How to Trauma Healing Improves Leadership with Kelly Campbell
What does healing your trauma have to do with leadership...everything. In this episode of "A Trauma-Informed Future," host Katie Kurtz is in conversation with trauma-informed leadership coach and author, Kelly Campbell, a visionary in trauma conscious leadership. We unpack why true leadership means embracing vulnerability and integrating healing as a journey, not just for ourselves, but for our organizations. Kelly gives us an exclusive sneak peek into their book, "Heal to Lead: Revolutionizing Leadership Through Trauma Healing" a must-read for anyone looking to transform their leadership out April 2024.
Learn more about Kelly:
Kelly L. Campbell (they/she) speaks and writes about trauma, leadership, and consciousness—”The New TLC.” The author of Heal to Lead (Wiley, April 2024), Kelly is a Trauma-Informed Leadership Coach to emerging and established leaders who know they are meant for more. Kelly’s vision is to empower more than half of humanity to heal its childhood trauma so that we may reimagine and rebuild the world together.
Connect with Kelly:
Book Pre-Order: https://klcampbell.com/heal-to-lead-book/
Website: https://klcampbell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelly.l.campbell
Substack: https://kellylcampbell.substack.com/
Leadership Quiz: https://klcampbell.com/leadership/
Healing Resources: https://myhealingmenu.com
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): The term leader can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. We often talk about leadership in a variety of capacities, but how often are we really looking at leadership through the lens of trauma-informed care and our own trauma healing? In today's episode, I'm excited to talk with Kelly Campbell about their new book, about leadership, specifically conscious leadership and how trauma informed care is essential for the future of leadership. I am eager to share our conversation today. So let's get started.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): [00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome back to A Trauma Informed Future podcast. I am so excited to be in connection and conversation today with Kelly Campbell. Kelly, welcome. I'm really excited to see where this conversation takes us.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): I have been looking forward to this. You can't even imagine. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Kelly, There's so much to talk about. I'm already trying to rein myself in of all the questions I have after reading your new book, which is coming out April 16th which is Heal to Lead, Revolutionizing Leadership Through Trauma Healing.
Obviously, no surprise, anything related to trauma, trauma informed care and leadership is near and dear to my heart. I was so honored to be able to have a very early look at your book and, just devoured it. It's so beautiful. It's so real. And. It's so human it makes sense.
I'm always like, yeah, that makes sense. I don't know why it doesn't make sense to anyone else, but for me I'm like, this makes sense. [00:01:00] And it affirms so much, and also, there were so many moments of slow clap, like, yes. Thank you for putting this into a physical form for people to read on their own.
I'm looking forward to talking about your book, your trauma informed, coaching trauma informed leadership do you mind giving us a little bit of glimpse of how you got to this space? you share so much about your learned and lived experiences in this book, but I'd be curious to hear in your own words, from your more business corporate entrepreneurial social entrepreneurial endeavors to trauma informed coaching and trauma informed leadership.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah, happy to do that. Thank you for the question. And thank you for reading the entire book. It's amazing. Not every host does that. The journey into being a certified trauma informed coach has been a pretty long one, but In the scope of, the world in my lifetime, I guess it's actually been pretty short.
I started out as a very, very young social entrepreneur. [00:02:00] I started a digital marketing agency specifically for nonprofits and foundations and social impact initiatives. When I was 22, 23 years old. I worked in corporate America for about a year, year and a half, right out of college. And it was very clear Yeah that we were not a fit. I was, driving my motorcycle to work, listening to Ani DiFranco. They did not know what to do with me. I didn't know what to do with them. And ultimately, I think, in the environment that I was in, which was very toxic, masculine it was a hedge firm that had created an offshoot, like a marketing offshoot for its clients who had businesses, it was very convoluted, it felt extractive, it was a lot of, let me take my break.
Porsche to lunch and fly here for this meeting. And like the good old boys club golf outings on the weekends. I got out of there so fast [00:03:00] and I don't think I meant to, I think it was like, I was having an allergic reaction to the environment. And I was like, you know what? I could probably do this.
This doesn't look that hard. I could probably start my own business. And so that's what I did and. I, had no idea what I was doing in the beginning, but over the course of 14 years, I figured some things out. And what I didn't know during those 14 years that I only knew after I ended up selling the company in 2016 was that I had come to that work.
I had come to that driven entrepreneurial initiative taking place from a trauma response. Really felt the need to prove myself, to prove my worth, to prove my value, to prove that I mattered really to myself, also mostly to my mother and the world, at large. And [00:04:00] because I didn't really understand those things, and I hadn't touched those things, aside from being in therapy, but that was really related to, my upbringing.
I came to understand all of that. As I said, after selling and the trajectory from selling to ego death to becoming a consultant to then becoming a coach was a really rocky period of time. Over the course of those, let's call it seven or eight years, there was a lot of learning, a lot of unlearning a lot of curiosity.
Tons and tons of healing work, all different types of modalities, and ultimately, I feel like at this point, I'll fast forward at this point, it feels very much like. Of course, this is what I should be doing, right? Of course I would be the leader, the coach, the [00:05:00] confidant, the person who I needed back then.
So that's an encapsulation of that journey.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thanks for sharing that. It reminds me so much and I know you mentioned and talk about the work of Nicole Lewis Kieber. Nicole is a dear colleague and was also on episode 21 and this connection between Entrepreneurship and our trauma is so intriguing and , again, when you sit and think about it it makes sense.
I'm like, oh, when I sit and look at my lived experiences of trauma, and I look at my entrepreneurial and social impact journey, I'm like, oh, Okay, yeah, there we go. And I so appreciate the story, and you share this throughout the book too, is it wasn't like, oh, you realized this, you sold your agency at 14 years, and then like, all of a sudden, you figured it out and healed and good to go, right?
And [00:06:00] it's misconception, and it's a very, American way of looking at healing as this very checklist, not like linear, let's get to it, where, as we both know, healing is non linear, and as you refer it's a spiral and, you think you get to one stop, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, here we go again, or another thing, and I'm entering my eighth year of being an entrepreneur, and I self identify as like a social impact entrepreneur because trauma work, and I'm learning so much more about myself, and like entering another era of healing, and I was like, okay, and sometimes I'm like, where's the break?
But also, give me more I'm here for it. And I appreciate that because I think I'm This is something we clearly don't talk about as a culture, but also within, the leadership, quote unquote, world, it's almost seen as, it's still highly stigmatized, but as a weakness, right?
Oh we're healing. We go to [00:07:00] therapy if there's an issue, not to do anything else which is slowly shifting, but still there.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Which is fascinating that it's still there. All these years later. Yeah, it is fascinating that even therapy has that stigma. I think mental health issues, conditions, experiences will continue to have a bit of a stigma.
But that'll also become less and less, I believe. And I believe very much in, obviously the title of this podcast being a trauma informed future. I believe that that is the future. I believe that the more that we talk about these things, the more that we bring them out of the shadows, the better it is for everyone, right?
It gives permission for other people to show up that way and be vulnerable, which is, the second fundamental in the book embodying vulnerability. It's so critical. And I think, we have Vulnerability, we've [00:08:00] heard empathy I posit compassion, leading with compassion or compassionate intelligence, lighting the way for others.
A lot of those things have been trickled into the conversation about conscious leadership, which has been around for about a decade, but nobody says Yes, you have to be self aware, and this is how to develop self awareness. You actually have to push on the bruises. You actually have to touch and integrate and investigate your trauma in order to learn more about yourself and why you think and speak and behave the ways that you do.
So that's really what I'm adding to that conversation particularly in this book is that healing has to be a natural part of leadership. I would go so far as to say I would love to redefine the word leadership as a healing journey, right? If we're not using the environments in which we are living and working and leading, if we're not using those as healing [00:09:00] containers and growth opportunities and, supportive environments, like what are we doing then?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): There's so many things. So one of the big things I love about the breakdown of the fundamentals is we talk about integrating trauma. I think one of the biggest myths that I often have to dispel when I train or talk to people about trauma, because I'm sure you see this too.
We hear trauma and we get the, Ooh, the cringe, like, it's a bad word. I love when people are like, can you say something a little more positive? I'm like, no, we need to use the words for our experiences, and this is what it is, and I invite you to sit with that discomfort and maybe get curious about it.
But trauma is not mental illness, and I think this is where people get a little confused, and it gets a little intersected here, but mental health and mental illness are not the same thing as trauma. Trauma may manifest into mental health symptoms or mental illness. We [00:10:00] know this from Understanding PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the two are not the same.
And when we talk about trauma integration, and there's a lot of terms in the trauma therapy world. Resolution, recovery, like lots of different takes. But we know, as I always say, like the issues are in our tissues. We can't just mindset shift our way out of trauma. We have to literally move through it and become aware of it, and then practice these things in containers in which we can Accesses a felt sense of safety to do so.
So that's why we need, those therapists or those trained professionals to help create those containers. But , I've said this before, I'm a big believer that like, healing comes in many pathways. And if we're going to be trauma informed, we have to be healing informed too. And so one of the things I love about your book is naming this difference between like mental health maintenance, which is a thing and is important, and trauma integration, which is also a thing and is important, but they're not the same thing.
And I love that you're like I might offend [00:11:00] people with this. It's quote unquote, what we're saying these days, like a hot take, but also It's not it's the reality of the nuance of this work.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. I think in the beginning of that chapter, I may have said please read this chapter three times before you decide to get offended.
And really, the idea between mental health maintenance, therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, maybe remedial coaching, things like that have their place. They are not trauma integration modalities and if we're going to put one word on it, what is the actual difference?
What is this bifurcation? It's this idea or this. Let's actually call it what it is. It's a proven concept. It's a proven knowing that trauma lives in the body, right? You said in the tissues, it lives in the body. So we need to get it out of the body. The difference here is somatic work. It's movement. It's release, emotional release.
If we go through our whole lives trying to [00:12:00] reframe and change our mindsets and all of that, forget about toxic positivity, if we're just staying cerebral about our trauma and our experiences of it. That's not going to get us to the place where we can actually integrate it, heal it, make commitments as to what we're going to do differently, and then live those things, right?
And keep remembering that what you said before, the spiral will always come around. I don't ever use the word healed. I don't believe that trauma is ever healed. I believe that you can make great strides in integrating it. I don't believe it ever leaves completely. There's always going to be some other external force or external factor that you can't control.
Life will always bring adversity. That's one of the reasons why we're here as humans is to like, learn these lessons and, bring this around. And so you're never healed ed, you are [00:13:00] healing actively healing. It's an important distinction between these two things, mental health maintenance.
trauma integration modalities. And one thing that I do want to mention is that actually for both of these things, but mostly the trauma integration modalities, a lot of people will say, okay, so now I understand a little bit more about myself, maybe through some of these cerebral things.
Now what? Now where do I go? Where do I find these resources, these practices, these techniques? And no one's really had a great answer. And so in writing this book, I had written an entire sort of menu, if you will, of all of these different modalities. There were hundreds of them. And then my developmental editor said, you wrote a great book and you also overwrote it by 12, 000 words.
So this great resource that you have needs to be living outside of this book, which was a gift [00:14:00] because now that has become an online resource and accompaniment to the book at my healing menu. com, which allows people to chart their own path and. Really because it's nonlinear, you can order from the appetizers, which are the cerebral resources.
You can share plates. You can really go for the entrees, which are those more somatic practices and the desserts, which are maybe slightly controversial for some people, but psychedelics and plant medicine. If that calls to you. So there's just this huge resource and library that will continuously be built thousands and thousands of things that I can guarantee that if people start searching on there, they will come across many things that they've probably never heard of.
And that's part of the healing journey. Non linear, you follow the breadcrumbs you follow with, what is calling you what's interesting to you and you [00:15:00] go from there. No two people have the same path or the same journey when it comes to healing.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love that. I love the menu idea because it just reinforces this. trauma informed approach to healing, which has to be trauma informed. I'm always leery of making absolutes like that, but it has to be at this point. It allows for choice. I don't know how many times, and I'm sure you've heard this too, is like, tell me what to do.
What is it? What's the one thing? And what works for me may not work for you, and what works for you may not work for anyone else. You have to find what Fits for you. And it also is going to be dependent on your season of life and where you're at and what may have worked five years ago, may not work now.
And having a menu to choose from and send back and then try again. That's the beauty of going to a restaurant. I like you try a new dish and you're like, oh, I had this last time, I'm gonna have it again 'cause I liked it. Or I wanna try something new. And I think that's the beauty of healing that can also feel hard and long and that practice [00:16:00] because sometimes it takes a while to find the groove or the right person or people to find as guides or to hold space for. In talking about this I'm really curious your perspective on this understanding of.
This kind of fundamental and like workplace wellness and like. We're seeing, they've been around forever. After the pandemic, we saw, and during the pandemic because we're still in it, a huge uptick in wellness and all the things, and like self care and EAPs and all these things of trying to create quote unquote healing, environments at work, which I always, again, come from a place of I'm always super curious about them, and having been in places where these things, initiatives have happened, but also fallen flat, and so I'm curious of what your take is, if you're willing to share of the correlation between [00:17:00] looking at leadership as healing and these initiatives that happen in our workplaces.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah, happy to talk about that. I do have some feelings about that. I do want to go back to one thing that you said before that. People who can feel like this is very overwhelming or it takes a long time, on their particular healing journeys, I think we need to come to a place of acceptance that healing is a lifelong practice.
It's a lifelong commitment, right? So if we're thinking, Oh, I got this, I'm going to go to therapy for five years, maybe I'll do a couple of cold plunges. Good to go. That's not how it works. And also just this idea of attaching some. outcome to it or some time frame, right? I think we have to let go of that and just accept and really, deepen into.
This idea that I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life, and that's the way that it's meant to happen. That's the way that it's designed. If we [00:18:00] can wrap our heads around that and stop associating achievement with healing, I think that is a very good thing. Good place to be. That's the direction that we need to go in.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I always think of what Resmaa Menakem says is we have time and this, it's okay. Cause like we want to be there, right? We want to just be there and have a break and relax. Cause it looks like everyone else's, but the reality is I know for me, I have to reframe it. Oh, good. What a relief.
I don't have to have this all figured out in two years or whatever. And it's this reminder. And I always repeat that those words of resume, like we have time. Okay. Take a breath. Slow it down.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yes. And what a gift it is to your nervous system. What a relief you said, right? What a relief. I don't have to do this in a particular timeframe.
I think workplace wellness. Okay. is probably part of that future that we're thinking about. It just might look [00:19:00] different than the way people have been trying to do it. I think that there's been, and again, I don't work in corporate America. So I want to put that there in my experience.
I have very little experience working in corporate America. I have been coaching folks in the corporate space for a while. But it is not my own experience. So I'll just say that. I also represent a lot of people who talk about wellness in the workplace through the representation agency that I own consciousness leaders, and I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are in that space.
I think it is the future. I think what I meant by it needs to look a little different is there are people who are at the top of these companies, whether that's, C suite, or maybe it's like a director of HR or people operations that are making decisions as to what type of things they're going to bring and what type of modalities or mental health maintenance.
They're going to bring [00:20:00] in. I don't think it can be effective if you've got one person or a leadership team who's A, not trauma informed, B, shouldn't be making those kinds of decisions. about a person's and employee's healing journey. So if you're going to move in that direction, it has to be much, much wider, right?
I think we have to really rethink how we're showing up for the people who are under our stewardship, really. With consciousness leaders, as an example, some of the people that we represent our grief counselors, some of them are somatic emotional release experts. These are the types of things that need to potentially be brought into organizations, not just we'll pay for your gym membership.
There's a yoga studio around the corner, and our health insurance covers, cognitive behavioral therapy, that's not going to do it. So I like the movement that we've [00:21:00] made. Up till this point, because it used to be none of that. But we have so much further to go, and I think we have to get much more creative and much more expansive to use, one of the things that I know is very important to you, to expand our definition of what wellness actually means particularly in the workplace, and I don't mean physically in the workplace, necessarily, it could mean that, but what I'm talking about is Looking at employees as whole humans and supporting them in ways that we've never supported them before, right?
Because they're choosing to work in our organizations if we are the leaders. So it's up to us to support them in ways that they need, not in ways that make sense to our bottom line. That's what I'll say about that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Yeah. And also like. You can't cure anything with a pizza party.
Love pizza, but there's nothing more than a small Band Aid on a gaping wound. And I think [00:22:00] we miss the opportunity to actually Promote and integrate wellness in the workplace when we're only solely focusing on outside initiatives. If we're not actually integrating a trauma informed approach inside our leadership, inside our team culture, the culture of care within the organization, how we're allowing for autonomy or self determination in those spaces, how we're honoring people's humanity, which also boils down to what's your paid time off?
Like what's your grief policy for if there's loss, no one in the history of the world gets over. a death of a loved one in a day and a half. So what are those things when we're looking at wellness? I want to see those things, not how many granola bars you passed out one day for free.
That's really nice, but we're looking at like systemic and long sustainable wellness. And yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings obviously about that [00:23:00] too.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. And I was that. Employer. I was that leader who thought the pizza parties and, setting them up with nourishment and making sure that they didn't feel like they had to pay for their own lunches on Fridays and being in community.
I thought those were the right things. So I really empathize with the people who are like, I'm doing a great job. Yes, you care about your people. And could there be ways that you could support them that are more meaningful?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. So Kelly, I want to talk more about leaders as healers. Before we do that, can you just give us some shared language and understanding around these three types of leadership you talk about throughout the whole book, which is conscious leadership, which you've mentioned, has been around, but then you also talk about high conscious leadership and low conscious leadership. Do you mind just talking a little bit about what that means to help give us some perspective?
Kelly Campbell (they/she): [00:24:00] Absolutely. As I said, conscious leadership has been around for about a decade. It comes out of the conscious capitalism movement, which was really coined and created by John Mackey, who is the CEO or former CEO of Whole Foods and his colleague Raj Sisodia, who also has endorsed my book.
He's a great author as well. There's so many books that Raj has authored that are, I would. put up on the list and are also on my healing menu. But anyway, conscious capitalism about a decade ago was just this idea that like business should not exist just to make money. Oh my God, what a concept, right?
So that then morphed into conscious leadership. Conscious capitalism morphed into conscious leadership and conscious leadership was about, okay, so if we're going to have a movement of conscious capitalism, where the purpose of business is not just to make money, then there have to be leaders who lead with that same ethos.
And that's where the hallmarks of [00:25:00] empathy and vulnerability compassion, things like that came in. There was a book written probably around 2016. Well, two books written around 2016. One was becoming a conscious leader by Gina Hayden, which was my, Bible for lack of a better term and the 15 commitments of conscious leadership by Dethmer.
And really, if you know anything about those books, or you know anything about conscious leadership the 15 Commitments sort of posited that you have a line. You have this line of, I'm either above the line as a conscious leader, or I'm below the line of conscious leadership. So it really, it was, are you reactive or are you responsive?
Just to use different terminology. So in my view, the way that I think about things is low conscious leaders are very obvious sometimes not so [00:26:00] obvious. But they're the ones who are more reactive. They are people who are causing harm. They are people who are taking credit for themselves for other people's work.
They are stepping on others in order to raise their own, status in the world or in their organizations. They are people who are not conscious about the communication that they use. They don't really think of these hallmarks of leadership as meaningful. They think of them as, the soft new agey PC woo woo, things that they would never ascribe to.
These are sort of your, I don't know. I guess I would call them a little bit more antiquated, although it doesn't have to do with age. It can just be sort of a mindset and a way of being. I might use a synonym for low conscious leaders. I might call them wounded leaders because really what they are wounded adults, [00:27:00] wounded children in adult clothing.
We all know what these people look like and sound and feel like we've probably had bosses like them. We have, if you live in the U S you've had a president like this. If you live in Florida, you've had a governor like this, they're all over high conscious leaders. In my definition are those who really understand that their role as a leader is to actively heal for themselves, but also for the benefit of others.
They see the people under their leadership as people that they are stewarding, that they really are there to care for and develop, and they hold tightly to, empathy, compassion, vulnerability. They understand that their role is to normalize diversity, equity, and inclusion. They take, an active role in making sure that their organizations are places of.
[00:28:00] healing and growth and support. They cared less about their own personal legacy. They're less concerned with creating more followers and more concerned with creating more leaders. So just for context, this is not a binary of good and bad. This is a spectrum of healing.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love that. I think starting there is also so important.
And I mentioned this a lot because we need this reminder a lot because our brains function in that either or thinking to keep us alive every day. That's like literally how we're surviving. But when it comes to our humanity, when it comes to relationships of any kind, We don't live and exist in the binary.
Everything is very nuanced and it can be hard to shift into holding the complexities and the and both. I think one of the first steps of trauma informed care as well as with high conscious leadership is that [00:29:00] ability To hold that nuance and honor it and exist within the liminal spaces of the and both.
It's so explicitly clear when you're around somebody who has that style of leadership who embodies it versus a low conscious leader where it's very good, bad, right or wrong, very binary. It's very rigid. It's very constrictive. I feel it viscerally when I'm around, or I witness one of those, public leaders speak or say something. I feel like a gripping in my physical body because of those very binary ways.
And I love that you talk about a spectrum because it again allows for a visualization of the nuance about there is no, it's an evolution. There's no arrival.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. And, low consciousness. In terms of leadership can also look like that act of healing, right?
Like when I was a CEO of my digital marketing agency, [00:30:00] I, from the external could look very much like a conscious leader. I really cared about my employees, about my team members. And I also did things that in retrospect were slightly emotionally manipulative, not from a conscious standpoint, but subconsciously because I wanted to make sure that let's say our reputation from the outset was intact.
Maybe I felt like I had to micromanage people. Because, a particular client that we were supposed to get some big job from, some big engagement from, I needed to be the one to do the work because I couldn't trust my people. Well, that not trusting and that micromanaging and all of that's part of low consciousness.
So that spectrum is very real, even for people who are doing this work. Yes. That was also 12, 13, 14, 15, 20 years ago. [00:31:00] And I am a different version of me, a new version of me than I was back then. I've learned a lot I'm healing a lot. So it's not, one of those things where you are identified or categorized as one type of and then that is what you are.
We all are actively moving across the spectrum and some people, I would say the majority of people are moving from one part of the spectrum to the other, but it is also a bit of a dance. So it's just part of the process.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love what you talked about, like reactive versus responsive. And I think this correlates so beautifully with how, again, trauma informed care and healing informed care, which I really see this as, when we talk about our own healing and our own leadership is.
A lot of times when I'm teaching trauma informed care people ask what do I do if someone what if I cause harm? What if I say something? What if I do the wrong thing? What do I do? And I really invite people to notice what happens in your body? Are you going to react?
[00:32:00] I know as somebody because of my own healing journey, like I know because of my trauma and childhood and adolescence and young adulthood, like I don't respond well to conflict. My fawning goes up and then I want to fix and I want to solve and that's my reactivity to a comment or someone coming forth with feedback.
Even it's this like jolt of people pleasing and I have to pause and do the work of stepping away, resourcing myself so I can be more responsive. There's been many times when I've come from that place of reactivity and There's been more harm towards others in myself because I did not take that pause and time.
And also, I'm going to give myself some grace, although taking accountability at the same time, I didn't have the resources, I wasn't at that marker in my healing to have the capacity to do that. And it's not perfect by any means [00:33:00] because that's not real, but it is this level of reactivity versus responsiveness and how do we do that dance and learn from those things so that we can continue down that spectrum.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. And so everything that you just said makes me know that you are a high conscious leader as you are showing up today, right? How you're talking about it and what happens in your body and your self awareness and that's high conscious leadership.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Well, work in progress always I appreciate that breakdown and I think again, this shows that intersection of trauma healing and trauma informed care because a lot of times this is still so new to people, although it's been around forever, like it's still new and especially in spaces of business or entrepreneurial endeavors, whatever it may be and there is this assumption that trauma informed care is trauma healing. And I do believe that Again, when I say healing, I mean healing [00:34:00] in all its forms, not therapy specifically only, but in all forms that when we embody and integrate trauma informed care, we are creating pathways for healing to occur.
And I think that very much aligns with what you were saying is like leaders as healers, that when leaders are doing their own trauma healing and are in that practice and working towards that spectrum of high conscious leadership. That is inviting healing to occur in the environments and spaces they're leading in.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): So they don't have to be doing anything, quote unquote, just by being this way, right? Showing up in these ways and doing their own work, but just certainly in the way that they're showing up from a being I have that bifurcation between or distinction between being and doing from a Buddhist perspective when they are being trauma informed.
They are actively healing other people
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely and I love that distinction because I think [00:35:00] that as we see this, which I always get really excited about it, and maybe this is just me and my like. Trauma world because people are like, how are you so excited about this?
I'm like, I don't know. It's just who I am. But I'm so excited to see people awaken to these realities. And because we're humanizing the workplace, we're humanizing leadership. We're humanizing our human experience. And when I see. This occurring what we're also seeing are wanting the shortcuts that very cultural Western cultural thing of wanting to get there quick.
No, where's the pill? Can you do this in 30 minutes? No but what happens is then we're just saying we're doing, we're saying, but we're not being, we're not embodying, we're not slowing down to actually sit with and experience these things. And I love that because I think that's such the true nature of trauma informed care.
It's not something we can just [00:36:00] say, it's something we have to be.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah, and I think other examples of this in terms of the future that you see, that I see, that so many of us see, we already start to see it in the movement toward let's say the slow food movement, right? We're moving away from that Fast factory cheap, to slow food, really intentional farm to table understanding where our food comes from, maybe more toward a plant based diet, things like that.
We're seeing it in fashion. People are understanding that fast fashion has created a whole host of issues from a climate perspective. So slow fashion. Upcycled materials more recycled. So you're starting to see it in many different sectors. And you're right. It's definitely not, in the mass adoption phase from a leadership standpoint, but it will be.
And I do think it will be in our lifetime.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, I agree. And I think we both know and believe that obviously, [00:37:00] trauma informed care is rooted in social justice frameworks. This is social justice work, and people at the helm were social justice advocates and activists.
When we look at more of our people talking about decolonizing mental health and looking at the power of colonialism and how it's imprinted everything we do and feel and say and be, trauma informed care, although it's not the same, it can't be without. They're together.
And when we look at liberation justice, DEI work, anti racism, anti oppression work, it's all interconnected. We can't have one without the other because they're so intertwined. This is the long game, right? If we could have gotten, human rights and justice for all, I think we'd be in a very different place right now.
And we're clearly not. And we're actually at a very pivotal place of crisis in many accounts. And so I think that's why Looking at it back to your point earlier is this is a lifetime, a [00:38:00] lifelong practice, there is no arrival. It is an evolution. It's a spectrum. And I think what excites me about your book is it's inviting, we need as many different types of invitations as possible to this work.
And I think you're creating an invitation for people who self identify as leaders, maybe people who are still hesitant to claim that, which that term or that identifier, but you're inviting people in to see this world and what's possible because there's so many possibilities.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you touched on the decolonization lens and the social justice roots of this, because I think for many people, not all, but for many people who will read this book, I think that might be new information. And there may be some confrontation. I talk about white privilege.
I talk about the cishet white male model. That may not be content that they are familiar with, and it is an invitation. And the way that I bring [00:39:00] it in there I do feel like is invitational. So I appreciate you saying that and naming that because there is so much of that, that just runs underneath the current or throughout the current of the entire book.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Yeah. No I definitely noticed that and I was excited to see that because it's so important when we're looking at, because most people just think of trauma as something really bad, like war or violence, We tend to think it in very narrow definitions, and it just happened to one person, and we forget that we are also all exposed to collective and systemic trauma, and we play roles within that, and that's a really hard and uncomfortable thing to witness and also reckon with, but it's part of healing, and we also need to take part of the collective healing of which we exist in these systems, which is a whole other book.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): It is a whole other book, but I think I've teased it out enough to where it sets it up for another book or it sets it up for, deeper [00:40:00] conversations about that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. So Kelly, I would love for you to share a little bit before we wrap up of who is this book for and how can people who read it, begin, because I think that's the one question I hear is like, where do I start?
Where do I begin? And I love the, my healing menu, because it's offering choice and helping in small doses of figuring that out with healing, but also starting to rumble with this idea of conscious and high consciousness. where any tips, any invitations there for folks who may be listening where this is new, but really intriguing.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. The book is for emerging and established leaders who are meant for more. They know they're meant for more. They just don't know what more means. And. As you said before, if someone doesn't necessarily identify as a leader because they don't own a company or they're not in the C suite or they're not an entrepreneur, that doesn't mean that they're not a leader.
They could be a leader within their social group. They could [00:41:00] be a leader within their community.
They could be a leader within their family system. So it's leadership as a much, much broader term. So I'll say that. And then in terms of where to start. Start what I did in, I forget which chapter it is, but there's a leadership quiz.
It's called your true North, identifying your leadership style or your identity. And that can just be taken. It's a very quick 20 question. I statement quiz at KL Campbell. com forward slash leadership. I'm sure you can pop that into the show notes, but that's a really. Great entrance into, just seeing where you sit on that spectrum that we talked about before about high conscious, low conscious, and then there's a couple of different other ones in between.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Awesome. Thank you for that. So excited for you to bring this book into the world. I'm so eager. I'm going to put it in my calendar cause I'm just going to watch and wait to see [00:42:00] like waiting for people to read this. So I can be in conversation and also like just see the reception and the invitations for people to be in conversation connection and community around reimagining leadership and in so many different ways.
So I'm really grateful that you're here and that we're in having this conversation. We'll talk about pre orders and books and things like that, but I want to just close our conversation today With the three gentle spritz questions I always love to close with if you're ready for them.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): I am ready for them
Katie Kurtz (she/her): All right. So if you could describe trauma informed care in one word, what would it be?
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Trauma informed care to me is love and the way that I define love is support and challenge.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): What does a trauma informed future look like for you?
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Trauma informed future to me is my vision for the world.
My vision is to empower half of humanity to heal its childhood trauma so that we can re imagine and rebuild the world that we want to live in versus the world we live in right now. So a trauma informed future to me is everything moving in that direction. I say half of humanity because that in and of itself is a pretty audacious goal or a vision.
I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime, [00:45:00] but I do want to be a part of contributing to that. Because I think that as soon as we hit that like 50 percent mark, those of us who are healing can help the other people who have not been on that journey yet. Yeah, that's what it looks like for me.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love that. I think this invitation for people to be in their healing practice is so important because we know and you touch upon this and this is another thing I repeat a lot is the research is very evident that safe, healthy, nurturing relationships are the number one thing to prevent, heal, and mitigate trauma.
And the more we can focus on our healing and what we have to work on, we're able then to show up as a safe, healthy, nurturing person in someone else's life. And that ripple effect can be Insidious. And it can also be very subtle that we don't realize it, but we all know the, that person in our life that helped change the trajectory of our pathways.
And so that's, [00:46:00] so I always, when I feel a little less hope in humanity, I always bring myself back to that. I'm like okay. What are we doing? Yeah. Such a beautiful vision. I hold it with you.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Thank you. And. May I ask you a question?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): So based on what you just said, who was that, was there one person for you when you were younger or at any point in your life that, that was that and gave you that?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, absolutely. It was my Aunt Gerry. She, is still to this day like a second mother to me, and the reason why she's always been there for me, Although she's a tough Irish woman, and she believes in gutting it out, even if, life is tough. But, the thing that was so pivotal for for me, because what she did, which was so simple, and I've shared this with her many times, and she'll deny it and be like, oh, whatever, but she listened to me.
She listened to me. As a kid, I had big feelings, and [00:47:00] I knew something wasn't right, but everyone told me it was fine, and I knew, and I, you internalize that, and she listened, and that to be seen and heard by somebody, So young and then to have that consistency throughout my whole life, she's been a solid anchor.
And it's been really beautiful to watch her listen and witness my work and to see some small shifts in some of her, what she says or how she shows up for me. It's been really beautiful to see the mirroring there.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Yeah. Yay. Aunt Gerry, thank you for sharing. Yeah.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you for asking Kelly.
You did share a lot of things. Everything will be linked in the show notes. I just want to reiterate, the book is coming out, Heal to Lead, April 16th. For anyone listening, please pre order. Pre orders are so important for authors in so many different ways. It helps. Folks look at the accessibility of books it can help impact it being carried in your libraries.
It can be, there's so many different benefits to it. I just want to close with anything else you'd [00:48:00] like to add about you, the incredible work you're leading the communities you lead and the book coming out.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): I'm just really excited for this book to be birthed in the world. It's been in the making for about five years.
I was writing different variations or versions of this book, and I worked with a book consultant that two or three book consultants, but the second one said to me a few years ago You're not writing your first book. You're writing like your third book. And I was like, what do you mean? I just spent how many years and how many hours writing what I've written and you want me to just throw it out the window?
And she said, I don't want you to throw it out, but I want you to put it aside. And I want you to start from scratch, which was so daunting. And we were on the telephone and she said, I want you to close your eyes. And I want to ask you a question. And she said, When was the first moment that you recall stepping into a leadership role?
And I [00:49:00] had my eyes closed and this memory came fluttering back. That memory became the reason why I wrote the book and it became the introduction to the book. I don't want to spoil it if you actually read it, but it was such a pivotal question for me and so yes, the book has been in the making for a long time, but really solidly in the last, year.
And I'm just really grateful to my literary agent and to Wiley for being all in on this from day one. It was like, yes we are going to put this out in the world. And Wiley has even basically advanced the timeframe, which with which it was going to come out because it's a presidential election year.
So with that said yes, I'd be grateful for the pre orders and also just grateful for feedback. Anyone who wants to share anything that has impacted them. Yeah, happy to [00:50:00] talk about that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Awesome. Thanks, Kelly. Yes. I have a few very intentional podcast planned for Fall of 2024. So stay tuned for that.
And we'll be revisiting and sharing this podcast episode again during that time as well. Thank you so much for being here and helping us co create this vision of a trauma informed future.
Kelly Campbell (they/she): Thanks Katie.
