I got to have a great conversation recently with Jennifer Simpson Carr of Furia Rubel Communications about trauma at work–how it shows up, the impact it has, and how we can get better at supporting each other through it.
One of my favorite parts of the discussion was when Jennifer asked what leaders can do to get started on supporting team members who are struggling. Here’s what I said:
“The first thing we can do as leaders is getting better at listening. There’s often that push to want to problem-solve. The more senior we get in our jobs, the worse listeners we become. The way we get more senior is by solving problems. When we are able to fix things, we get kudos for that, we get raises, we get promotions, and it becomes instinctive, so it’s really, really difficult to train that out of yourself, to be willing to be more receptive and just hear the person in front of you instead of instantly starting to think through, ‘What is the answer to this? How do we fix this thing that they’re coming to us with?’ I really think that is the first thing that leaders can do.”
You can read the full transcript or click through to listen on all the various platforms here.