Infusing trauma and equity awareness into decision making and planning
As you may know if you've read recent posts on grief and trauma and focusing on needs, trauma has been very much on my mind and in my heart lately. As this tremendously difficult school year starts to come to a close (or has already closed in some parts of the country), as vaccination roll-out starts to include our tweens and teens, and as pandemic restrictions start to lift and companies and organizations are in various stages of considering their reopening plans, you would think that this would be a time of joy and celebration... and it is for some, to varying degrees, but it is also a time where many of us are still processing and coming to terms with what we just went through, and the trauma of it all.
Not to mention that, as I have said before, the fact that DEI work is the work of dismantling the systems that cause oppression and trauma, as well as facilitating healing at an internal, interpersonal, organizational and systemic level has never been more clear to me.
Different people are dealing with different but often multiple layers of intersecting and interconnected trauma. I believe that although not equally, we are ALL dealing with the trauma from systems of oppression such as patriarchy and white supremacy. And again, although not equally, we are ALL dealing with the trauma of a global pandemic.
What does that mean for DEI work, what does that mean for organizations engaged in DEI work, and what does that mean for organizations in general?
I believe that organizations need to be designing for a trauma-informed approach to everything they do, not just during or in the aftermath of a global pandemic or social or political crisis, but all the time, for everyone.
And while this fifteen months has shown us what happens when "business as usual" is no longer possible, I think it has also shown us that "business as usual" was not working well for most people even under "usual" circumstances.
Safety and inclusion foster engagement which fosters the conditions where we can all engage with our full potential, not just to create material wealth, as capitalism would have us do, but with respects to however we wish to define value.
A trauma-informed approach benefits everyone, not just those most impacted by trauma. However, looking at the impacts of trauma without understanding the many systemic as well as organizational and interpersonal causes of trauma is also limited.
Thus a book that is really resonating with me right now (although full disclosure, I haven't read it front to back yet and have been jumping around a bit) is a book I am only just now realizing only came out a few weeks ago: Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education by Alex Shevrin Venet.
As she says in the introduction to the book: "If schools focus on the impacts of trauma that they think they see and not on the inequitable conditions within schools that cause, exacerbate, or perpetuate trauma, then the promise of a trauma-informed approach has failed."
I would say the same is true of the workplace.
She is also clear that inequity causes trauma.
While this is a book written specifically for educators, I think there is a lot for those of us in the workplace to learn from as well.
As I said, I've been jumping around in the book a bit, but chapter five on "Four Proactive Priorities for Decision Making" jumped out at me, those four priorities being:
Predictability
Flexibility
Empowerment
Connection
I read the chapter with our DEI work and clients in mind, but I also found myself responding in a surprisingly emotional way as a parent who has seen how an inflexible and disconnected school system has further impacted my kids since school closed so abruptly on March 13th, 2020 - they have not returned since.
It has been so hard.
And my kids are relatively protected from other systemic inequities and traumas.
Yet it is also incredibly validating and healing to have a framework for understanding some of the reasons, beyond the obvious, for what has made it so hard, and what healing from that experience might look like.
What Tenet suggests is using the four priorities above as a way of infusing trauma and equity awareness into our decision making and planning, which to me also means integrating these priorities into our workplace cultures.
I'm happy to say that our work already incorporates these principles, and there is plenty of room to strengthen and deepen our approach.
For us, EMPOWERMENT means connecting to agency, especially for those who might feel very understandably disenfranchised and hopeless within a toxic culture and system. It can be easy to feel that if leadership or the culture doesn't change, nothing will, but we always have choices and things that we can and can't control. We have found that focusing on needs, articulating them and using those needs to measure results and impact provides a path forward to equity and inclusion.
Building systems, processes and points of engagement that are based on consent and choice is where FLEXIBILITY comes in, and I'm realizing that one of the things that felt so traumatic to my kids about remote learning was the loss of agency that came with a system that felt very inflexible.
I mean, it felt inflexible and oppressive to me, especially at the beginning, and I do understand that schools had to shift on a dime with very little time for planning and at a time when they were also dealing with all the stress and fear that everyone else was in figuring out how to keep themselves and their families safe during quarantine.
Which is why a trauma and equity infused approach has to be place before a crisis happens. Our systems were JUST NOT READY in any way shape or form. They were already not serving so many folks in crisis before the pandemic hit.
There were so many ways that I felt equity was misunderstood and traumatized this past year in particular. Equity doesn't mean a one size fits all solution that works for everyone. Equity generally requires multiple solutions that meet different needs. We can take a lot of the lead from universal design practices that pro-actively build in multiple options for access that are available to everyone.
To me, equity, flexibility and empowerment go hand in hand and are important to think about in the workplace as, in some cases, firms and organizations have been forced to offer more flexibility than they ever have before as far as where and when their staff get their work done, and might now be thinking about taking that flexibility back instead of thinking about how re-opening could actually increase flexibility and options to meet different needs.
PREDICTABILITY may seem to be in tension with flexibility but it's important that these two things are balanced. As Venet says, "Being predictable doesn't mean being rigid. We need to consider the interplay of predictability and flexibility for any structures or routines we build."
In the workplace, predictability can be created through transparency, open communication and consistency in alignment with values or objectives which allows for what Venet describes as "different paths up the mountain." Even something as simple as letting people know what you're going to do, doing it, and then following up can go a long way to create a sense of stability and safety. The unpredictable will happen, if the pandemic taught us nothing else it taught us that, but having systems and values in place to respond to the unpredictable can mitigate its impact.
CONNECTION may feel like the most obvious as we come out of a time when physical distancing has in some ways heightened our awareness of our need to connect. Certainly, systems of oppression seek to isolate us and pit us against one another and in some ways is most threatened by the solidarity that can come from open communication, transparency, and breaking out of silos to create community and connection.
How could you incorporate these priorities into your day-to-day decision making and planning?
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