As teams navigate an era of constant disruption, from organizational change to mounting emotional demands, many leaders are finding that the greatest challenge isn’t maintaining performance but sustaining the human capacity to work and collaborate. In this Insights@Questrom piece, William Kahn, Professor of Management and Organizations, explores how cumulative trauma shows up in everyday workplace behavior, why middle managers often struggle in caregiving roles, and what leadership practices help rebuild trust, reduce burnout, and restore collective capacity in teams under strain.
Many teams are carrying the effects of multiple, overlapping disruptions. What are the most common ways this cumulative trauma shows up in everyday workplace behavior?
Constant disruptions – from the personal lives of team members, from the workplace itself – are not in and of themselves indicative of trauma. Trauma refers to experiences or conditions that overwhelm an individual’s psychological capacity to manage and to cope. It is defined not by events but by the effects of those events on the person’s ability to cope with and make sense of those events. The question, then, is how and when the cumulative effects of events overwhelm the capacities of a team and its members to work and collaborate. We know those capacities are overwhelmed in two primary ways: the team is unable to do the work for which it was created; and the relationships among team members are in disrepair, as individuals enact various defense mechanisms – externalizing blame, victimizing one another, forming unhealthy cliques – that prevent them from joining together to manage disruptions.
Middle managers are often expected to support distressed teams while meeting rising performance demands. Where do leaders most struggle in this caregiving role, and what support is often missing?
There are several types of support that managers need to provide to distressed teams. First, managers need to manage the boundaries separating the team from its environment (other parts of the organization, senior leaders, customers and clients), such that the team does not become overwhelmed. This requires managers to have the capacity to recognize when boundaries are too permeable and the skills to navigate relationships with others in the environment that protect the team and its members. Too often, managers lack those skills or the resolve to implement them. Second, managers need to look closely at where, when, and why the team’s capacities are overwhelmed by events, and find ways – in discussions with team members – to help the team develop and strengthen the relevant capacities, whether it be in operations, collaborations, setting expectations, or technical skills. And third, managers need to create and protect spaces for team members to talk openly about their experiences and their needs. Team members will know more about the barriers to their effective performances and useful ways to overcome those barriers. Managers need to listen closely and honor their experiences and ideas.
In caregiving-intensive fields like healthcare, education, and student-facing work, emotional labor has increased. What leadership practices actually help reduce burnout in these environments?
Burnout in these fields is a result of unceasing demands, routine and boring tasks, chasing the illusion of perfectionism, the sense of impossible tasks and ongoing failure, and the lack of acknowledgement and appreciation. Leaders that remain aware of these factors – rather than ignore how they wear people down, rather than blame front-line staff members for being inefficient or disengaged – are able to offset some of these issues. They are able to ensure that staff members get appropriate breaks from demanding labors, craft jobs so they can be more engaging and meaningful, set and model reasonable goals and expectations, look for ways in which staff members can experience momentum and efficacy in their work, and show appreciation in genuine rather than performative ways.
Leaders are encouraged to acknowledge stress and grief at work. What does meaningful acknowledgment look like, and what tends to feel superficial or unhelpful?
Genuine acknowledgement of others’ distress is rooted in empathy: the seeing of others in oneself, and of oneself in others. This is not easily faked – people have rather sophisticated radars when it comes to false empathy. In practice, genuine acknowledgement of emotional distress occurs when we make time to sit with others and hear of their experiences. When people are able to tell the story of what happened to them and what they thought and felt and did, the distress is able to recede and become right-sized: with the telling, painful events shift from stories that have us to stories that we have. This happens only when others are able to listen care-fully; to inquire without judgement; to show compassion for others in ways that enable others to have compassion for themselves. It also means staying away from the empty cliches that can leave those that grieve feel more alone. And it means asking what others need rather than make assumptions about how they can best manage stress and grief.
After layoffs, restructurings, or rapid change, trust is often fragile. What are realistic first steps leaders can take to begin rebuilding trust when people are still hurting?
The most impressive leaders are those that are able to access their own humanity during large-scale organizational events that require loss of some sort. These are the leaders that are able to normalize the hurt that members can feel – to tell them that hurting is an appropriate response, which offsets the shame that others might experience. These are also the leaders that can openly acknowledge what they can and cannot tell others, and why that is – and then to make themselves available to answer all the questions that they can about “how we got to this place,” while taking appropriate responsibility for the decisions that they made.
Leaders themselves are frequently exhausted or emotionally taxed. How can leaders care for others without ignoring their own limits or burning out?
The short answer: they cannot. Leaders must set the example: work within boundaries, have reasonable rather than outsized expectations for how much they work and can get done; take time off; delegate and empower others rather than stay at the center of everything; and be public about their needs for breaks and vacations. The point is for them to lead with their own humanity, rather than project a false front of themselves as superhuman.
As organizations move forward, what lessons about trauma, care, and leadership should become permanent, not just crisis responses?
The central experience of trauma, grief, loss, and burnout is helplessness and powerlessness, accompanied by an undercurrent of shame for having that experience. This has two implications. First, members should regularly have the opportunity to have work experiences that offset that of helplessness and powerlessness. That means delegation, empowerment, opportunities to learn and grow, and the like. Second, they should have regular opportunities to meet together to talk about their experiences at work – not to complain (although there is some of that) but to develop a shared sense of what is occurring and how they might join together to remove barriers to effective work and collaboration. These conversations move them from the shameful experience of being a victim to the energizing experience of being agents of change.
