Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
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Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
Career Club Live - Julie Cooper
Dr. Julie Cooper, president of Trauma-Free World, joins us for a transformative conversation that promises to reshape how you view leadership and organizational success. Dr. Cooper's unique trajectory from biochemistry to trauma-informed care offers a profound understanding of how trauma influences behaviors and emotions. She shares personal anecdotes from her journey in child welfare and fostering, illustrating how trauma-based leadership can equip individuals and leaders with the tools to navigate tough times with empathy and effectiveness.
Our discussion highlights the often-overlooked impact of trauma in the workplace and the crucial role of leadership in cultivating healthier environments. Drawing from Dr. Cooper's experiences in Back-to-Back Ministries, we explore how trauma affects employee focus and productivity. Leaders can learn compelling strategies to foster psychological safety, turning mistakes into learning opportunities and encouraging open communication. With practical illustrations from international settings, we delve into power dynamics and cultural considerations for implementing these principles globally.
Empowering voices within an organization means addressing power distance and promoting engagement, and Dr. Cooper provides actionable insights into achieving this. We examine how Trauma-Free World strives to build trauma-informed cultures through resources like the "Trauma-Informed Leadership" course, offering consulting and coaching to support tailored organizational needs. Dr. Cooper's insights are a valuable guide for leaders eager to support vulnerable populations and foster inclusive, resilient communities. Tune in to gain a fresh perspective on creating lasting change in your leadership approach.
I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodman, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we get started, I just wanted to make sure that if you are in job search or know someone who is, every Thursday at one o'clock Eastern time, we offer a free, what we call Career Club Corner, which is an hour free of career coaching for anybody who's in job search. So if you're yourself are in job search or if you know someone who is in these days who doesn't, please just point them to careerclub and there's a big banner right there on the homepage that would take you out to register for this free weekly coaching call.
Bob Goodwin:And I am very excited about today's guest. The topic is going to be on trauma, which we'll describe here in a minute, but also trauma-based leadership, and the reality is we live in challenging times, whether it's politics, wars, what's going on at work, what's going on in your real life, what has gone on in your life before. Everybody's dealing with something, and today's guest is going to help us really understand some very practical but sustainable tools to help you, both as an individual, but also you as a leader tools to help you both as an individual, but also you as a leader. So, with me getting ahead of myself, let me go ahead and introduce our guest today, dr Julie Cooper. Julie is the president of Trauma-Free World. Julie welcome.
Julie Cooper:Thank you, bob, it's great to be here.
Bob Goodwin:It's truly a pleasure and a privilege for me to have you on the podcast today, so thank you for joining me.
Julie Cooper:Yes, you're welcome. I hope your morning has gone well and I've looked forward to our time together.
Bob Goodwin:No, likewise. So my morning is going well. Nothing a cup of coffee won't take care of.
Julie Cooper:That's right.
Bob Goodwin:So, first of all, where are you calling in from today?
Julie Cooper:I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. We're enjoying a rather gray, rainy morning, but yes, all is well this morning.
Bob Goodwin:Well, being a fellow Cincinnatian. Yes, that is all true, so it's great to have you. So SSR Want to Do. We'd like to just ask you a few questions just to help people get to know you a little bit. So we'll start off with something super easy. You're in Cincinnati, but where were you born and raised?
Julie Cooper:I was born and raised in Elkhart, indiana actually Okay so right on the Michigan border, went to school at Indiana University, which is actually where I met some of the folks that I work with. Still, I've been working with them now for over 20 years, which has been kind of fun, so now, I introduced you as a doctor, so your undergrad was at IU. That's right.
Bob Goodwin:Okay, and then, what was your degree in?
Julie Cooper:Yep. My degree was in biochemistry.
Bob Goodwin:Awesome. And then you've got your doctorate. And where was that and what was that in?
Julie Cooper:Well, interestingly, at IU I was very interested in being a medical doctor and things kind of went a different way as I found myself in the social work world doing case management in mental health, kind of in the mental health space. So my PhD is actually in psychology and counseling and I did that at Regent University in Virginia Beach.
Bob Goodwin:Well, that doesn't sound like a terrible location. That sounds like fun. So just very quickly a little bit about your family.
Julie Cooper:Yeah, my husband and I have six children, as I mentioned, so early on, as we were both really working in the social services field with adoptions, foster care in our county, with mental health in our county we really just began to feel like gosh. Working with foster youth is something that we feel like we could do. So of course, this is back when I really didn't know anything at all, but I had a lot of passion, we like to call it. I was consciously compassionate, but maybe not so much competently compassionate, but anyway. So right as we were starting our family, we received a foster placement, and so it just so happened that I had a four-month-old, and a seven-month-old came to our house. A few months later, I found out that that bio mom was having another baby. Would we take him? A few months later, I found out I was pregnant. So we ended up adopting those two children and for that reason, our first four children are all within 24 months of each other.
Julie Cooper:It sounds insane, but it really was fun, I promise.
Bob Goodwin:Wow, you have all my respect if we just stopped right here. That's amazing. And then we've talked a little bit about your education and I think you started to hint at some things. But do you mind just painting a little bit of a picture of your career arc and how it is that you've come to be leading Trauma-Free World?
Julie Cooper:Yeah, it's so interesting the way things build on themselves in our lives. But you know, my first job 30 years ago was working in child welfare and I actually worked in residential care. So I had, I was caring for those kids who really were deemed as like too difficult to make it in a family, and that's tough work because most of those kids are going to age out, they're going to end up on the street. And it was really at that point I started to understand. Some of you out there understand this type of work, right, but I had a check board and I would just like go around and check, honestly sometimes is this kid still alive? Is this kid in their bed, like are they going to wake up? And you just realize quickly like we could do more. We could do more than make sure this child is just alive at the end of the day, like let's stop just checking their rooms and backpacks, let's check in with their heart and find out why are they behaving the way they're behaving? And so this was really my entry into understanding trauma, informed care, into understanding that what has happened to us influences our emotions and behaviors, which ends up really the behavior is what people see and that's what's out there and that's what ends up having so many kids getting involved in the system at a really young age. But if we can back up and understand the reason behind the behavior then we can really start to do some healing practice. That's going to change cycles of poverty and generation and reliance on welfare. So all of that was really my system.
Julie Cooper:I've worked with lots of foster youth. As I was working on my PhD, I really intended to go in and think I'm going to do research around foster youth, but that was the time when I'm also realizing, like all of these organizations serving kids, the leadership of that organization has every bit as much to play in the outcomes as the programs and services themselves. So that really began my switch to look at leadership, which turned into a really exciting actually and broad area of study to see just how much a leader correlates into a win for their employee and a win for their organization. So if we empower our organizations, leaders that kind of gives us. I love working from the bottom up right. I love working with the practitioner, the person on the front line, but I also love working top down and I actually think the most successful organizations are kind of doing both and meeting in the middle.
Bob Goodwin:I love that. That's awesome. Now do you mind just sharing a little bit, because I think it's amazing.
Julie Cooper:A little bit about your time at something called Back-to-Back Ministries. Yeah, in Back-to-Back is really where all of these ideas started to come to the forefront. At Back-to-Back Ministries, my family lived internationally, so we lived in Mexico for 11 years and worked in all manner of care community-based care, institutional-based care for countries that don't have foster care. They're still operating as an orphanage, so how can we help reunify where we can? How can we help strengthen communities so the kids don't end up actually having to go to an orphanage? Those 11 years were really a lab for me to be able to live out some of the practices I was learning, but also introduce some of the leadership concepts into our organizational leadership as well.
Bob Goodwin:Wow, that's awesome. So how long have you been at Trauma-Free World now?
Julie Cooper:up? Wow, that's awesome. So how long have you been at Trauma Free World now? So, trauma Free World, we've been around for five years. We were born out of back-to-back ministries. We are a separate 501c3, but they own us entirely. We're a subsidiary and we've been operating as a separate entity for about five years.
Bob Goodwin:Got it. So you know we're already getting some things of like why I'm so excited to have you on because, as you say, kind of both at the individual level right and just getting better individually. But then how leadership can foster an environment and lead differently, healthierly if that's a word right and just really massively amplify the magnitude of the impact. So let's do this. Oh, one last question Six kids, phd, leading an organization. What do you do when you're not doing all that stuff?
Julie Cooper:I read, I like to read. I like to read things that have nothing to do with trauma, nothing to do with children or anything dramatic. I like to read mysteries. So I read like Agatha Christie, sherlock Holmes, like old school mysteries. That's what I do.
Bob Goodwin:That's awesome. I love that. Okay cool, so I'm a reader too, so you have to get that.
Julie Cooper:So let's just start at the start. What is trauma? That's a great question because the word trips people up. Trauma is anything that overwhelms a person's capacity to cope. This is a definition that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association uses and we have adopted it here at Trauma-Free World because it allows for a wide range of experiences.
Julie Cooper:You know, back in the 80s, when psychologists were figuring out what PTSD was and veterans were returning from Vietnam and they were realizing like they had shell shock, they had all these names and they were realizing like, wow, ptsd is really what we're looking at. At that point we started to think it was just the extreme things that caused trauma, or surviving something horrific, horrific abuse in the home, and of course, all those things are traumatic. But because we are all individual and we have our own temperaments and we have our own kind of history of things that have been happening, it's very unique. You and I even could experience the exact same thing. For you it'd be really stressful, but for me it could be considered a trauma because it has overwhelmed my capacity to cope.
Julie Cooper:The other thing about this definition that we always like to call out is that we sort of think in English that the word cope means like you get by, like you cope with it, you just put up with it. But cope really implies you have successfully overcome something. So it's not something happened and I'm just putting up with it. Therefore, it wasn't trauma, it's did this thing happen and I haven't been able to successfully overcome it, and this opens up a wide range of things like interpersonal violence, domestic violence, of course, violence and abuse in the home, but natural disasters, racism and discrimination Like it really broadens our minds as to what could cause trauma for an individual.
Bob Goodwin:Got it Okay. Well, so anything that causes an individual's ability say it again to cope.
Julie Cooper:Anything that overwhelms my capacity to cope.
Bob Goodwin:My capacity, and capacity is very individualized.
Julie Cooper:That's right.
Bob Goodwin:It's totally individualized. So, now, because this podcast is oriented towards both individuals, but also we have a lot of HR leaders who will listen to this and people that have significant people responsibilities. How do these things start to play out in the workplace? Why is this important in a workplace context?
Julie Cooper:Yeah, gosh, in so many ways. When I mentioned that the word trauma can be a sticking point sometimes in the HR world, I'll just mention that when we talk about trauma there might be this idea of like well, that's not really, that's not our area. Like that's why we have our EAPs or that's why we have our referral programs and if we train our people in trauma, all of our people are going to think they're psychologists. So we really intend for this to be practical, to address practical issues in the workplace. So some of the ways that we see trauma manifest itself in the workplace are, of course, things like staff who have trouble concentrating. Like a key thing about trauma is it kind of derails your brain from being able to focus and it keeps you constantly in this hyperactive, hypersensitive mode. What that can lead to is a person who sees challenges where there really were none intended Right so maybe becoming over defensive when feedback is given, their feelings being excessively hurt when one of their ideas aren't chosen Right, so so something that's been given in just kind of a benign feedback way, that person is taking it really personally because of the way that their brain has been wired kind of towards survival.
Julie Cooper:In general, with employee well-being. We also see higher rates of just missing work and we see higher rates of turnover with our staff who have histories of trauma. There can be trust issues. We see communication issues. We see these staff more likely to use tools like passive aggressivity because they didn't really trust they could use their voice, but then they're going to go out and they're going to have that water cooler conversation apart from that. So that creates some divisiveness in the workplace. And then also, when our minds are in that survival mode, we really don't have access to good problem solving and creativity. So it's hard to get our employees to think outside of the box, to come up with new ways to solve problems, because that creative access is something that you need when you are feeling completely safe and trustworthy in your relationships. So those are just a few of the things that we see from a work productivity side.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah. So just to recap for my own benefit and and hopefully it's self-sufficient I think about productivity, engagement, absenteeism, presenteeism right, I'm here, but I'm not really here Attrition I can't take it, I'm leaving. And then healthcare costs. I mean stress-related healthcare costs right.
Bob Goodwin:And one of the reasons I want to bring all this up is, you know, this isn't like, oh you know, kind of touchy-feely. Let's be nicer to everybody. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but there are hard business cases to be made. You're spending the money today in all of those different areas. You may not call it that, but these are real business problems. And the other reason, not the other reason another reason I was so excited to have you join me today, julie, is in HR. People will talk a lot about, you know, bringing your whole self to work.
Julie Cooper:Yeah.
Bob Goodwin:Well, guess what they do and they are, and this whole self isn't just you know kind of political spectrum or where you fall on some social issue. It's all these things that make us truly human. Yeah, it's what's coming to work and it's my aging parent, it's my kid who's off the rails.
Julie Cooper:It's my marriage that isn't working.
Bob Goodwin:It's, you know, that I might have a substance abuse problem, mm, hmm, it could just be a whole host of other things. I guess they're coming to work with all of that stuff, right? And you know and, by the way, I want to get you to talk about this for a second we're sort of creating a dichotomy Maybe it just happened in my mind, but a dichotomy of them and us, it's us. There is no, it's us, right. And so you're kind of employees, are doing this. Well, guess what, if you're the CEO of the company, you're also an employee of the company, or an SVP, or whatever your title happens to be.
Bob Goodwin:So, there's not really a them and an us, and so maybe that could maybe bridge into is there? Is there a bit of a? If I'm a leader at a company and what you're saying makes sense to me, you know, because if you're paying attention, I think that you know in reality, this has happened in your organization because everybody plays human beings and we all deal with this stuff. Is there an element of physician, heal thyself first. You know, do I need to, as a leader, start to look at me first before I figure out how to fix everybody else?
Julie Cooper:Yes, absolutely.
Julie Cooper:You can't give what you don't have and I suppose for a while you can fake it till you make it, until something triggers you, and not so much anymore.
Julie Cooper:We see constantly the idea of bringing your whole self to work is something we talk about a lot because we see supervisors who we say that but they don't actually want it and that is because in and of themselves they're uncomfortable with emotions. They're they're uncomfortable with your emotions and they would kind of like that just over there, that falls under staff care and they just want to talk details of the job. So it definitely starts with the leader. Even as far as leaders setting good examples of like I'm using my vacation, I'm setting boundaries on when I receive emails, right, you can say, hey, have good work-life boundaries, but if the leader doesn't, you actually most people feel like you need to work as hard as the leader. And if they're working extreme amount of hours and they're not taking their vacation, if you take yours, you can end up feeling like you're the weak link or you're like you're not behind the team. So it so much. It really does start with the leader and I can't get promoted.
Bob Goodwin:I mean, yeah, there's a lot of things so I think you used this word earlier but, um, in terms of like creating an environment where I can feel safe, there's an element of trust, can you talk a little bit, julie, about how leaders can create that environment?
Julie Cooper:I can In some of the assessment work that we do. I even brought this here with me today so that I could remember. But in some of the assessment work we do, when we work one-on-one, we just ask super practical strategies. So the idea of safety yes, physical safety, but you know, here we're talking primarily about psychological safety. Can I make a mistake and will that mistake be punished? Will I lose future opportunities to make mistakes, or is it really okay? Do we really consider this a learning thing that our whole organization will benefit from? And we always just ask our leaders when was the last time you were vulnerable about a mistake that you made? When was the last time you let everybody know hey, I tried, this didn't really work. Here's what I learned.
Julie Cooper:Again, that goes back to the leader setting an example. It also is understanding that feedback comes both ways. Obviously, we give feedback, but we should be asking for feedback from our staff and if they feel safe with us, we should be able to expect honest feedback, even if it's not anonymous. But most folks would say and some work I just did through Cornell University would say create. They would say create anonymous opportunities for feedback as well to promote safety. Because as much as we would want to say. We've got a low power distance. People can come and talk to me. It may not always be, as that distance may not always be as low as we think it should be, so even creating opportunities for anonymous feedback is a way to start.
Bob Goodwin:Okay. Is there an example where you've seen people putting these principles into work and having a positive impact in the work environment that you could share?
Julie Cooper:Yes, I can share. So within back-to-back, for one of our sites they really focused on this and it was an international site, so power distance was an issue, particularly lower working class, if you will like. Staff didn't feel like they could speak to the leaders. Sometimes the women didn't feel like they could speak up and they put together a plan to do things like rotate leadership of meetings, to make sure that they that every they have like sticky notes and to make sure when a topic would come up, rather than share out loud want like in front of everybody, they put sticky notes on the wall.
Julie Cooper:They did some of these steps first to help all of the staff kind of get used to the idea that actually, yeah, my voice is wanted here. And as they started to build that culture of everything you have to say is okay, out of the box ideas are okay, then their staff started becoming better able to just verbalize it without needing to do all of those other things. So it was kind of a step Almost. They needed the leaders to kind of put their money where their mouth was and show me, like, show me step by step, that you really are open to listening to anything I have to say you really are open to my ideas and then I'll be more comfortable just sharing that and things like team meetings.
Bob Goodwin:Well, you've opened up a couple of things. One is cultural differences differences, yeah. And then two could be gender differences and gender might be nested under culture. And, yeah, what I'm hearing you say is that these kinds of principles transcend culture. Is that fair? Yes but how they get executed or implemented might be cultureed in the cultural norms.
Julie Cooper:That's excellently said. That's right. That's right. All of these, all of the principles, like you, need trustworthiness and transparency in any culture. Like that has been shown scientifically through research to promote longer, lasting, better working teams. But you're exactly right, how that gets played out is very unique to the culture. It's very anti-culture in some places.
Bob Goodwin:That's what I was thinking. It could be extremely, you know, depending on the hierarchical nature of the company and the culture. You used a term. I just want to go back to it real quick. It's new to me. I think I can intuit, but just to make sure, Is power distance?
Julie Cooper:Yes.
Bob Goodwin:Do you mind defining that?
Julie Cooper:Sure, Power distance is the perceived distance between the person in power and everybody else. So, for example, the United States. We are a very low power distance culture. We have a much more flat organizational structure. I always joke that in the United States, like any one of us, we really do think that we could probably pick up the phone and deserve to be on the phone tomorrow with Kamala Harris or something like. We really think we can call anybody and speak to anybody.
Julie Cooper:So, different from, say, a culture in Southeast Asia, they would never consider speaking up to power, not even to one level above who their reporting structure is. So and I've heard from teams as I've worked internationally, I've heard them say, like we say, we tell them, we tell them, we want to hear, we want to hear Nobody. Still nobody says anything because it's so cross-cultural or counter-cultural. And that's where we start to talk about okay, well, you've got to just, little by little, build something different. So, little by little, you have a suggestion box.
Julie Cooper:Little by little, you break into small groups. You have a suggestion box. Little by little you break into small groups and maybe the three women are in a small group because they will share together and then they report back. You have to really be strategic about how you do it. But we I mean we know. We know that the more voices that are represented, the better ideas we get right, the more full picture we get of a project. We know voices are needed. So, yes, we do have to get a little strategic sometimes in allowing those high power distance cultures to be able to speak up when they're in a meeting.
Bob Goodwin:Well, you know what that kind of takes my mind to is if, when things are farther apart, it takes longer to get there, right? So we also, again speaking as an American, we want to go right now. I order on Amazon. It's on my door in 10 minutes. How the heck did that happen? And other places say, no, things just take a while. And so you know, building in the proper amount of if this is the right word, julie patience, like if you want a forest, you got to start planting trees sometime, but it takes a while for this thing to grow up. And having the kind of the organizational patience to allow this thing to develop in a way that in that context, it's going to develop.
Julie Cooper:Yes, that's excellently said. In some of the places this is actually my husband's turn. But in some places where we've worked they talk about you would never sit down and have a team meeting until everyone's done the how's your mama question, like if you don't connect on that level, you actually don't move into and it would be inappropriate actually to move into Now. You know some cultures, some work cultures. They have adjusted to what we would consider more of like our American norms and they're starting on time and everything else. But a lot of the folks that we've worked with, especially in the non-profit world and people out there trying to make a difference in their cultures much more relational Things, take time because their processes are very set, because they're very relational Trust. They would say trust right, is spelled T-I-M-E, like you can bring me your CV and you can show me your degree. But once you and I have had some meals together, now we've built some trust and now we can talk about the important things like budget and strat plans.
Bob Goodwin:Well, ok, so that'll make sense. One of the things I'm thinking about is yes, you have created an environment.
Bob Goodwin:Let's just say hypothetically, you know, as a leader you know I've done what I believe I can do and will continue to try and do in terms of, you know, modeling some vulnerability. I made a mistake creating feedback mechanisms, whether those are anonymous or otherwise, but kind of doing what I think I can do. But on the other side of it, right, people have autonomy and I can choose to opt in or not opt in to this. So how does that kind of fit into the puzzle?
Julie Cooper:Yep, we talk a lot about choice, employee voice and choice, and we know that when someone opts in, they are much more likely to contribute with all of their capacity. When they feel forced in, you get meager work. So we always start with talking about and this is kind of a transformational leadership theory concept that I think fits really nicely in with this but making sure that as a team we take time to dream together about the exciting things we could do together. That way everybody feels like they're a part of an exciting thing and when they feel like they're a part of an exciting thing that they have a voice in as opposed to. You came to me with your exciting thing and you know like I kind of feel like I'm a means to an end, it can be harder to get buy in.
Julie Cooper:So one of the principles for helping that person, even though they've totally got autonomy, get kind of excited about the way that we want to work and the way that we want to work in a way that's trauma-informed, is to dream together about the great things that can happen. And then, of course, when they're voicing ideas, when we can, we want to give some power. Right, you can't micromanage, you want to give some power and that's a great idea. They can succeed with something great. They might fail and we turn it into a learning. We turn it into a learning kind of a learning lesson, but in the end we end up with an employee who feels like I'm actually a real part of this organization. They listen to my voice, they let me try my ideas. If it didn't work, we you know, try again, fail again, fail better. So we're in it for the long haul.
Bob Goodwin:Fail faster, fail better. So I feel like maybe I've gotten us further along. I want to back up a little bit. So trauma happens at an individual level. Right, something has happened that has exceeded my ability to cope with it. So that could be a million things. As we said, that's very individualized. And now I'm in a work context and maybe it could be my leadership style is informed by some traumatic event or period of time in my life or whatever it is. For me it could be. You know, I'm on a team and, like I've got a bunch of stuff going on in my head. Some of it I may be conscious of, some of it I may not be conscious of. Like how do we? I want to ask you like 10 questions at once.
Bob Goodwin:Like, not everybody's going to participate, not everybody's going to quote, get better, whatever better looks like for them whether I'm the leader, the team member, the subordinate, whatever it is, the team member, the subordinate, whatever it is. How do we deal with everybody's at way different places in their journey and their awareness, interest, motivation, to deal with their stuff, if you will?
Julie Cooper:I think one great thing we can do is normalize the conversation around this topic really things like emotional and mental health in general. But from the HR side it's to just constantly let people know we've got resources, we've got things that we can help you out with. One of the concepts that is a trauma informed concept that we have found really helpful is called peer support. So not everybody wants to go on this journey with someone else, but some do Like so. Some organizations would put together a peer support group of perhaps it's leaders who are struggling with depression and they it's informal, nobody's recording it, you're not taking meetings it literally is just a peer support group and they pull support from each other. Actually it's pretty cool because the idea of peer support has shown that employees involved in that need much less access to formal kind of clinical resources.
Julie Cooper:The one idea is to pull folks together to support each other, but then the other is just to make sure that from an HR standpoint we are just keeping tools in the tool belt to help folks move along in their journey, and I suppose there comes at any point that a leader is actually not able to execute their strategic plan. What we often find is that that level of trauma might be leading someone towards burnout. That level of trauma might be leading someone towards burnout, and if they're approaching something like burnout, there's this collision of what's going on and the collision of what's happening at work. Typically, we see two things when a person has gotten that far, and it's either that they end up leaving or they end up staying and kind of bringing a cancerous attitude and kind of spreading that cancer towards others, which of course we want neither of those things.
Julie Cooper:One of the benefits of working um in the organization I work with is that we have the option of taking sabbatical um which is like an extended period of time to really like dig into some of the issues that I feel like are hanging on getting in the way of me being all that I can be as a leader. Not every organization has that in place, but I always encourage folks to talk to their HR and their direct supervisor. We find that supervisors are they would much rather give space for their, their leadership to take time to, to get healthy than to lose them or see them become kind of that negative attitude does. But I always tell people have that conversation. If that's you or if it's someone you report to and you want to suggest that for them, I think it's totally appropriate.
Bob Goodwin:Well, you know to your point, like most companies probably don't have a sabbatical policy, but they do have PTO and Americans are terrible at taking all of their vacation.
Julie Cooper:That's right.
Bob Goodwin:Right, and so, if nothing else, just take the time off right. And go, just go be with your family, go, do something that just relaxes you, whatever. How do we?
Julie Cooper:what are the?
Bob Goodwin:potential unintended consequences of somebody that's like listening to this gets more involved. With the amazing curriculum you guys have developed, how do I avoid the tendency to try and become a junior psychologist? And now I want to fix everybody.
Julie Cooper:Yes, and that is a that's a real fear, and we hear folks talk about it a lot. So part of at least in our training, part of what we talk about is that you're actually. It's kind of like you're called to be a good citizen, to be honest, but you are not called upon to be the clinician, and mostly what this kind of work involves is being a good listener.
Julie Cooper:Now, interestingly, if someone takes this training and they feel like they need to go fix everybody, there's probably a little something in themselves that's feeding that, so they may need to go deeper into some of the concepts, but we always incorporate in our training a little bit around that here's your role, here's the role you can step into, and this is not what it's intended for. So we write it right there.
Bob Goodwin:No. So again I can just I'm glad that you guys are helping and not surprised, but glad to know that you're sort of hey warning sign. This is where your role in this stops, that's right. And someone's got a DR in front of them. Maybe you know it begins. So can you maybe paint another example, julia? I'd love to hear about a leader who has been through the curriculum, who has been through the curriculum, has kind of integrated it personally, and how that has transformed their team, their organization, just where you've really seen this work really really well.
Julie Cooper:Yeah, gosh. Well, I'll start close at home and I'll start with Back to Back. Who is the organization that we came out of? Because we see this language now it's all over the organization and one of the concepts that you will hear everywhere is hey, we need to provide attachment and orientation. So in training we're learning that attachment means I know who my people are like. I know who to go to when I need something.
Julie Cooper:When you've come from a history of trauma, usually one of the things that you did not have was like the right support system. Most of us, if we had a really strong support system, we deal with trauma better, I guess I would say. When you've lacked a support system, when you've been all on your own, that's typically when it stews and it becomes part of your emotional circuitry. So for us, attachment is making sure everyone on the team always knows this is who you can go to for clarity around your role. This is who you go to if you have questions about processes. This is our HR department. This is our staff development department. We make sure you know you've got people.
Julie Cooper:And then the orientation piece answers how does this place work? That's clarity around role. That's making sure that folks have the chance to ask what we call the last 5%. You're leaving a meeting and then you realize you've got 10 minutes left and suddenly the real questions start coming out because it's almost over. So always making sure that people have time for the last 5%, because those are the questions that they really want answered. So those are some of the concepts that I've seen come out in back to back and it's changed not just the way that the US office works but each of our international sites as well. Making sure constantly. They're all staff members, they know who the people are, they know what the process is, because when you have those two things, your brain can relax. And when your brain relaxes, then comes out your creativity, your focus, your communication style. All of that good stuff can happen when those other details are taken care of.
Bob Goodwin:Well, you know, that really kind of at least in my mind reverts back to what we're talking about in terms of an environment of safety and trust. If I'm not on high alert and worried about some kind of a threat, then, to your point, my brain can relax and now I start to focus on other things that aren't just about some kind of self-preservation or whatever. We need to start winding this down a little bit. But in terms of the entry point into an organization, you know, I could see, for example, you know, the CEO or whoever's leading the organization. It's like I get this and it can be fairly top down.
Bob Goodwin:I could see functionally human resources HR saying, hey, you know this. I believe this would be something that would really help our organization. So that would be an on-ramp for learning these kinds of principles and behaviors. Are there other ways? I mean, does it have to happen in one of those two ways? Can it happen in other places? If, again, I might be a team leader, I might just be a rank and file employee, how can this be introduced into organizations?
Julie Cooper:Yeah, we have some organizations. Well, like you said, through HR, others are targeted towards a specific set of leaders. We've also had some organizations just say hey, we've put together a focus group. The organization isn't entirely sure how. If they want to move this way, we've got a focus group, could we use your stuff Absolutely? And then we honestly just have employees who aren't sure anyone else is on board but they want to be a voice for some of this change and they just come take it by themselves. So we see all kinds of on-ramps, honestly, and they're all good for where a person is, for where their organization is. All of those are legitimate on-ramps.
Bob Goodwin:So maybe this kind of leads us to a little bit about what is quote it. If somebody was to engage with you all, what are you guys offering exactly? What would the deliverable be?
Julie Cooper:Yeah, well, the easiest thing and the thing that exists right now and for free is a two-hour course that's broken up into short videos that talks about some of the principles that we've discussed in some of the application, and it's just called trauma-informed leadership. It also has a section on you asked about should this start with the leader? And there's there is a section that talks about the leader and what the leader should be doing for their own personal wellness in order to be able to carry out some of these principles. But this course it's on demand and it's free. It comes with a companion guide.
Julie Cooper:If there are folks like our focus group, they watch the videos on their own. Then they come back and they talk about the prompts and the companion guide. So they do it in kind of like a small group study. Other folks are doing it on their own, but it's free. It's at the Trauma-Free World website and you'll see it very prominently just on the front page under leadership, and all of the resources that we've talked about are there as well A companion guide, what it looks like to do a leader evaluation in these areas, suggestions for running a trauma-informed team meeting, suggestions for starting peer support groups. We've just kind of munted it all there to make it accessible to anybody who feels like this is something that could benefit their organization.
Bob Goodwin:And the website again is what?
Julie Cooper:TraumaFreeWorldorg.
Bob Goodwin:TraumaFreeWorldorg. So if you're listening to this. That's the website. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, we'll put that in the post-production so that you know where to go. Click Are there other services? So that's the free curriculum. Are there deeper levels of engagement or other ways of working with you all.
Julie Cooper:There are deeper levels. So if for organizations who want more specific consulting or coaching, they are free to reach out to us and we can talk about setting that up on a one to one basis. Some organizations also work with us to have kind of an in-house train the trainer model, if you will, kind of an in-house expert so we can help provide that, or we ourselves can come and work with teams and provide consultation for anyone who wants to just go deeper.
Bob Goodwin:That's awesome. Is there anything, julie? I mean, this is such a giant topic and I've probably got a huge disservice with it, but is there anything that we haven't talked about? That would just feel like a major miss if we didn't touch on it.
Julie Cooper:No, in general, I don't think so. I just I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. Obviously, it's something I'm very passionate about, but I love talking about leadership within this way because it's really a win win win, if you will. It's not a trauma-informed leadership doesn't mean I'm soft and I'm letting people get away with things. That's not actually the case. It's really about how do I lead in a way that brings out the best potential in my employee. It's there and we get to play a part in bringing that out, and it is a more satisfying way to lead. Research shows that our employees feel they have better well-being, better connection to the organization, which means that their performance for the organization is better. So the leader and team members and actually the organization they all win from this type of leadership. So I just would underscore that if this is, if this is something that an organization has been thinking about, they want to dip their toes into this area. We would love to be able to provide these initial resources just to help answer some of those questions.
Bob Goodwin:Well, Julie, I just so appreciate your time. I appreciate what you're leading there. Thank you, this is near and dear to my heart, because you know, human beings are just infinitely complex and to try and reduce them to cells on a spreadsheet and work producing units is naive at best and I don't know at worst, but but it, but the business case to be made, if nothing else, I think is just so profound and there's so many dimensions that you can build that business case.
Bob Goodwin:And we've talked about've talked about absenteeism, presenteeism, productivity, engagement creativity innovation, health care costs, I mean, like it just goes on and on and on. And so this isn't about being soft and gooey. It's about really understanding your most important resource and how to optimize it for everyone. Your most important resource and how to optimize it for everyone To your point. The three wins, the win, win, win. Everybody benefits at the end of the day, and again, that's why I'm just thrilled to have you on today and start to share, again, free resources. It's a two hour training thing that people can go through. Right, it's free. It's on traumafreeworldorg.
Julie Cooper:That's right.
Bob Goodwin:And then if people wanted to learn more or engage individually, I assume there's a contact page or something on the website as well, right, yes, julie, what a thrill. I'm just so glad that you joined me today.
Julie Cooper:I even hope this isn't a one and done.
Bob Goodwin:I suspect that I might have you on the third day, but it would be I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you to Brian Berkey for getting us introduced.
Julie Cooper:That's right.
Bob Goodwin:You've got a phenomenal team there. It's not just the Julie show. You're surrounded by really, really talented people, people, and I wish you nothing but the best, because it's very clear to me that the impact that you guys are having and have the potential to have is, you know, just amazing and something that I hope that we can help people be a part of.
Julie Cooper:All right, that's great, thank you.
Bob Goodwin:And everybody's taking the opportunity to listen to this for a few minutes. Please go to traumafreeworldorg, please access the curriculum Julie was sharing. And, again, if you think that your company might benefit from something like this we have no commercial engagement or relationship with them I just genuinely believe this is something that would help your company, whoever, wherever you are. So, with that, julie, thank you again and thank you, listeners, and we'll see you on the next episode. Excellent, thank you.
