Trauma to Triumph: A Roadmap for Leading Through Disruption (and Thriving on the Other Side)

By Mark Goulston and Diana Hendel

When you turn a crisis or even a trauma into a learning moment, it will turn fear into courage and then determination. This leadership roadmap shows you the way to successfully navigating through crisis or trauma and coming out stronger on the other side.

Organizational trauma takes many forms. It could be a pandemic that disrupts the way people work. An economic meltdown. An act of violence. A failed merger. A layoff—or continual threats of one. Whatever the scenario, events like these can traumatize leaders and employees, sending everyone into survival mode.

Here’s the good news: when leaders navigate a traumatic event effectively, the organization doesn’t just survive.

In Trauma to Triumph, Mark Goulston, MD, and Diana Hendel present a visionary and tactical roadmap to help leaders create stability amid chaos and uncertainty, move productively through a traumatic event, and flourish in ways previously unimagined.

After reading this book, readers will learn:

• How the survival mechanism manifests in employees and leaders amid trauma
• The predictable polarities, dilemmas, tensions and other patterns that emerge in traumatized organizations…and how to break these cycles
• Why lack of clarity in roles and poor communication are dangerous in times of crisis (and how to avoid these common pitfalls)
• How leaders can shift to a mindset that helps create trust, confidence, safety, respect, and inspiration in employees
• Best practices for leading yourself and others through crisis; grieving losses, embracing healthy coping mechanisms, reframing, and more
• How to launch a rapid-response process where you “control the controllables” and create a framework for making better decisions during a crisis
• High-impact tactics to help your organization recover and heal in a way that doesn’t just return to baseline, but transcends it

Filled with tools and tactics, Trauma to Triumph is an organization-wide blueprint for navigating a future where we’ll likely experience one trauma or crisis after another. It gives leaders at every level the guidance to create confidence, courage, and enthusiasm in their team.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781400228386

Mark Goulston

Mark Goulston, MD, FAPA is a board-certified psychiatrist, fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA NPI, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He is the creator of Theory Y Executive Coaching—which he provides to CEOs, presidents, founders, and entrepreneurs—and is a TEDx and international keynote speaker. He is the creator and developer of Surgical Empathy, a process to help people recover and heal from PTSD, prevent suicide in teenagers and young adults, and help organizations overcome implicit bias. Dr. Goulston is the author or principal author of seven prior books, including Why Cope When you Can Heal: How Healthcare Heroes of COVID-19 Can Recover from PTSD, PTSD for Dummies, Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In, and Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life. He hosts the My Wakeup Call podcast, where he speaks with influencers about their purpose in life and the wakeup calls that led them there. He also is the co-creator and moderator of the multi-honored documentary Stay Alive: An Intimate Conversation About Suicide Prevention. He appears frequently as a human psychology and behavior subject-area expert across all media, including news outlets ABC, NBC, CBS, and BBC News, as well as CNN, Today, Oprah, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and Westwood One.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A PERFECT STORM . . . AND A CHAOTIC NEW NORM

WHATEVER YOUR INDUSTRY or role in your organization, there’s no denying we are living in a time of incredible upheaval. Multiple events and forces are causing strife in the business world. The chaos we’re experiencing now has reached unprecedented levels.

First, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic. As this book goes to press the virus is still raging across the world. As of mid-November 2020, nearly 11 million have contracted coronavirus and more than 250,000 have died from it in the United States alone. We are leading with COVID-19 because it feels like the epicenter of the quake. Other crises have happened too (and are unfolding as we write these words), and we’ll get to those in a moment—but so many of the shakeups feel connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has disrupted every industry. While some few have thrived (online shopping, digital content providers, grocery stores), others have suffered or are still suffering greatly (airlines, tourism, retail, construction, entertainment). Some of the hardest hit may, eventually, bounce back. There’s no way to know for sure. Certainly, many of them will never be the same.

Individual businesses have been impacted in numerous ways. Many had to temporarily close and furlough staff, and in many cases those employees never came back. Revenue is down everywhere. Cash flow shortages create major challenges for business owners. There have also been precipitous drops in customer loyalty, especially for brands not seen as essential. All of these have created major hardships—and in many cases have been fatal for businesses.

In September 2020, CNBC shared some discouraging numbers from Yelp’s Economic Impact Report: As of August 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed, a 23 percent increase since mid-July. According to Yelp data, permanent closures have reached 97,966, representing 60 percent of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.¹

Global supply chain disruptions have been severe. At the start of the pandemic there was a ripple effect across multiple industries. There were (and continue to be at the time of this writing) shortages of materials. This results in rising costs of supplies and has other negative impacts on businesses. Leaders must figure out how to transform supply chains in a way that reduces uncertainty and makes them more agile and resilient.

Consumer behavior has shifted dramatically. This makes sense when you consider that everything about our way of life has changed, from mandatory masks and social distancing to closures of venues like bars and gyms. In general, people are staying home more than they used to. Naturally all of this changes how people spend money (or don’t).

For example (and not surprisingly) folks have turned to online shopping in droves. Plus, for a while there was a decline in discretionary spending, doubtless due both to falling incomes and crippled consumer confidence. When they do leave the house to shop or travel people seem to be sticking very close to home (and favoring companies that show they take safety seriously). They aren’t hanging around to browse and thus buy more.

All of this greatly impacts small businesses. The shutdowns dramatically lessened foot traffic, which stores and restaurants count on. What’s more, most small businesses run on super-tight margins and can’t weather month after month of revenue shortfalls.

Companies have been forced to adapt quickly to consumer behavior changes. They have had to reimagine themselves and their products and make massive changes to their retail environments, their marketing, and more.

For instance, business owners and leaders have suddenly become very aware they must digitally transform in order to serve customers who expect a seamless digital experience. This was already happening, but COVID accelerated it. New consumer behaviors are requiring many businesses to completely overhaul their strategies. None of this is easy.

At the same time all of this has occurred, COVID has transformed the workplace. Think about all that has become routine that could scarcely have been imagined less than a year ago. Masks. Social distancing. New cleaning and sanitation routines. If you still go into an office, a brick and mortar store, or a restaurant (to name just a few) your work life looks very different.

Of course, that’s a big if since many people are working remotely. If your business is one of the many that have gone virtual, you know the new setup changes the dynamics of interaction between employees and leaders. (Of course, as fate would have it, this massive change is happening when teams most need to up the teamwork and collaboration factors!) So much has to happen virtually and it’s a challenge for leaders to create engaging interactions over Zoom.

At the beginning of the pandemic, air travel was severely curtailed. (This is still the case to some extent, though the numbers of people flying have definitely picked up.) What this means for businesses is that conferences and learning have been disrupted. Selling is tougher when it can’t happen face to face. It’s hard to get dispersed teams together to collaborate. Many people are still afraid to get on a plane and companies are reluctant to insist on it for legal and ethical reasons.

Needless to say, the new way of working is tough on employees. There’s a lot of fear and anxiety around catching the virus when people have to come into a physical workplace. Those working remotely often have to deal with issues like homeschooling kids. And even if layoffs haven’t directly occurred in an organization, fear of them is palpable among the workforce. All of this can threaten productivity. It also forces leaders to lead in new ways and pay more attention to the mental and emotional health of their employees.

Employers are under pressure to learn all kinds of new things. As mentioned, we’ve been forced to rethink the way we lead. Also, we’ve had to master new processes and procedures for keeping employees and customers safe. What do you do when someone in your business gets sick? What are the rules and regulations around the CARES Act and other grants or loans that might be available? Last but not least are the legal obligations. Can you insist employees come to work (or travel) if they are uncomfortable with it? All this is stressful and time-consuming.

All of the changes we’ve had to navigate since early spring of 2020 are not necessarily bad, they’re just different. Of course change is hard for all of us, but once we get used to a new way of doing things we usually find there are benefits. For example, the expansion of telehealth has potentially increased access to medical professionals for many patients.

We have just spent a lot of time focusing on COVID. That’s because in many ways it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yet that camel was already staggering. There have been, and will continue to be, lots of other big upheavals that create uncertainty for the business world—and, by extension, employees and leaders.

For example, the summer of 2020 ushered in a new focus on racial strife and social justice. Demonstrations broke out across the U.S. following the killing of several Black citizens by members of the police, which sparked riots as communities clashed. And social upheaval doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Tensions spill into the workplace, sometimes leading to dissention and divisiveness within the ranks. What’s more, all the attention on this issue has created a big push for diversity and inclusion, and leaders are scrambling to make sure they are doing the right things.

Politically, the U.S. has been a powder keg for many years, and will likely continue to be. Racial turmoil, political instability, and changes create a lot of divisiveness, which trickles into the business environment, disrupting relationships. Transfers of power are hard for leaders in other ways, too. In the period leading up to elections there has been lack of clarity around regulatory changes and shifting trade and tax policies. The uncertainty around these issues makes it tough to make long-term strategy decisions.

We’ve also had our fair share of natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires. (When writing this book both were happening at the same time—severe flooding on the East Coast and catastrophic fires on the West Coast.) Frighteningly, they’re increasing in frequency and severity. It’s becoming obvious that so-called hundred-year events like storms and floods can happen two years in a row or more often. Worsening weather conditions pose huge challenges to businesses in the danger zone and can devastate supply chains.

We could go on, but we won’t. Suffice it to say in a tumultuous world it’s impossible to mitigate all the risks.

Stress and chaos are not always the result of terrible disasters. Sometimes positive forces are the culprit. For example, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology have vastly accelerated the pace of change businesses must deal with. This has been shaking things up for decades. Businesses are forced to constantly learn and upgrade so they can stay relevant. The same phenomenon also displaces employees—new technology makes their jobs obsolete—and forces the remaining ones to learn new skill sets.

All of these crises and