Becoming a Trauma-Informed, Cross-Culturally Fluent Leader in Times of Crisis with Lori Adams-Brown

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Hey difference makers. A quick pause before we dive into the episode. If you've been enjoying these conversations and you want to take the impact even deeper, I'd love to invite you to subscribe to my Substack newsletter. It's where I unpack the behind the scenes insights from each episode of A World of Difference and share practical, thought provoking tools on trauma informed leadership across cultures, inclusive talent development and global organizations. When what the most forward thinking Chros and CEOs are doing right now and how you can make an impact in your workplace whether a nonprofit, business or faith based spaces.

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When you subscribe, you'll instantly get my free guide 3 Strategies for Trauma Informed Leadership. Is it designed for leaders navigating cross cultural teams and high change environments? Just head to loriadamsbrown.substack.com or click the link in the show notes to sign up. That's loriadamsround.substack.com where leadership meets best purpose values and difference becomes our greatest strength. Alright, let's get back to the show because our world is different and we were born to make a difference in it.

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Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown and this is a podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. Hey friends, it's Lori Adams Brown. And if you are a leader anywhere in the world right now, whether you're in a business and a nonprofit, as an executive, as a manager working in hr, you know what many of us know, especially in talent, that the world feels heavy. People are bringing that into the workplace.

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There's political unrest, there's global polarization, lots of employee burnout, cultural conflict in many, many places, and you're being asked to hold a lot as a leader. But here's one thing. You're not alone. Many of us are feeling this way. And in today's Zillow episode, I thought I would take the time to address and walk through with you how trauma informed leadership isn't just a buzzword.

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It's the most important skill set for navigating these times that we're in right now. And I'll be sharing some stories I've never told here on the podcast, like what I learned in translating for a world renowned trauma therapist during my time of working in the Indonesian tsunami. I'll also talk about how that experience really shaped my global career from Southeast Asia to here in Silicon Valley and why I keep going a lot deeper into the neuroscience behind behavior and leadership. Plus, I'll bring in some key insights from our recent guests like Catherine Matisse, who just released her powerful new book, Being a Change Agent Inside Organizations, Especially when conflict Runs really deep. So let's dive in.

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It's time to lead differently.

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Hey friends, it's Laura Corey Adams Brown. If you are a leader right now, especially in talent, hr, executive leadership, nonprofit business, you already know the world feels heavy. Political unrest, global polarization, employee burnout, cultural conflict. You're being asked to hold a lot. But here's one thing you're not alone.

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And in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through how trauma informed leadership isn't just a buzzword. It's the most important skill set for navigating these times. I'll be sharing some stories I've never told on this podcast, like what I learned translating for a world renowned trauma therapist in the wake of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. I'll also talk about how that experience shaped my global career from Southeast Asia to Silicon Valley, and why I keep going deeper into the neuroscience behind human behavior and leadership. Plus, I'll bring some key insights from recent guests that you loved, that I also loved.

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Like Catherine Matisse, who just recently released her powerful new book on being a change agent Inside Organizations. Especially when Conflict Runs deep, let's dive in. It's time to lead differently.

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In 2004, I was living in Indonesia when the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated Aceh Province where I was working. I suddenly found myself called to be a helper in a situation I had no idea was coming. I brought in a translator who was a world renowned trauma therapist who I had flown in to do a short stint to support medical teams, families and children who were recently orphaned in that devastating day. It wasn't about just translating his words from English to Indonesian and to translate Indonesian children's stories and parents stories for him back into English. It was translating pain into understanding, despair into dignity.

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In that very moment, I saw firsthand how trauma manifests in the body, how even the strongest leaders can freeze when the grief is just too much. And how listening, really listening, is the beginning of healing. My friend Nana, you may have heard me talk about her before. She was my best Acehnese friend that I had met when she was in university before she got married. She had later gotten married, had her first baby.

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They had a house that they had bought, like many young families, right on the beach. And the beach was beautiful. Gorgeous palm trees, fresh coconut you could drink, you could eat grilled fish on the side of the ocean with your hands freshly picked out by the fishermen as they brought in the day's catch, eating with rice and the soy sauce that they make there with chopped up vegetables. It's really one of my very favorite meals that I miss so much. Living on the beach was a dream and a beautiful life until the day that it wasn't.

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On December 26, 2004, they that early Sunday morning, like many families, found themselves on the beach. And they, my friend Nana and her husband Aya and their baby girl, just one year old, found themselves running up into the top of a middle school to escape the Indonesian ocean, waves that came larger than anyone had ever seen in their lifetime. And as they race to the top, like many stories that I ended up hearing in not only translating for that trauma therapist, but just throughout my early weeks and months of work in that disaster zone, they had their arms be pulled back by the mob. And many women were trying to climb, and so were men and children. And there was a particular woman who kept pulling on the arm of my friend Nana's husband, Aya.

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And he kept holding onto his baby girl until the last pull pulled his arm back and the ocean water was rising to the point that his baby girl was swept out to sea. This isn't the only story like that that I know, and anybody who worked in that early part of the tsunami heard these stories. But this one was from my good friend. And my heart broke in a million pieces, completely shattered when I heard about what had happened to her baby girl. And as I rocked my baby boy, just a few months younger than her girl, to sleep at night, I remember tearing up and thinking, why is it I have my baby and she doesn't have hers?

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I wanted to do anything I could do to help. And having this trauma therapist I was translating for, it was a great opportunity to go sit with her in her home and hear her story. And I'll never forget the day when we were at her house and she shared what had happened and had obviously probably told that story so many times, even in those early days. But the reality is many women and many men had the same story. And it's hard to recover from trauma when your trauma is just like that of everybody around you.

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You don't want to be a burden to them. And there were in her faith and her religion that told her that crying was not in the best interest of her and her baby. And so to stay strong and to stay steady and to keep normal what was absolutely not normal, she clung to things that made it difficult for her to heal and work through that trauma. But sitting with her. That day was one of the most deeply impactful moments of my leadership journey, along with many others that came after that, where I sat and listened to the stories of the heartbreak and the trauma and the unimaginable that had happened to so many parents and husbands and wives and daughters and friends.

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Because that kind of loss of life just never leaves you. But the reality is, even though my current role in business, I'm not dealing with many life or death situations. There are people that walk into our offices around the world every day, and the stats show US that about 75% of the workforce has experienced some form of trauma and has even witnessed workplace bullying. In the workplace, which can be an event that's very traumatic for a lot of people. All of these experiences have really formed this foundation for my life's work.

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That experience that day certainly laid a foundation for me that I've built upon since. And today I lead in global talent development. But what I really do is help leaders become healers as we listen to our direct reports, to the managers, to the executives, to our co workers around us. Because trauma doesn't just live in disaster zones. It walks into our zoom calls.

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It shows up in performance reviews, in microaggressions, at that water cooler, in silence, in resignations. And the good news is neuroscience is finally catching up to what many of us have intuitively known. That psychological safety isn't a nice to have. It's the oxygen of high performance. Recent research in trauma and neuroscience confirms what Gabora, Mate, Bessel, van der Kolk, and others have said for decades now.

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The Body Keeps the Score, a book that, if you haven't read, I highly recommend. Years ago, my therapist recommended it to me when I was coming out of a toxic work environment. But as leaders, we are stewards of nervous systems. If your team is constantly in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, your talent will disengage. Period.

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What I've learned from working across cultures from Singapore to San Jose, is that trauma may look different, but the brain's response is universal. It's why I now weave trauma informed practices into executive coaching, culture building, even onboarding. It's not about therapy. It's about creating environments where people feel seen and safe enough to perform at their best. Recently on the podcast, I had the privilege of speaking with Kathryn Matisse.

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I know many of you have told me you loved that episode. I did, too. Her new book offers a blueprint for what it looks like to become an organizational change agent, not just during easy seasons, but especially in the hard ones. Her book Navigating Toxic Workplace for Dummies has been newly released and I know many of you are starting to get copies of it. I highly recommend it.

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If you haven't heard that episode, please go back and listen to it. It was just a few weeks ago. This book really is where she talks about how toxic cultures often stem from unresolved trauma, not just individual, but systemic, and how leaders can intervene with curiosity, courage and consistency. One of her quotes in there is that you can't change workplace culture all by yourself. It takes a team.

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And the good news is that most employees want to work in a positive, respectful environment. The challenge is getting them to actively participate in creating that environment in a toxic workplace. Employees certainly feel like leaders don't care about making things better, so why should they? As a result, they end up doing what they're doing and waiting for leadership to make the first move. It's understandable and makes getting them on board hard, but not impossible.

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They need to understand that culture change is a group effort for which everyone is accountable. So getting employees to care is certainly the work that she's involved in. And that episode once again was very insightful and I really enjoyed reading through her latest book. Highly recommend that you get it. Her work really mirrors what I've seen globally.

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That we must stop thinking of leadership as control and and start embracing it as co regulation. Showing up as that non anxious presence as a leader. Because people outside of our workplace are experiencing so much political unrest, global conflict is continuing to unfold and this skill set, trauma informed, cross culturally fluent, neuroscience literate leadership is not optional, it's essential. Here in California there are ice raids. I know that people living in Ukraine are trying to just survive.

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There are people dealing with unrest all over the world, outside of the workplace, inside of the workplace, showing up as leaders who care. It matters as much as it ever has. If there's one phrase I carry with me from those early days in Sumatra and Indonesia, in the tsunami relief and into today's boardrooms in Silicon Valley, it's this something that Ted Lasso often says. Stay curious, not judgmental. We don't know what people are dealing with.

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And I believe that people are just by and large doing the very best that they can. Trauma informed leadership begins with that posture. Curiosity, humility, humanity. I would encourage us to ask more questions, to just find ways to sit in the discomfort hold space and remember every leader you admire didn't rise in spite of adversity, they rose through it. So if the world feels like it's on fire and this world feels like they have just absolutely lost their minds.

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You're not broken. You're being called. Called to lead with heart and courage in a way that truly makes a difference. So difference makers, as you head into your next team meeting, your next hard conversation or or your next strategic pivot, remember this. You can build resilient teams.

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You can lead with empathy and strength, and you can be the change agent your organization needs right now. If this episode stirred something in you, share it. Share it to your chro. Talk about it in your next executive team Sync. This is how we shift the narrative of leadership.

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And hey, if you haven't yet, subscribe to A World of Difference and check out the link in the show notes for my free guide, three Strategies for Trauma Informed Leadership, which you can also get if you subscribe to my substack newsletter, loriadamsbrown.substack.com you'll get the free download of Three Strategies for Trauma Informed Leadership and I think that you'll really find them insightful. Until next time, stay curious, stay courageous, and keep Making a world of difference. Hey, real quick, before you go, if this episode made you think, made you feel, or made a difference in your day, here's how you can make a difference too. Send this episode to five people right now. Seriously.

00:15:03
Five people in your text threads, slack channel or group chat who care about making the world better. You never know who needs to hear this today, and if you haven't yet, hit that follow button so you don't miss the next conversation. Then scroll down, tap 5 stars and leave a quick review. I read every single one and your words help this show reach more difference makers. Just like you remember, your voice moves mountains.

00:15:30
Sharing, rating and reviewing. It's not just support, it's activism. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being you. And most of all, thanks for making a world of difference here on A World of Difference, we talk a lot about what it means to show up with courage, especially when the world tells us to stay silent.

00:15:47
But here's the truth. Healing isn't meant to happen in isolation. We we all carry stories of joy, of pain, of resilience. And sometimes we need a space that's just for us. A space where we feel safe to process, to breathe, to be.

00:16:04
And that's why I believe in therapy. And that's why I'm so grateful to partner with Better Help online therapy that meets you wherever you are. Better Help matches you with a licensed therapist based on your unique needs. Whether you're dealing with burnout grief relationships or simply trying to make sense of your story. Because you matter and your story deserves to be heard.

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As a listener of this podcast, you can get 10% off your first month at www.betterhelp.com difference again, that's betterhelp.com difference because you don't have to walk this road alone. Hey, difference makers, Quick question. Have you ever felt stuck in your job? Like you're meant for more, but you just don't really know how to make that leap? It's scary.

00:16:49
Maybe you've outgrown your role, your industry, or even your workplace culture, and you're really craving a career actually aligns with who you are and the impact you want to make. I've been there. And after coaching professionals across three continents and leading in everything from global nonprofits to Silicon Valley tech, I created something just for you. It's called Master the Career Pivot, my signature course designed to help mission driven, values driven professionals like you make bold, values aligned moves without losing yourself in the process. This course isn't about polishing your LinkedIn profile.

00:17:26
It's about finding clarity, recovering from burnout, and reconnecting to your sense of purpose. It's about joining a community of others who are making bold pivots too. Because you don't have to do this alone. Whether you're navigating a toxic workplace, returning to work after time away, or just sensing that it's time for meaningful change, this course will give you the tools and and the psychological safety to move forward with confidence. I built this program around what I know helps reflection, expert guidance, and here's the fun part.

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Asking you to offer advice to others going through the same thing. Why? Because science shows we gain clarity when we help others. And that sense of belonging and purpose? Well, that's where the magic happens.

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So if you're ready to go from stuck to aligned, from exhausted to to energize, go to loriadamsbrown.com career pivot and join the Master the Career Pivot course today. And if someone just popped into your mind who's in that messy middle, forward this episode to them. You could be the reason they finally say yes to change.