Integritus Prime

This past week I gave a talk at an excellent networking event in Sacramento hosted by the wonderful Carmen Marsh, CEO of Inteligenca.

After having fun conversations with some of my peers about everything from coaching to speaking to real estate strategies (I’m going to give a talk to a group of realtors on behavioral messaging in the coming weeks – stay tuned), I gave a short interactive talk about a few characteristics of being an authentic leader. Some of these were to be expected, like confidence or self-care. In this post I’ll focus on one that raised a few eyebrows: transforming trauma into empowerment.

My forthcoming book is entitled From Abused to Empowered: Recognizing and Releasing Behavior Patterns that come from Trauma. It contains testimonies from me and others, detailing the types of trauma experienced and the coping mechanisms involved. In my talk, I gave some reasons that trauma can hold us back from being a powerful and authentic leader that I’ll expand on here.

First of all, being authentic is about being yourself. Trauma creates blocks and maladaptive coping mechanisms that disrupt our authenticity by shaping and conditioning our behavior. In particular, trauma makes us:

1. STUCK: Trauma keeps you trapped in a loop of old habits and thought patterns – what you perceive, how you interpret it, and what you say and do remain a function of your trauma. For example, if you were emotionally manipulated in the past, you might attract manipulators at work, and end up struggling to please them over and over in a pattern that leaves you exhausted and never feeling good enough.
2. REACTIVE: Trauma appears as triggers in our bodies and minds. When someone says or does something that triggers us, we react without thinking. This can often lead to unpleasant situations. For instance if you have a trigger around being laughed at because you were humiliated in high school, then you may react with anger at a colleague who has innocently made fun of you at a happy hour outing.
3. INAUTHENTIC: When you react or approach your tasks from a place of trauma or its triggers, you’re not acting from your true and authentic self. Trauma is directing your behavior; that’s not you, that’s your past. It’s a response that keeps repeating. For example, if you habitually clean your desk painstakingly because you had an experience that made you feel dirty – that behavior is a compulsive reaction and has nothing to do with wanting a meticulously clean desk…you HAVE to have it because otherwise you’re subconsciously reminded of your trauma, so you clean to avoid that dirty feeling.

Yes, this is heavy stuff. And, if you want to go deeper, stay tuned for the book. For now, what you could do instead: have compassion for yourself, do the deep inner work it takes to release your trauma with a therapist or coach, and start to live from a place of authenticity. Then, you will be truly present to challenges AND good times at work, and respond to each person you interact with from a place of reason, not past emotion. You will be more authentic as a leader.

For the examples I gave you, a response free from trauma might be

1. Confront the manipulator and set healthy boundaries for getting work done,
2. Laugh at yourself periodically if you discern the joke to be benign and not insulting or derogatory, and
3. Go to the root of the experience that created the obsession with cleanliness, to release it so you can be clean, but not compulsively.

If you think some of your behavior as a leader comes from trauma, how might you transform it into an empowered, authentic approach, or how have you already achieved freedom? Send me a message – I’d love to learn from you!