Business and... Trauma?
Can you be a strong business leader AND be trauma-informed?
Learn from Gap Relief’s Director of Development and Integration, Mike Turner that yes! It’s totally possible.
Legend has it that when John F. Kennedy was President and taking a tour of the Kennedy Space Station, he stopped to ask a janitor “What do you do here?” The janitor replied “Mr. President, I’m sending a man to the moon.”
Gap Relief’s Director of Development and Integration, Mike Turner, relates to this quote quite a bit. Although he is not sending a man to the moon, he finds himself in a similar position of being a minority in Gap Relief. Where most of the Gap Relief team is comprised of trauma therapists and coaches, he is one of the few who is not trained in trauma care. His strike-zone is in holding the business pieces of Gap Relief’s mission while maintaining the integrity of a trauma-informed organizational culture.
We recognize that it is hard to hold a trauma-informed culture alongside business practices, which is why Mike’s role in Gap Relief is so important and also so difficult.
A comical way this plays out is in our staff meetings where Mike is tasked with holding a group of trauma practitioners on-task and maintaining an agenda. The image of herding kittens comes to mind.
A more serious example is when a team member’s story and experience bumps up against best practices and he has to hold, prioritize, and walk out both at the same time.
In this week’s video, Mike is here to tell us that regardless of difficulty or concerns for efficiency or “the bottom line,” it is possible to hold both with integrity.
Not only is it possible, but it is an integral part of Gap Relief’s culture. Our mission is to help the helpers build resilient communities, and with few exceptions, these helpers are parts of organizations. What better way to show the helpers we serve that if they truly want to resiliently stand in our society’s gaps without going down themselves, their organizations must be able to hold an organizational structure that allows its team members’ stories, experiences, and the impact of pain, stress, and trauma to matter in the way they do their work.
Gap Relief has your back here. We have years of experience coming alongside leaders as they integrate a trauma-informed culture into their organization. If you’re an organizational leader who is interested in better understanding what it means to infuse trauma-informed (or just more human-centric) culture into your workplace, we’d love to talk to you about this more!
