Shana Hormann Helps Restore the Soul of Traumatized Organizations

Still a teenager, Shana Hormann found herself working at a residential center for girls who had personally experienced violence and family violence. Having grown up in a family with deep spiritual and cultural beliefs about caring for others, it was not a stretch to find herself at such a group home -- but it was also, she says, a "profound and foundational" experience.  As I sit taking notes across a small table in her office at Antioch University in Seattle, it's impossible not to feel Shana's combination of penetrating insight, reflectiveness and personal warmth.  "We all have our own family dynamics and cultures," she says, "but just imagine me, two house-parents and six girls -- thirty girls in the course of a year -- each of whom had their own history of sexual assault."  "That early experience," she continues, "was incredibly intense and immersive." 

Building on this work, she attended the University of Washington, gaining a Masters in Social Work. She soon started working with Rev. Marie Fortune of the FaithTrust Institute, educating clergy in rural communities about sexual assault and domestic violence.  By 2007 she had completed her Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch, having joined the faculty in 2000. Today she is an accomplished researcher, author, and presenter in areas of family violence, indigenous empowerment, collaboration and organizational trauma. She also maintains a private consulting practice.

Recently, she and colleague, Pat Vivian, published a groundbreaking manual for leaders, consultants, staff and funders, titled, Organizational Trauma and Healing. The book is focused primarily on non-profit organizations but has much broader applicability.  

You can find out more about Shana's work on the website she shares with Pat Vivian, www.organizationaltraumaandhealing.com, and she can be reached directly via email. 

Shana, how do you define organizational trauma?

Trauma is any injury to an organization that has long-term, lasting and collective psychic impact. It can result from external events, a clinic that is bombed or a shooter who walks in from the street, for instance, and it can also come from internal events, the suicide of a Director or discovery of some other great emotional harm to an organization, the embezzlement of funds by a trusted, long-time leader, for example.  Trauma can also come from a cumulative impact that has to do with the nature of the organization's work - for instance, organizations whose mission puts staff constantly in touch with clients suffering their own forms of traumatization from social ills. Insidious patterns of cumulative trauma, including a long-term practice of staff harassment can destroy organizations, especially when staff blame themselves for events or patterns they cannot control.

Trauma is not the same as a "crisis." Crisis is sometimes characterized as a "dangerous opportunity," but there's no sense of opportunity in organizational trauma by those involved. Instead there is a sense of doom, feelings and language of grief and death, and the failure of hope. I would also separate trauma from discomfort and stress in organizations.  Many organizations are stressed and people are unhappy, but that's different than trauma.  Problem-solving and making tough decisions can resolve issues in stressed organizations. While problem-solving and decision making are important for containing trauma in traumatized organizations, healing and reclaiming hope are vital for resilience.

How can we minimize the effects of trauma even as terrible events are happening?

The recent response to the landslide in Oso, Washington where in seconds many homes and families were destroyed, may be a good example of what we can do. Like all traumatic events it threw people completely; they were overwhelmed.  Yet in this case the community rapidly came together to search for survivors and then the careful, respectful search for bodies of anyone who was missing. There were immediate and spontaneous food and clothing drives. And there was also immediate concern for the physical safety of everyone, including the first responders, for whom debriefings of their experiences are a key strategy to protect them from psychological harm. There was structure right away to help people stay safe and come together. Moreover, there was no immediate media frenzy to sensationalize the event, to find a culprit and to blame. The media and the process on the ground have been very respectful. These are critical elements.  How we and the community regard and hold this event in our minds will have an impact on the community's long-term traumatization or long-term healing. Not rationalizing, minimizing, denying or blaming but instead offering structure and a compassionate, respectful response are essential.

Your work emphasizes the existing culture of traumatized organizations and consciousness of organizational patterns.  In addition to focusing on and responding to individuals, why is that so important?

The power of organizational culture is an important focus for my colleague, Pat Vivian, and me. Our separate streams of work -- organizational culture and organizational trauma -- challenged us to "stand on the balcony" with traumatized organizations and, eventually, to identify the patterns typically created when an organization is injured.  When we searched the literature, we found almost nothing relevant on a systems perspective to organizational trauma. From experience, what became clear is that if you focus on interpersonal dynamics alone, you can easily be swamped by them.  Moreover, in many organizations we could see how the focus on interpersonal interactions and on individuals needing to make changes left underlying patterns untouched. Patterns in the culture may continue the trauma, as evidenced by destructive conflicts and negative perceptions of specific individuals that are only symptoms of a deeper ongoing struggle with hopelessness. Consultants and leaders can help members surface underlying organizational patterns - for example, the expectation that overwork is desirable even to the detriment of organizational members or that every issue is urgent or a crisis - so that awareness and a new measure of conscious control and affirmation can be returned to people. Observing and intervening on destructive patterns is essential for building resilience and organizational health.

How do you define healing work in this context?

I encourage practitioners to begin with themselves. How we show up is what we have to offer. Pat and I encourage a non-judgmental response, one that focuses on expanding what we have to offer one another. If in my role as consultant or leader I'm here to fix you or your organization, that's a very narrow band. If I come to you and I'm judgmental, you'll feel it.  But if I am not judgmental or here to fix you, not here to keep score or to make things your fault, then you and the system can begin to relax and expand. A "non-anxious presence" is an important skill to develop; a good place to start for healing work. Non-anxiety allows room for hope, and our collective leadership has a chance to raise up the organization in a transformational, consciousness enhancing way.

Healing is about moving from a place of despair and doom to one of hope and health. It's about offering life-affirming leadership and being champions for an organization's strengths. Maintaining a focus on the system and bringing people together allows for healing through story-telling. As leaders we have a chance to voice and advocate for the specific strengths we see in our organizations and members. This is the way we stop dying and begin the move toward hope.

To get this started sometimes takes an outsider -- or a shared spiritual experience of some kind.  Sometimes spiritual experience happens because organizational members see that they are not alone, that they have each other. When the spiritual experience happens, you feel it as a definitive shift in the psychic space of the group.

What is your core advice to current leaders who find themselves facing trauma and needing to work with a potentially traumatized organization?

When faced with trauma there are many things we leaders can do on behalf of ourselves and our organizations.  We need to acknowledge the suffering and name organizational trauma.  We need to contain a traumatic event's impact - without minimizing - and offer optimism, confidence and energy.  We can foster a process of collective understanding.  We can personally champion strengths and personally model kindness, compassion, and what it means to have healthy boundaries.  These all help lessen the impact of a traumatic event or cumulative trauma.

But if I had to narrow it down to one thing, I'd say, "Don't be afraid." Don't be afraid because when we are, we isolate ourselves.  Our isolation, in turn, is what initiates the real hold trauma has on us as individuals and also on the organizations we lead. Whether or not we ascribe to the "expert" model of leadership, others in traumatized circumstances will look to us for what to do and how to be.  Whether we are formal leaders in organizations or consultants coming to help, people see us as the models.  Sometimes we're expected to be miracle workers - and of course we are not.  But when we overcome our own fears enough to reach out we begin modeling for everyone else, and the more we begin to use one another as resources in our moments of greatest fear and pain, the more we start that astonishing process of healing, hope and resilience that characterizes the best of our humanity.

MY LEADERSHIP BINDER

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