As we start off the new year, it seemed like the right time to talk about the third pillar of trauma-informed leadership: Relationships and connection. As we talk about relationships and connection in the workplace, what does it mean? And what does it specifically mean for you as a trauma-informed leader? Over the next three weeks, we’re going to do a deep dive into this subject. This week, we’re going to start with an overview of why building relationships and connection is important as a trauma-informed leader.

Connection to others is encoded within our DNA as one of the most significant and essential forces that sustain us. It begins when we are in the womb, reliant on our mother’s body to take care of us until we are ready to come into the world. Once we are born, the importance of connections and relationships cannot be understated. There is a wealth of literature about the importance of our initial attachments with our primary caregivers and how they significantly impact on our ability to form relationships and connections with others as we get older. We will dive into this research more next week. More recently, Brene Brown’s research and works have highlighted the important role that connection plays in developing trust, healing shame, and giving us the courage to have difficult conversations with those around us. Simply stated, our physical and emotional health is reliant on our need to truly connect with others.

The Role of Relationships and Connection in Trauma

Unfortunately, one of the most egregious impacts of trauma is its capacity to sever those critical connections. While some traumatic events, such as the experience of natural disasters, can physically isolate us from our support system, some of the most complicated and challenging types of traumatic events occur within the context of our connections and relationships over time. This type of trauma is called complex trauma. One of the main components of complex trauma is that someone whose job it was to take care of us - such as a parent - is precisely the person who caused us harm. For example, a child sexually abused by a parent over several years, or exposed to domestic violence every night, are instances of complex trauma. Complex trauma is not merely defined by the type of trauma that the individual experiences, but by its profound impact across different domains, including how we build and sustain relationships with others.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic had several long-lasting impacts. One of the most significant of these was how it changed our connections with each other. Workers went from interacting with people in-person daily to keeping their cameras off on Zoom calls. For some, this was a welcome relief, for others, it increased their sense of isolation and disconnection from the world around them. The lack of opportunities for social interactions, such as parties, concerts, and other groups events, only added to our sense of isolation. As a result, much has been written about how we have “forgotten” how to interact and connect with each other.

As Bessel van der kolk indicated in his bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score, trauma occurs within the context of relationships. Therefore, the best way to heal trauma is within the context of relationships. Dr. van der Kolk was not specifically referring to therapy as the primary mechanism to provide that connection. Therapy can be helpful and is warranted in several situations. However, connection can occur in a wide variety of ways.  In fact, if our primary connection is with our therapist, I can guarantee that one of the goals of the therapeutic process is to develop positive and supportive relationships outside of the therapeutic alliance – such as within our social, intimate, and workplace relationships. It is for this reason that it is imperative to cultivate relationships and connections as a trauma-informed leader. This doesn’t mean that you need to be anyone’s therapist. I am not suggesting that you should know the intimate details of your team members’ personal and traumatic experiences. However, when we create environments at work characterized by true caring and support for one another, team members are more likely to feel that who they are as individuals matters. And when we feel like we matter, we’re more committed and engaged.

The Role of Relationship and Connection as a Trauma-Informed Leader

As a trauma-informed leader, what does it really look like to cultivate an environment characterized by relationships and connection? Despite our universal need for connection, the type of connection we each need is highly variable. Some of us might identify as extroverts and have several friends, craving time to socialize with others. Others of us might identify as introverts where we can only spend time with a handful of close friends. We all know some people that crave social stimulation and time with their peers, while others might only need to see other people once or twice a week to feel like they are connected. Despite all these variations in the types of connections that sustain each of us, the common factor is that it needs to be authentic and meaningful. While most of us don’t expect our leaders to fully know and understand all our individual intricacies, we do want to matter as human beings in the workplace, not just as someone who achieves a pre-determined level of productivity.

I remember when I was directly involved in leading teams, I was always so surprised at how two different team members could have vastly different expectations and need for connections and relationships. For years I worked at a non-profit organization where many of my staff members were social workers. Not to make any generalizations here, but social workers are often individuals who thrive on feeling connected to others. This makes sense since that is a core expectation of their job. These staff members wanted to have get togethers all the time and wondered why our remote staff (who worked locally) didn’t want to come to in-person get togethers (even if they didn’t know anyone at the event!). On the other hand, if you talk to my husband who works in Information Technology, he was always wondering why my organization had so many in-person get togethers and meetings. For him, it just didn’t make sense since he and his colleagues were more engaged and productive when they were full-time remote. Unlike my social worker colleagues, many of his teammates had no desire to attend in-person meetings and felt like they were a waste of time and emotional energy.

These different perspectives regarding remote and in-person work have come to light recently as many companies have started to require that their remote staff return to work in the office. Every day it seems there is a new headline about some major company requiring staff members who have been remote since the COVID-19 pandemic (and working quite productively!) to return to the office full-time. While there are many hypothesized reasons for this that are outside the scope of this blog, it still posits an interesting conundrum – how do we foster relationships and connections effectively that meet the diverse needs of team members while still promoting engagement and productivity? 

The Benefits of Cultivating Connection and Relationships as a Trauma-Informed Leader

Regardless of where you and your organization stand on in-person versus virtual teams, we know that teams that feel connected with one another and foster relationship building have several benefits. These include:

• Team members are more likely to feel like they are a part of something bigger and are better aligned with the Mission and Vision of the organization. They are more likely to link the organization to part of their identity and experience true joy and commitment for the work that they do.
• Team members are likely to feel more supported, especially after dealing with a tough situation. Whether it is dealing with a difficult client or customer, or stress over a higher leadership directive, we will all experience times when we feel overwhelmed. If we feel like we’re alone in the situation, it makes everything worse. However, if we feel connected to others and have someone to talk to, it can make even the worst days more tolerable.
• Organizations are more likely to have better employee engagement. There is a reason that some of the key employee engagement inventories have questions like, “I have a best friend at work.” While many people I know think that this is a silly question, I understand why it is a key indicator. We all want to feel like someone is in the trenches with us. Some of my very best friends in the world are people who I worked with in a stressful job where we could come together and commiserate over all the crazy things that our leader did that day.
• Team members are less likely to leave the organization. We like to stay in places where we feel connected to others. It’s plain and simple. When things get bad and we want to leave, the one thing that keeps us engaged might be having people around us who care about us as people.
• Organizations can manage concerns regarding burnout and secondary traumatic stress more quickly. When team members feel connected to each other, they are more likely to share when they are stressed before that stress turns into burnout. Since it can be hard to come back once you’ve entered burnout, this is critical.

Now that we have a sense of why it’s important to facilitate relationships and connections as a trauma-informed leader, we can dive a little bit deeper. Next week, we’ll talk about your role in building relationships and connection as a leader. After that, I’ll share some specific ways you can cultivate relationships and connections with your team.