job as a leader is to get out of their way.  On the other hand, there are highly autonomous employees who don’t ask questions when they need to and don’t work well with others. Those team members who are less autonomous might ask great questions and make sure that the team stays on track, while others might ask questions every 5 minutes and are hesitant to take any initiative in their roles.

This translates into leadership as well. I have seen leaders who stress out their highly productive employees through their micro-managing styles, directing every action they take and disempowering any sort of individual initiative.  I’ve also seen leaders who are so removed from the day-to-day functioning of their team members that staff are largely functioning out in the middle of the ocean without a compass to guide their way.  As with most things, a trauma-informed leader operates in the space between these two extremes.

The Role of Lack of Autonomy in Trauma

Autonomy refers to an individual’s ability and right to make decisions and have voice, choice, and control over their own lives. A hallmark of a traumatic event is that an individual or group’s autonomy has been taken by them through physical or emotional coercion. As I write this blog, enormous fires have erupted in the Los Angeles County area, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes. These individuals who have been impacted have lost a sense of autonomy about their home and belongings, where they get to stay, and what happens moving forward.

On a more individual level, a 15-year-old didn’t have any control over whether their father came home drunk every night and became violent with their mother.  They likely adopted coping mechanisms designed to help them manage the scary situation to the best of their ability.  For example, they may have tried to take active control of the situation by making themselves the focus of the violent acts instead of their mother.  On the other hand, they may have become terrified that if they did the wrong thing, they would be grave danger, so they froze. In situations that seem out of control, we are all trying to find opportunities to regain our autonomy, our sense of agency, even in the most challenging circumstances.

After the trauma is over, that same individual often spends an inordinate amount of their energy trying to regain control over all the details of their lives, whether it’s what they wear, where they walk, where they sleep, who they’re with, the list goes on. As a former therapist who provided direct services to individuals who have experienced trauma, this idea of autonomy was crucial in our work, and was accomplished by giving the client voice, choice, and control in micro moments. While the 15-year-old who witnessed domestic violence may not have been able to control the abuse and may not even have control over whether they were coming into therapy, as a therapist, I could give them control in small moments.  This may have looked like giving them a selection of activities to engage in and allowing them to choose what to do on any given day.  It might have been as small as letting them choose which pencil to use when they completed their intake assessment forms.

Providing Autonomy within an Organizational Setting

As these children become adults and join the workforce, they are likely to bring their coping mechanisms into how they respond to their co-workers and leaders and engage in their work. For example, the 15-year-old who witnessed domestic violence during their childhood might grow into an adult who tries to take active control over every situation by directing their peers and micro-managing others. Alternatively, they might freeze when asked to complete a task, terrified that they will do it incorrectly. These employees might need explicit instructions before they feel safe to take any action.    

In truth, whether we’ve experienced capital “T” or little “t” trauma, we each sit on different places on the continuum in our comfort with autonomy. Some of us crave autonomy and struggle with working in confined corporate environments. Others might become uncomfortable with the idea of being autonomous and just want our own leaders to tell us exactly what to do.

For others of us, we may have grown up without any boundaries, free to roam without any clear expectations or consequences for our behavior. You may have experienced a high degree of autonomy but also felt untethered and disconnected from those around you. If you grew up with this type of parenting, you may crave a high degree of autonomy in all your pursuits and be quite uncomfortable with having limits or rules placed upon your behavior. Or on the other hand, you might crave specific and concrete directions because not having any boundaries makes you feel unsafe.

As leaders, finding an appropriate balance of autonomy in the organizational setting can be challenging. Leaders are responsible for meeting business needs and often must make decisions that impact staff but are unpopular.  Staff members are often unable to make decisions that impact on them directly, such as their base salary, the core functions of their job, and what happens when the organization has a financial crisis that could lead to layoffs.  However, it is still possible to identify ways to increase autonomy, in both the individual and team settings. Those will be discussed in greater length in the coming weeks.

The Impact of COVID-19 on our Collective Autonomy

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, suddenly there were several events that were completely outside of our control as human beings.  Some of us were sent home from work but wanted to be in the office, while others wanted to be at home but were still required to go into the office.  Our favorite restaurants and parks were shut down. Mask mandates were enforced.  It is not a surprise to me that there were so many different feelings about all the mandates that were in place, as individuals felt that their sense of autonomy was stripped of them.  For an individual with a trauma history, these restrictions could very well have mimicked their own experiences of powerlessness in the past.  If you were a leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, you were likely required by your organization to implement policies that you may not have agreed with, or alternatively, that your staff did not agree with.  These changes that resulted from the pandemic, in combination with a generational shift that has occurred in which our Millennial and Gen Z staff are insisting on greater voice, agency, and autonomy in their workplaces, have fundamentally changed how we do business.

The Benefits of Championing Autonomy

As leaders, it is our job to walk the line between providing a clear and consistent direction for our team members while also providing them with some autonomy with how they fulfill their roles. There are several ways in which autonomy helps improve employee engagement on our teams. These include:

• Control - Team members feel a sense of control over their own successes, and their own challenges. When they have this sense of control, they are more likely to be invested in both their successes and challenges and actively seek out opportunities for improvement.
• Creativity – Each of us brings our own set of unique skills to our work environments – whether it is in how we complete a specific task or how we define our roles more broadly. When we champion autonomy, we give team members the opportunities to bring those skills into their roles, creating more room for creativity in how the work gets done while also boosting engagement. This can contribute to the overall success of the organization.
• Innovation – When team members bring in their unique skills and have greater engagement in the overall process, they are more likely to be creative in their work. When we have a team full of individuals who feel like their unique skills are accepted and celebrated, they are more likely to generate bigger innovations that can support the organization more broadly.
• Adaptability – When team members feel like they have control, agency, and autonomy over their work, they are more likely to be adaptable and engaged and adjust to the changing requirements of the organization.

Creating cultures that effectively balance team members’ autonomy with clear, consistent expectations can be tricky. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to dive deeper into the idea of autonomy. Next week, we’ll discuss how to understand the role of autonomy in your own personal leadership style. The final week of the blog focused on autonomy, we’ll discuss ways to successfully navigate the balance of autonomy and clear direction with your team members.