I was in the Methow Valley in eastern Washington over the weekend when a helicopter flew up the valley. The energy in the valley changed. Everyone paused and looked skyward and I swear even the trees held their breath.

The helicopter, which was in the valley to carry logs upriver for salmon habitat restoration, was the same kind of helicopter that flew water up the valley during last summer’s raging wildfires.

The whirring of the blades and the sight of the aircraft immediately recalled for residents the moments they dropped everything to retrieve kids from summer camp as fire broke out in the valley, the weeks they were prepared to flee their homes at a moments notice if fire jumped the road into their neighborhood and the devastation of watching the voracious fire steadily devour their beloved valley forest.

It made me think about what lingers with us even after we think a traumatic experience is in the past. We know from research on trauma that people adapt to traumatic environments with self-protective behaviors that keep them healthy and safe in the immediate situation, but in the long run may not serve them well.

Turns out, the same thing happens in organizations. Like individuals who experience chronic stress and trauma, organizations can also become trauma organized. Behaviors we adopt to get through stressful, traumatic situations like pandemics can serve us well in the emergency, but when they persist and become part of our culture, they undermine the mental stamina and psychological safety we need for strategic thinking, innovation and striving – the very things we need to adapt and bounce back.

,Families Thrive has a nice discussion of how organizations become trauma organized and there are interesting parallels to the pandemic. The kind of trauma organized behaviors many organizations exhibited during the pandemic include:

• • Top down decision making to preserve life and health – like mandates for telework, masking and vaccination.

• • Acting with urgency to address rapidly changing threats – like back to back meetings into the evening with no time to grieve or feel.

• • Unclear communication – like what resulted during the scramble of reinventing internal communication systems when work changed drastically.

Your organization may be trauma organized if it feels:

• • Unsafe

• • Punitive

• • Stuck

• • Fragmented

• • Crisis driven

• • Overwhelmed

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to deliberately reset your culture by stopping trauma organized behaviors and replacing them with behaviors that create resiliency, connection and safety. This is how you will restore focus and energy to your work.

You can get a free download of the kind of behaviors that build a resilient culture of belonging and well-being on my website ,www.brookebascom.com

Behaviors to Create a Culture of Belonging and Well-Being

• • Listen: Seek diverse perspectives, and engage others to challenge our assumptions.

• • Recognize: people for the value they bring, the work they do, the effort they put in, who they are.

• • Support people’s growth and development with mentoring, coaching, performance feedback, opportunities to stretch and build new skills.

• • Include others in the decision making process, especially when decisions impact the work they do. Push decisions down to the lowest level possible and empower people with the information about “why” so they can exercise their judgment to achieve goals.

• • Have empathy and demonstrate kindness.

• • Build something meaningful by seeking improvement all of the time. Collect and study data, be willing to fail, treat mistakes as learning opportunities.