EVOLVE. THE PATH TO TRAUMA-INFORMED LEADERSHIP.
A new book for brave leaders who know that productivity is not the secret to success. People are. Understanding, caring for and creating safe spaces for people to thrive as their full selves.
This is a new era of leadership.
There are really only two ways to lead:
-
Tell people how to do things better
-
Inspire people to figure out their own ways of doing things better
Most people tend to fail on the second one. Which is a shame because there’s really only one way to lead effectively: Inspire people to figure out their own ways of doing things better
Leadership itself, then, is kind of broken.
Through this book, I’m not trying to fix leadership or tell you how to be a better leader, I’m going to walk alongside you as we encourage it to evolve. You are only here because you are interested in leading in a better way.
I believe that way is by understanding the nuances and complexities of human nature. Which means understanding trauma. And, those are the ideas, concepts and methods we’re going to explore together in this book.
Leadership isn’t broken because we’re bad at it.
Leadership is broken because it hasn’t evolved much in all of our understanding about what it actually means to be a leader.
Leadership is broken because we have misunderstood what it really means to be a true leader. We have misunderstood the common traits of great leaders.
In all of our centuries of studies about leadership, we have focussed so heavily on how great leaders throughout history have impacted others. It seems like that’s the logical thing to do.
But, actually, great leadership is very rarely first about leading others, and more so about learning how to lead ourselves, to evolve who we are, to understand and accept all parts of ourselves so that we can unbecome everything that we were never meant to be and become more of everything we are.
If we are successful in doing this, we shine the light for everyone around us to do the same.
If the pandemic has taught us all anything, it’s that we are all dispensable.
Even the most effective leaders. Even in the industries that thrive.
The only way to make yourself indispensable and actually drive true, lasting change is by committing to being the person in the room who cares. The person who cares to understand each individual in the team. The person who asks the most questions. The person who is brave enough to have the hard conversations. The person who leads with their people first.
Effective leaders are human-first leaders. Successful leaders know how to take care of themselves AND their teams.
Inspirational leaders prove that it’s OK to be your full self, and make it safe for everyone around them to do the same.
Effective leadership is trauma-informed leadership.
If the world was full of Evolved, trauma-informed leaders…
everyone would have the permission they need to be who they are, own who they are, love who they are, and, therefore, become the greatest versions of themselves.
And, wouldn’t that be a great world to live in?
Wouldn’t that make our organizations more efficient?
Our cultures less toxic? Our leaders less biased?
Trauma-informed leadership is the future of leadership, and this book is, in part, the personal journey I went through; grief, motherhood, leadership, entrepreneurship and marriage, that brought me to my own understanding of trauma, but mostly it is an exploration of what that word even means and how we can better understand it, to better understand our teams and adopt frameworks for leading people in a way that embraces our whole selves and the whole humans in front of us.
I hope you’ll join me.
