Sustainability Practices at Work
When collective stressors, shared trauma, or uncertainty arise, this energy doesn't stay contained to the headlines or our personal lives. It moves through your group practice like water through fabric, showing up in the weight of team meetings, the quiet tension in hallway conversations, and the exhaustion that settles over lunch breaks. Your team carries these experiences into their work with clients, and you carry the responsibility of holding space for both your community and your people.
You may be asking yourself:
How can I support my teams while they hold collective distress?
How do I provide that support when I am also personally struggling?
What does trauma-informed leadership look like when I'm feeling overwhelmed, too?
How do I create space for processing with my team while maintaining boundaries?
Creating this space also serves as a protective factor against burnout and compassion fatigue..
In times of collective stress, political upheaval, or climate disasters, your work culture values remind you that they are more than ideals; they are relational agreements that keep your team connected to each other and to their purpose. These values become the container that holds your shared humanity when everything else feels uncertain.
When your team is offered space for their humanity, it eases their helplessness, hopelessness, and empathic distress so they can tend to their hearts and return to holding space for your clients and community.
Creating this space also serves as a protective factor against burnout and compassion fatigue. When your team feels seen in their struggle rather than expected to compartmentalize, they're more likely to carry processed awareness into their clinical work and working relationships.
The invitation to create conditions where people can be human.
Being a trauma-informed work culture requires spaces where people can name what they're carrying, receive support, and recommit to their values from a place of authenticity rather than depletion.
Depending on your work culture's values and norms, you can be endlessly creative in cultivating this type of space. You might facilitate an activity during group supervision that honors what your team is processing. You could open a team meeting with a moment of collective acknowledgment. You might even consider offering an optional drop-in gathering where people can be present with one another without an agenda or expectations.
Our offering to you during a time of polycrisis is a Sustainability Practices at Work (click to download resource) handout that you can facilitate with your team. This resource includes concrete practices designed for group practice settings, activities that honor both individual and collective needs while maintaining appropriate boundaries.
Release the idea that you have to fix or solve. The path forward is about gathering imperfectly, expressing authentically, taking values-aligned action, and attending to your shared humanity. Your willingness to acknowledge collective pain and create space for it is itself a form of leadership, one that models resilience as a community practice of care and support.
Interested in more leadership support? Our newsletter is a space to resource your leadership. We intend to provide nourishing ideas that uplift you and your team.