The Hidden Factor in Leadership: How Trauma Impacts Your Team

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(01:03): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kelly Campbell. Kelly speaks and writes about trauma, leadership and consciousness, something she calls the new TLC. She’s also the author of Heal to Lead, revolutionizing Leadership Through Trauma Healing. Kelly is a trauma-informed leadership coach to emerging and established leaders who know they’re meant for more. So Kelly, welcome to the show.

Kelly Campbell (01:33): Hey John. Thank you so much for having me.

John Jantsch (01:35): Alright, so we’re going to talk a lot about trauma, pretty weighty topic perhaps, but let’s maybe start with how do you define trauma?

Kelly Campbell (01:44): Yeah, that’s a great place to start because I think that there’s a lot of misconception around that. A lot of people have this idea that it has to be something that’s really big and really impactful, and that’s not actually true. So trauma, the way that, or the definition that I’ve come across that I love the most is really just unintegrated energy and information. So I’ll say that a different way just for everyone to wrap their heads around When we have situations or experiences where our nervous system doesn’t have the ability to cope with them, that becomes trauma and that’s how trauma is stored in our body. So it’s really just an overwhelm of the nervous system, and so when I say it’s unintegrated information, the nervous system’s inability to integrate what it’s being given or what it’s on the receiving end of, that’s where if that remains unresolved or unprocessed, that’s where we get into tricky territory and where it becomes problematic because then it’s kind of floating around and coming back and really causing some maladaptive behaviors. But we’ll get into all of that as we continue to talk.

John Jantsch (02:52): It sounds like when you talk about energy that is lucid almost sounds like the electrical cord that’s frayed in some places and it’s like you never know what kind of damage it’s going to cause. Right?

Kelly Campbell (03:04): That’s a great analogy. That really is a great analogy when a cord that’s electrified gets cut and it almost has a mind of its own, right? Yeah. Something else driving you. And so that’s why sometimes you might have a reaction or a response that feels to the other person very just not in line with what the reaction should be or what they’re expecting, and sometimes it’s because of that loose wire that you’re talking about.

John Jantsch (03:29): I don’t want to be a complete downer, but I’m getting ready to be the statistics on some horrible things that happen to people that cause trauma are pretty sad. But as a whole, especially since you’ve definitely broadened the definition of trauma, how many in 10 people that are in, especially as you apply to leadership, leadership roles, I mean, is this really impact how big a deal is this, I guess is what I was saying?

Kelly Campbell (03:54): Yeah, 10 out of 10.

John Jantsch (03:56): Yeah,

Kelly Campbell (03:56): It’s 10 out of 10 because here’s the deal, none of us have had a perfect childhood, and this isn’t about blaming your caregivers or your parents. This is about really understanding how trauma impacts all of us, and that could be what some people call Big T trauma, those big impactful, more obvious things. Maybe being in a household where your parents were getting divorced or maybe you grew up in a war torn country where safety, physical safety was a big deal and not available to you. So things that have shaped your worldview that were very impactful, that’s what we typically call big T trauma. We think about those things along the lines of the ACEs study, the CDC and Kaiser Permanente study from the late 1990s, and it kind of gave us a framework of 10 to 12 things, two of which I just mentioned, but that’s not where it stops.

(04:51): So if it stopped there, then maybe we could say, all right, well that might’ve impacted two thirds of people. If we broaden that a little bit and understand the reality of the situation. My nervous system and your nervous system are two different nervous systems. So what might be impactful to you might not be to me and vice versa. So when we’re younger and we have what we might call small t traumas, things where or experiences where we’re made to feel embarrassed or shame or abandoned or betrayed or humiliated, all of these other, I would call them maybe like death by a thousand paper cuts, right on their own, they might be impactful, but many times the small T traumas are continuous. And so that’s where it really starts to erode our sense of self and really becomes the foundation for how we see ourselves in the world.

John Jantsch (05:42): Well, I’ve always felt that leadership, good and bad is really an act of or lack of self-awareness. And there’s a whole lot of people that I suspect listen to this. I threw myself in this category, frankly, say, nothing really bad happened to me. I mean, I can’t identify really anything, and I was never hungry. I was never bullied, those kinds of things. So somebody who maybe is thinking that, how do you uncover the fact that you’ve said every single one of us has this at some level?

Kelly Campbell (06:14): Yeah. Well, you’ve touched upon it a little bit already. You are automatically thinking, I never went hungry. I was never neglected. I never maybe had physical abuse. Those are only big T traumas. So you’re not thinking about all of the other times when

John Jantsch (06:29): I did have a teacher that told me I would never amount to anything one time, I do remember that one. And

Kelly Campbell (06:33): The fact that you can recall that lets me know that actually did impact you. And there might’ve been other things along those lines where even if they were just verbal, we tend to downplay, oh, well, it was just verbal or get over it kid, or that made you tougher or you had to overcome something. This whole resilience culture, those things over time really do impact. And so what you touched upon before about self-awareness, if you’re self-aware enough to understand that when you get feedback, for example as a leader and all of a sudden you feel angry, you feel defensive, you want to be right, you want to challenge it. That might indicate that there might be something in your past where that a similar situation had occurred and maybe you feel like you’re being, I don’t know, accused of something that isn’t true. So I would kind of maybe try to trace that back. If it’s me, I’m going to try to trace that back a local functional detective, but that’s not really what matters. What matters more is, are the ways in which you’re showing up as a leader creating psychological safety for other people? Are you showing up in ways where you’re inviting curiosity and innovation and collaboration with your teams? And if you’re reactive versus responsive to different things, then you’re not creating those environments. So that self-awareness piece is really important.

John Jantsch (08:00): So how have you seen some of the things we’re talking about show up in maybe good ways and bad ways for people that are either aspire to be leaders or in some cases thrust into leadership roles?

Kelly Campbell (08:12): Yeah, yeah. I mean, emerging and established leaders we’re all human, so it’s just one has a little bit more experience than the other. Some of the ways I see this sort of manifest, and I talk about in the book, I talk about this bifurcation between, or not even bifurcation. It’s really a spectrum between people, pleasing leaders and people controlling leaders. And you and I can be each of these things or pieces of these things on any given day. So people pleasing might look like taking on a lot on your plate, maybe because you’re taking so much on and you’re trying to make sure that everyone else has a great experience, making sure everyone’s happy on your team, you’re going to take on so much that some things are inevitably going to fall, and so you become a little unreliable. You might also be pleasing to other people with a little bit of an underlying motivation.

(09:09): Again, this is subconscious. You’re not doing this consciously, but you want the attention or praise or gratitude from your employees. And so if you don’t get that, if you’re pleasing and trying to make their lives happier and you don’t get that respect or even reciprocation, you might start to get resentful, then you might become a little passive aggressive. There’s all of these really interesting and very nuanced ways. Sometimes they’re not as visible as others. So that’s more on the people pleasing end, on the people controlling end of the spectrum. It’s a lot more obvious and it’s a lot more predictable. So these are your authoritative, get over it. We don’t have time for those emotions in the workplace. Taking credit for other people’s work, making sure that some people don’t get promoted because they maybe are too much of a threat to your authority or your power. Speaking down to other people, making sure that you keep that balance of power at all times. Again, sometimes these things can be conscious, but most times they’re not. So lots and lots of ways that shows up. And then of course that trickles down into the organization, whatever kind of organization you run.

John Jantsch (10:25): Would you say that these trait traits, behaviors that you’re describing, I mean aren’t unique to the workplace? I mean, they show up at the little league manager and they show up at church. I mean, it’s kind of just people being who they are, conscious or unconscious. Would you say that’s true?

Kelly Campbell (10:43): A hundred percent. And that’s a great point is that this isn’t just relegated to a boardroom or something like that. This really is the little league coach who’s power hungry and yelling at the kids. We’ve all seen these things and many times we have been these things or are these things. So it’s easy to see it in other people. It’s a little harder to recognize it in yourself.

John Jantsch (11:10): So far, at least we’ve probably been talking about at the personal level. Let’s talk a little bit at the organizational level. People bring you into organizations to maybe work with folks that maybe they’ve identified something that needs to be worked on, or maybe it’s just, Hey, we know we’ll all be better people with this work. But organizationally, what have you seen have been some of the benefits of people really saying, Hey, our leaders, they don’t just need to know how to run good meetings. They also have some of the, do we still call ’em soft skills that show up or don’t show up? What have you seen organizationally?

Kelly Campbell (11:49): Yeah, so leaders who, in general, leaders who are more self-aware, who are actively working on their own healing, their own trauma, they do create more supportive environments. Some people say psychologically safe. I try to lean away from terms safe spaces because my personal belief is that I cannot create a safe space for another person. I can create a supportive growth environment for my team or my employees. They are the ones who say whether they feel safe in that environment or not. So I’ll just say that. But creating those or those supportive environments really comes with that and that work that you’re doing on yourself. Therefore, in the organization, those employees are going to feel more like they can bring their full selves. They can maybe voice opinions, voice risks, voice threats, voice feedback without repercussion. So now you have more trust created inside of the environment.

(12:49): When you have more trust created, you’ve got more collaboration, more innovation. That all trickles down to the bottom line if you run a for-profit organization. So we see this in so many different ways. It could be everything from employee retention and employee engagement to innovative new ideas kind of think tank mentality where again, it’s all rooted in trust. And so if I feel like I can really be myself and I can voice the things in a very conscious way that I think are going to improve the team, the work, whatever the things are that we do here, then the whole organization just feels different. And when you say soft skills, and I talk about feeling these things have been historically pushed away for such a long time because we came from the industrial revolution where everything was productivity focused factory. If somebody got sick or couldn’t do a job, then we just remove them. But that’s very expensive today, and it’s also just not the right way to do business. I think part of that also comes from this different level of consciousness that we’re bringing to business. That business in general is not there solely to make money. We’re here to develop relationships, to develop our people, to see the sustainability of an organization over time. And that shortsighted, very, that older, more antiquated mindset didn’t think that way. It was like short term decisions get to the bottom of it.

John Jantsch (14:31): People were assets,

Kelly Campbell (14:33): People were assets or yeah, you could say it that way. You could say it that way. But yeah, I mean there’s a million benefits of this work.

John Jantsch (14:42): So as fortunately, companies have become much more intentional about diversity and inclusion, has that presented challenges for leaders who that’s a new environment for them?

Kelly Campbell (14:58): Sure, sure. Of course. I mean, I think I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about that for people who have benefited from the systems that we have been in for a very long time, hundreds of years. It’s a new environment. And especially some of the leaders that I work with that are cisgender, heterosexual male, it is a new environment for them. And so again, they have to encounter their own biases, their own prejudices. That’s part of the healing work. That’s part, there’s so many different aspects of trauma and so many different aspects of how we become who we are as leaders, and we’re just gathering lots and lots of information from the time that we were born up until the time of right now when we’re in our leadership role. So that is something that can be challenging for them. And also, again, they have to be willing and courageous to encounter that and to engage with it if they’re going to change

John Jantsch (16:00): And do cisgender white 60-year-old male. Right. So I think you were talking about me in some regards. Do you find that some of it’s just lack of exposure, lack of experience, lack of knowledge? Certainly an openness, but in some cases just I’ve never, it’s almost like I don’t know how to respond or react or even operate in this environment. Yeah,

Kelly Campbell (16:22): I think two things come to mind mean on the extreme level, it’s hard to hate up close. So the more that you have exposure and the more that you feel connected to and start to understand and empathize with other people who are different from you, you’re going to start to see them as human and not this other. And so I think that’s just part of it to your exposure question. For sure, for sure. There are a lot of people, leaders who maybe have employees who have different pronouns than they’re used to. If I’m encountering people like that where it’s like, oh, I just want to be honest. These pronouns, they’re hard for me. It’s like, okay, well then all you’re lacking is practice, right? Because you use they and them and their all the time in your language. So let’s talk about that. Let’s practice that. My pronouns are they, she. So let’s talk about that.

John Jantsch (17:17): And I think that’s a helpful dialogue, no question. Especially

Kelly Campbell (17:20): When there’s no judgment coming from either party, right?

John Jantsch (17:25): Yeah, that’s one of my favorite Mr. Rogers quotes. It’s hard not to someone once you know their story.

Kelly Campbell (17:30): That’s

John Jantsch (17:30): It.

Kelly Campbell (17:32): I just got chills. I love Mr. Rogers did a lot of good for us.

John Jantsch (17:35): Who does? So tell me how you work with somebody. It’s just typically somebody, probably, there are a variety of ways, but what’s a typical engagement that somebody would say we need to bring Kelly in?

Kelly Campbell (17:46): So I mean, it really depends. There could be some among a leadership team, and in some cases I’m working with the entire leadership team. In those situations, I’m coaching each of the leadership team members individually, and we’re also doing group sessions, depending upon where they are. The group sessions sometimes can be in person, and I’m pretty close to New York City. So if that is available, then we will do that for part of the in-person group team sessions. But it’s really about, in the one-on-one sessions, it feels more like therapy than anything else because we’re talking about the business, but we’re talking about how does the leader show up in ways that they aren’t necessarily proud of or that they would like to change? Or if they’re complaining about someone, we flip that around and we say, okay, well, how is that situation mirroring some way in which you want to be different? Or why is that the behavior of this employee or this other leadership team member? Why is that actually rubbing on you? What is it about them that you actually see in yourself? And they’re like, and think about that. And so in order to have those kinds of conversations, again, you just need to be willing and courageous.

John Jantsch (19:04): It’s interesting, you referred to it as therapy, and I imagine in a lot of ways it is for people because we don’t often get the opportunity to actually look at that, to have somebody question us on, well, have you thought about why that exists? I mean because just a bundle of reactions half the time. And so the idea that somebody’s asking us to think about how something occurred and how it could be different, I’m sure you get two types. I’m sure you get some resistance to that. And I’m sure you also get people that are like, this is the first time I’ve been able to explore this.

Kelly Campbell (19:37): I think more often it’s the latter, only because by the time someone is seeking out coaching, and particularly the kind of coaching that I do enough to say, I think the problem might be me. And I really think that in order to work through this conflict or help the organization as a whole, we need to change. Or maybe they’re in a period of transformation with the company or the organization. They’re enough to say, yeah, I think part of the stumbling block or part of what needs to actually evolve here is me. And that’s the interesting thing about coaching is I’m not doing anything. This is not right.

John Jantsch (20:19): I’m not fixing, you’re not prescribing,

Kelly Campbell (20:21): Definitely not prescribing. That’s psychiatry, but not fixing. I’m holding these clients as whole and complete and perfect as exactly who they are. What I’m doing is empowering them to figure out what they want to change and how they want to get there, what that looks like for them. And I’m really just holding that space and asking them very poignant questions to try to get them to think differently without an agenda. So sometimes a leader might come to me and say, I don’t know which way I want to go. Do I want to stay in this organization, or do I want to actually exit? And I say from the beginning, I don’t have an agenda here. Whichever way you go, that’s what I’m supporting. And we navigate that together and sometimes we’re together anywhere from six months to 18 months. Wow.

John Jantsch (21:10): Well, Kelly, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there someplace you would invite people to connect with you and obviously find out more about Heal to Lead?

Kelly Campbell (21:18): I mean, everything about my work and the book is all on my website. Obviously with my background in marketing, I wanted to make that easy. So website is just klcampbell.com.

John Jantsch (21:28): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.