The Power of the Pause: What Trauma Sensitivity Teaches Advocates About Leadership
For September's Community Advocacy Network call, Adriana Leigh, author of “Trauma Sensitivity at Work” and founder of ALG Consulting, walked Community Advocacy Network call participants through trauma sensitivity as a leadership lens, an extension of trauma-informed practice built for rooms that might not ever use the word “trauma.”
It was a case study in getting trauma-informed thinking past executives who flinch at that word, donor reports that can't reference it, and cultures that reward the manager who stays in control no matter what.
An Inside-Out Approach to Trauma-Informed
Leigh calls herself a recovering human rights lawyer. Nearly two decades of work on gender equality and gender-based violence prevention, much of it international, taught her something she didn't expect: the survivors she represented were carrying trauma, and so were the organizations she worked inside, herself included.
“I really take an inside-out approach,” she told the group. The gap she kept finding wasn't in service delivery. It was in how organizations, frontline-facing or not, handled their own stress, power, and conflict. That observation ultimately became the focus of her book.
Why “Sensitivity,” Instead of “trauma-Informed”
Leigh borrowed the term “trauma sensitivity” from the education sector rather than coining it herself. She wanted to reclaim sensitivity as a strength, and she needed language flexible enough to travel into spaces, executive suites, donor reports, international contexts, where the word trauma itself can sometimes create resistance.
“The goal isn't to win a terminology debate,” she said. “It's to change how people experience the environment.”
That flexibility matters because, as one attendee put it, the founder of a California nonprofit that trains people on stress and cultural patterns (while also never naming trauma), the hardest system to change is a belief system. Leigh agreed that the doorway that gets traction shifts by audience. Some leaders respond to vision and self-awareness while others need numbers.
She pointed the group to McKinsey's recent work on trauma-informed leadership, which framed the same idea for the boardroom: pressure moves through an organization at the self, relationship, and system level, shaping whether judgment holds, coordination stays intact, and execution holds up over time.
Key Takeaway? Pause Before You Judge
One of Leigh's most concrete tools addressed a specific failure point: under stress, people freeze, get defensive, or turn controlling, and leaders routinely read those responses as performance problems: this person is difficult, resistant, doesn't care.
Trauma sensitivity inserts one question between the reaction and the judgment: what else might be happening here?
She paired that with a simple sequence: 1) regulate, 2) recognize, 3) respond, and 4) reflect. When asked which step leaders skip most, the chat answered fast: regulate and reflect.
Leaders may tend to jump straight to responding because they feel pressure to have an answer, without first noticing what's happening in their own bodies.
Systems, Not Just Individuals
Leigh was also careful not to let the conversation stop at personal coping skills. Her framework centers on safety, agency, and connection, then layers four levels around it: 1) awareness, 2) leadership behavior under pressure, 3) workplace culture, and 4) policies, processes, and the workload distribution that either reinforce or undercut the other levels. Change only holds when the four line up.
“You can have a wonderful individual manager,” she said, “and still be inside a harmful culture.”
One participant, describing years inside a recovery-focused nonprofit, put the tension bluntly. Leadership funded a one-time training on trauma and burnout, then shut down the follow-up conversation the moment employees tried to use it. The message, as she summarized it: we did the workshop, get back to work. Leigh's response was direct: awareness without follow-through in policy and behavior is exactly the checkbox she's trying to move people past.
Takeaways for Community Advocacy Network Attendees
Reframe the reaction, not the person. A frozen, defensive, or controlling response is a stress response (not a character flaw!). Pausing to ask what else might be happening changes the conversation before it starts.
Match the doorway to the room. Vision and self-awareness work for some leaders. Others need retention numbers, risk framing, or outside research. Treat the entry point as a tactic, rather than a compromise.
Sensitivity is a practice, not a diagnosis. Don’t ask leaders to identify who has a trauma history. Ask them to build conditions, hold structured meetings, set advance agendas, and ensure real follow-through on complaints to reduce the odds of causing further harm.
“My door is always open” is not psychological safety. People may have grown up or worked in environments where speaking up was discouraged, punished, or seen as a sign of incompetence. Simply telling them the door is open doesn't mean they feel safe enough to walk through it. Leaders need to build trust and create conditions where speaking up genuinely feels safe.
Join the conversation
CTIPP's Community Advocacy Network (CAN) calls are free and meet on the third Wednesday of every month from 2:00 to 3:00 PM ET for advocates working to advance trauma-informed policy at every level of government. Register for both at ctipp.org/calendar.
Comments