Over the past few months, my colleagues Brian Arao, Dawn Lee, and I have been coaching senior leaders around equity leadership through our Evolve program. We are noticing a trend emerging: equity leadership traumas. These equity leadership traumas are deeply disturbing events related to equity leadership that continue to live on for the individuals beyond the actual events. They can lead to fear, self-doubt, second-guessing, missteps, overthinking, silence, and inaction. Helping these leaders heal from these equity leadership traumas can help them release fear, gain courage, and take action.
Equity Leadership Traumas
Equity leadership traumas can take many forms. It might include a mistake where a leader’s intent did not align with the impact of their decision. It might include disingenuous criticism from nefarious actors looking for notoriety leading to public condemnation and even threats of violence. As a result of these equity leadership traumas, the leader can second guess themselves, hesitate to act, or avoid leading around issues of equity out of fear of doing harm, experiencing oppression, facing criticism, being canceled, or experiencing violence against themselves or their families.
Healing from Equity Leadership Traumas
Processing with a trusted partner, like a coach if you are able, can help understand the incident, put it in perspective, learn from it, and even heal from it. Although putting the incident behind you might seem tempting, that’s not how healing works. We have to be able to work through the incident and process so that it is an integrated part of our wholeness. Here are three key steps in healing that we have been working with through Evolve.
- Recognize. Name the trauma, acknowledge its ongoing impact on you, and identify the thoughts and feelings it brings up in you. This naming, exploring, and recognizing can help you engage with mindfulness and awareness.
- Reconcile. Just because it was an awful experience doesn’t mean there isn’t important learning to take away. Processing and meaning-making can help us harvest the learning we want to carry forward from the experience. Once we have learned and can apply that learning, it can be easier to release the rest of the experience that no longer serves us or gets in our way. We might even be able to befriend the experience. This is the difference between putting the experience behind you and working through it.
- Revisit. You can re-engage with the experience with perspective, learning, processing, tools, and distance. How would you navigate the same experience now with your new capacities? We can be e reparative and restorative with the same experience by engaging as a case study, re-rewriting a response, or even imagining how we would be in the moment now. Realizing that you can apply what you’ve learned and engage differently, can help you keep perspective and integrate the experience so that it is a part of your past and not dictating your present.
Being good company on the journey for these leaders as they recognize, reconcile, and revisit has been transformative for them and us. We’re putting a more explicit focus on this in our Evolve program, which continues to, well, evolve.
Learn More About Evolve
Evolve is for senior leaders from higher education, government, non-profit, and corporate sectors. So, if you know of senior leaders who are deeply committed to equity and are eager to release fear, gain courage, and take action – let’s connect! On the Evolve site you can learn more or schedule a free 15-minute 1:1 conversation about Evolve with Brian, Dawn, or Keith.
