Toolkit: Trauma- Informed Leadership and Organizational Well-Being
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Introduction
This toolkit is designed for mid- to senior-level managers in refugee-, newcomer-, and survivor-serving organizations. It provides a structured approach to leadership that supports workforce wellbeing, organizational stability, and trauma-informed practice. The aim is to help leaders navigate high-pressure environments with clarity, steadiness, and cultural humility, recognizing that leadership directly influences psychological safety, staff sustainability, and client experience.
The toolkit progresses in a clear sequence: establishing leadership stance, assessing alignment between values and practice, preparing for disruption, strengthening communication under stress, and converting reflection into consistent organizational routines.
The sections are as follows:
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Leadership & Wellbeing: establishing tone, pacing, expectations, and supervisory practices that support staff and prevent burnout.
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Self-Assessment: examining how organizational values are experienced across roles, programs, and client interactions.
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Crisis & Recovery: responding to disruptions with clarity and preparing intentional recovery processes that support staff and clients.
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De-escalation & Communication: applying grounded, culturally responsive communication practices in moments of tension or escalation.
Each section includes key concepts and reflection prompts to support practical application in supervision, team structures, and organizational planning. This toolkit may be used as a structured training sequence or adapted for ongoing leadership development and policy review.
This Toolkit has been developed and written VAST,
in partnership with The BC Refugee Hub, as part of the BC Safe Haven Resource Network, led by AMSSA, funded by the Province of British Columbia.
PART 1: Trauma-Informed Leadership & Workforce Well-Being
Leadership often takes place in a landscape of grief, pressure & moral complexity. In refugee-serving organizations, leadership means holding:
- Secondary trauma from staff exposed to clients’ pain
- Moral injury from system-level barriers we cannot fix
- Ambiguity under funder, policy, and geopolitical pressures
- Cultural tensions between inclusion and performance
This is not generic nonprofit work. In our sector, leadership means navigating staff crises while managing caseloads, budgets, immigration timelines, and stories that haunt. Staff bring grief into supervision, and managers absorb frontline trauma while being expected to “hold it together.”
Invitation to reflect: How do we build cultures that don’t just cope with trauma exposure, but actively protect and restore staff within it?
A trauma-informed leader:
- Regulates their own urgency, not just others’ crises
- Moves from “fixing” to accompanying
- Interrupts oppressive patterns, even under pressure
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Makes equity and emotional safety non-negotiable
These lessons apply to leaders at all management levels, and at all stages of experience– this isn’t about being calm or kind, it’s about re-patterning the system.
Resmaa Menakem shares that “Unprocessed trauma becomes a leadership style.”
Invitation to reflect:
- How has your own story shaped the culture you lead?
- Do you respond to pressure by escalating timelines or asking, “What do we need to pause to stay human?”
- Do you treat conflict as a risk or as a portal to a more equitable process?
In trauma-informed systems, supervision is:
- Relational – focused on trust, not just tasks
- Predictable – it creates regulation in chaotic work
- Reflective – it names emotion, not just behavior
- Equitable – power is named and shared
For survivor-serving teams, weekly supervision may be the only space where staff can process secondary trauma. When leaders skip this or reduce it to task reviews, they deepen burnout.
Invitation to reflect:
- In your organization, how does supervision reinforce control or model care?
- How does your organization use tools like reflective supervision logs, supervision agreements, and trauma-responsive performance reviews?
Unchecked workplace trauma results in:
- Increased turnover and disengagement
- Interpersonal conflicts and lateral violence
- Cynicism and distrust of leadership
- “Performative care” – surface wellness, no safety
This is the reality many refugee-serving orgs face: mission does not shield staff from harm. In fact, it often masks it. Burnout is a systemic issue. Addressing it starts with organizational humility, not staff resilience workshops.
Invitation to reflect:
- Are we rewarding exhaustion?
- Are we tolerating harm because of scarcity (of resources, capacity, etc)?
Wiens, K. (2023, May 25). Has cynicism infected your organization? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/05/has-cynicism-infected-your-organization
Fish, K., & Stief, J. (2017, September 14). Symposium: Decolonizing our relationships through lateral kindness. National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. https://nccdh.ca/blog/entry/symposium-decolonizing-our-relationships-through-lateral-kindness
Allen, D. B. (2022, March). We need trauma-informed workplaces. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/03/we-need-trauma-informed-workplaces
Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP). (2024). Toolkit: Trauma-informed workplaces (Organizational policies, workforce equity, trauma-informed leadership tools). https://www.ctipp.org/post/toolkit-trauma-informed-workplaces
Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute (CTRI). (n.d.). 5 principles of trauma-informed workplaces (Emotional safety, voice, trust, collaboration, cultural humility). https://ca.ctrinstitute.com/blog/5-principles-of-trauma-informed-workplaces/
Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment. (2024, April 19). The moral injury guide for public safety personnel and leaders. https://www.cipsrt-icrtsp.ca/assets/en-moral-injury-guide-apr-19.pdf
PART 2: Organizational Self-Assessment for Trauma-Informed Practice
Centering integrity, not perfection. Measuring how our systems live out our values.
This section supports leaders in reflecting on how their decisions, communication, and presence influence the environment experienced by staff and clients. The aim is to strengthen alignment between values and everyday practice through steadiness, clarity, and accountability.
Trauma-informed leadership rests on:
- Humility: remaining open to learning and adjustment.
- Psychological safety: encouraging openness without fear of judgment.
- Repair: acknowledging harm and responding with care and accountability
The leader’s emotional presence shapes tone and relational safety. Rather than certainty or performance, leadership grounded in self-awareness helps create steadiness for others.
Questions to consider:
- How do I check in with my own capacity before entering conversations, supervision, or decision-making?
- When I feel pressure or uncertainty, how does that affect my tone or pace?
- Do I make space for staff to speak honestly about their experiences, or do I move quickly to solutions?
- How do I receive feedback about my impact: with openness or defensiveness?
- What helps me return to clarity and calm when dynamics become difficult?
The first moments of contact signal whether clients can trust the environment. Safety is communicated through tone, timing, privacy, and respect.
Questions to consider:
- What atmosphere is created at the point of first contact: warm, neutral, rushed?
- How do I support frontline staff to stay regulated and grounded during emotionally complex interactions?
- Are reception and intake environments arranged to support privacy and ease?
- Do interpreter practices honor identity, cultural meaning, and voice?
- What subtle signals in the environment could be strengthened to convey welcome?
Programs reflect our values when shaped alongside the communities they serve. This requires listening, flexibility, and a willingness to shift.
Questions to consider:
- Who informs the structure and content of programs, and whose perspectives are overlooked?
- What practical barriers to participation need to be removed or reduced?
- How is cultural context and lived experience woven into facilitation?
- When feedback is offered, how is it taken up in meaningful ways?
- Do we define progress in terms that include connection, affirmation, and agency?
Sustainable work requires predictable support, clear communication, and attention to pacing. These conditions help reduce and mitigate exhaustion and moral distress.
Questions to consider:
- How do I explain decisions so that expectations are clear and predictable?
- When staff are stretched, how can tasks, timelines, or priorities be adjusted?
- Do leave and flexibility policies reflect the realities of grief, migration, and extended family care?
- What routines help the team stay connected, reflective, and grounded together?
- What expectations do I set about pace, steady and intentional, or reactive and urgent?
Culture is expressed through how we respond when things are difficult. Humility allows room for repair and growth; accountability builds trust.
Questions to consider:
- What emotional tone do I bring into shared spaces, and how does it shape engagement?
- When conflict arises, do I approach it with curiosity and steadiness, or move to avoidance?
- How is harm acknowledged: quietly, indirectly, or clearly and relationally?
- How do I speak about my role and authority in ways that are transparent and grounded?
- If external pressures were less present, what would I shift to strengthen wellbeing and trust?
National Council for Mental Wellbeing. (n.d.). Trauma-informed care: Organizational self-assessment.https://www.hca.wa.gov/assets/program/trauma-informed-self-assessment-national-council-for-behavioral-health.pdf
Trauma Transformed & TIA-ORCHARD. (n.d.). Organizational reflection and capacity assessment tool.https://traumatransformed.org/documents/tia_orchard.pdf
Traumatic Stress Institute. (n.d.). Trauma-informed care organizational self-assessment. https://traumaticstressinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Trauma-Informed-Care-Org-Self-Assessment-Final.pdf
Sustainability Directory. (2025, April 14). Organizational humility. https://pollution.sustainability-directory.com/term/organizational-humility/
Center for Creative Leadership. (2024, April 10). How leaders can build psychological safety at work.https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/
Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment. (2019). The moral injury guide for public safety personnel and leaders.https://www.cipsrt-icrtsp.ca/assets/en-moral-injury-guide-apr-19.pdf
PART 3: Crisis Response Planning and Post-Crisis Recovery
In our sector, especially in work with refugees, newcomers, and survivors, complexity is part of the landscape. We’re often operating under pressure: new arrivals, evolving policies, limited resources, and staff who are stretched. Organizations are often balancing day-to-day service with long-term planning, while community needs increase, and conditions shift.
Rather than frame issues that arise as “crises,” we recognize them as recurring disruptions that test our systems and values. Crisis response is not separate from mission, it supports it. Trauma-informed leadership requires planning for these realities so we can respond with integrity and care when challenges arise. Effective leadership means being ready, grounded, and aligned so that teams can effectively respond to shifting conditions and needs.
When disruptions happen whether due to funding shifts, community events, or internal challenges we want to respond with clarity, not confusion. That means developing plans that go beyond checklists.
Crisis response should include:
- Clear internal roles and responsibilities
- Decision-making processes that reflect organizational values
- Practical tools for communication, service continuity, and care
- Considerations for safety, language, cultural responsiveness, and staff wellbeing
Effective crisis planning is tailored to who we serve.
Invitation to reflect:
- Do we have protocols in place for clients who need interpretation?
- Have we prepared staff for disclosures that may emerge during tense times?
- Do we have a clear escalation path that doesn’t burden frontline workers?
Leaders are often called to make decisions before full information is available, and those decisions affect staff, clients, and community partners. We might be adjusting programming, reallocating staff, or pausing certain services.
What matters is how we do this. We don’t need all the answers, but we need to explain what’s happening, how decisions are made, and what supports are in place. The process should be culturally responsive and emotionally aware– that’s what makes it trauma-informed.
It’s easy to move on quickly once the immediate pressure is over. But trauma-informed leadership builds in space to reflect and recalibrate. Organizational culture is shaped not just in response, but in recovery.
Recovery also includes connection with and support for staff. That might mean pausing non-urgent tasks, offering space for grief or decompression, or acknowledging what the team carried.
After challenging periods, we need to:
- Debrief and reflect with staff
- Reconnect with clients and communities
- Name impacts including emotional and operational ones
- Revisit policies and practices with insight from the experience
We can’t predict the future, but we can prepare ourselves to navigate it well. That starts with a culture where adaptability is not seen as instability, but as leadership in action.
This includes having “what if” scenarios, clear communication plans, and a shared understanding of how we hold trauma-informed values even when we need to pivot. It’s about being steady, responsive, and aligned, not reactive.
Adaptability means:
- Creating flexible structures for service delivery and staffing
- Supporting staff to respond with confidence, not fear
- Anticipating changes without rigid control
- Normalizing thoughtful course corrections as a sign of strength
Forbes Nonprofit Council. (2024, December 16). 15 strategies to adopt when navigating nonprofit crisis management. Forbes.https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2024/12/16/15-strategies-to-adopt-when-navigating-nonprofit-crisis-management/
Sage Intacct. (n.d.). Nonprofit crisis management: 7 steps for finance leaders. https://www.sage.com/en-us/blog/nonprofit-crisis-management-7-steps-for-finance-leaders/
PART 4: De-Escalation & Communication in Practice
In trauma-exposed workplaces, intensity is normal. Staff may carry stress from caseloads, advocacy pressure, grief, systemic barriers, and lived trauma. These experiences often show up through communication: urgency, withdrawal, frustration, defensiveness, or overwhelm.
Trauma-informed de-escalation is not about calming people, it is about creating conditions where people can return to clarity and dignity. Leaders shape this environment through how they regulate themselves, interpret behavior, and guide conversations. This section offers practical approaches to help leaders hold difficult moments in ways that protect safety, trust, and team resilience.
You are not acting as a clinician, you are shaping a safe, steady work environment. When a team member escalates, it is almost never about the surface issue. Escalation signals overload, moral distress, accumulated pressure, or unmet needs. Strong performance can sometimes hide this strain, so leaders must read communication patterns as data.
In high-pressure, trauma-exposed workplaces, burnout first appears in how people communicate. Leaders can look for:
- Sarcasm, defensiveness, cynicism, or withdrawal
- Escalation when staff feel unseen, misunderstood, or unsupported
- Reduced patience or lowered frustration tolerance
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Emotional “shutdown” during complex or high-stakes tasks
To counter this, normalize brief emotional check-ins, not as extra work but as essential infrastructure for regulation and team cohesion. Offer pause, space, and validation before moving into correction or problem-solving. When leaders respond with steadiness rather than urgency, teams become more resilient, less reactive, and more trusting.
This section will help you:
- Use the C.A.F. Model (Calm – Assess – Facilitate)
- Recognize stress, burnout, and overwhelm in communication
- Communicate in ways that regulate nervous systems
- Hold boundaries with empathy
- Repair ruptures within teams
- Coach staff through escalated behaviors
- Apply practical DOs and DON’Ts of trauma-informed leadership
In high-stress moments, we default to habits. The C.A.F. model gives structure that centers safety and respect. It isn’t linear, it’s dynamic. As a leader, you may have to do all three steps at once.
A trauma-informed de-escalation approach integrates:
- Calm – Regulate yourself and signal safety
- Assessment – Look beneath behavior without judgment
- Facilitation – Support a return to regulation and next steps
(Crisis Consultant Group, 2023; CTIPP, 2023)
Note: The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model has been recognized as a best-practice intervention by numerous leading organizations, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the American Association of Suicidology, the National Association of People of Color Against Suicide, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services (SAMHSA), the White House Conference on Mental Health, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Your tone, breath, and posture send signals. Regulation starts with your body, not your words. Whether you’re managing a client crisis or staff conflict, the first intervention is nervous system leadership.
You might consider actions to regulate your own body:
- Lower your voice and slow your speech
- Maintain open posture and respectful distance
- Avoid sudden movements or commands
- Remove distractions and minimize stimuli
- Present steady, not passive
B.E.F.A.S.T. is a quick reflective tool used to look beneath the surface of someone’s actions. Instead of reacting to behavior at face value, it helps us pause, consider what might be driving it, and respond with clarity and care. Each step below blends purpose and guiding questions to support a deeper understanding of the needs, pressures, and survival responses being communicated, and to guide responses rooted in curiosity, regulation, and care rather than urgency.
Behavior
What is the person doing?
Notice actions, pacing, withdrawal, agitation, or avoidance. Behavior is a clue, not a conclusion.
Emotion
What might they be feeling beneath the surface?
Emotions like fear, frustration, sadness, or overwhelm often show up as communication changes.
False Beliefs or Projections
Are they interpreting something inaccurately because of stress?
People may assume they’re being judged, blamed, or unsafe, even when that’s not the case.
Appearance
What does their body language show you?
Energy level, posture, facial expression, and tension offer insight into their regulation state.
Speech
How are they speaking?
Fast, pressured, quiet, repetitive, or flat speech often reflects emotional or cognitive overload.
Thinking
What is the quality and flow of their thinking?
Are they organized, scattered, repeating themselves, or struggling to track the conversation?
Facilitating means giving people space to return to themselves. When we coach staff, teach them how to guide, not overpower. The goal isn’t to shut things down, it’s to help things settle. “Do you want to sit for a minute or step outside?” can be more powerful than a whole speech.
In facilitation, we may:
- Offer choices to restore dignity
- Normalize pauses and redirection
- Don’t rush repair, invite it
- Use collaboration, not control
- Prioritize dignity, not dominance
(AllVoices, 2023; De-Escalation Training, 2024)
The actual tools of de-escalation are not complicated techniques, but consistent presence. Coach staff to listen with their full bodies and embrace therapeutic silence. Reflective phrases like, “You’re carrying a lot right now,” can shift an entire moment.
Consistent presence might look like:
- Speaking slowly, not just softly
- Introducing yourself and your role
- Reflecting facts and feelings
- Using silence and presence
- Asking open-ended questions
- Offering hope, not false promises
Sometimes harm happens inside our teams. Repair must be modeled. Your empathy must include boundaries, or it burns out. This doesn’t just build trust, it builds a trauma-informed workplace.
Repair that honours boundaries:
- Validates feelings, not harmful behavior
- Understands empathy as understanding, not rescuing
- Understands boundaries not as rejection, but as protecting connection
- Understands repair as a leadership practice
(CTIPP, 2023; Head Start, 2022)
Conversation starters for repair might begin with a prompt along the lines of “Let’s talk about what happened earlier, I want to make sure we’re okay.”
This slide is for coaching, not diagnosis.
Each behavior is a communication of fear, need, exhaustion, or pain. Help staff learn how to meet those communications without collapsing or overpowering.
Some scripts that might be helpful for your team include:
| Behavior | Coaching Language |
| Disorganized speech | “Let’s slow down, one thing at a time.” |
| Hallucinations | “That sounds intense, let’s focus on this space.” |
| Paranoia | “I hear that’s real for you, can I support safety?” |
| Agitation/mania | “Can we pause and breathe together for a second?” |
| Withdrawal | “You don’t have to talk, but I’m here when you’re ready.” |
| Intoxication | “We’ll talk again in a quieter space. Let’s pause now.” |
What a manager models becomes the team’s norm. Hold your centre; debriefing matters. Don’t punish people for struggling, and don’t let emotional avoidance become your team’s culture.
| ✅ DO | ❌ DON’T |
| Use calm questions | Correct or confront distress |
| Reflect tone and slow pacing | Escalate urgency |
| Hold your boundaries | Abandon your role |
| Coach your team through aftercare | Leave rupture unaddressed |
(De-Escalation Training, 2024; Crisis Consultant Group, 2023)
Invitation to reflection: How do we want to show up the next time this happens?
- Our leadership honours complexity, and guides others to stay grounded.
- De-escalation is more than learning how to “calm people down”, it’s about building a relational and trauma-informed organizational culture.
- Communication is not neutral, and how we interpret behaviour is shaped by culture and power.
- Staff may indicate that they are burned out through their communication behaviours
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The CAF (Calm – Assess – Facilitate) model offers a framework for de-escalation.
- Calm- regulation starts with your body. The first intervention is nervous system leadership.
- Assess- begin with observation that comes from a place of curiosity. Seek understanding by considering what is going on under the surface
- Facilitate- facilitation creates space and is collaborative.
- Presence and communication are tools for regulation
- Meaningful repair honours boundaries.
- Meeting behaviors as a communication of feelings or needs can be a tool for supporting staff in meeting communications without overpowering or collapsing.
- Managers can model de-escalation to promote healthy workplace cultures.
AllVoices. (2023, October 11). De-escalation techniques to keep your team calm and productive.https://www.allvoices.co/blog/de-escalation-techniques-to-keep-your-team-calm-and-productive
CIT Center. (n.d.). De-escalation techniques: Training presentation for law enforcement and service providers [PDF]. University of Memphis Crisis Intervention Team Center. https://cit.memphis.edu/modules/De-Escalation/presentations/FL%20-%20De%20Escalation%20Techniques.pdf
Crisis Consultant Group. (2023). Empathy and communication: Key pillars of effective de-escalation techniques.https://crisisconsultantgroup.com/empathy-and-communication-key-pillars-of-effective-de-escalation-techniques/
De-Escalation Training. (2024, May). Real-world de-escalation examples for human service settings. https://deescalation-training.com/2024/05/de-escalation-examples/
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. (2004, July/August). A prescription for leading in cynical times. Ivey Business Journal. https://iveybusinessjournal.thedev.ca/publication/a-prescription-for-leading-in-cynical-times/
Safe & Together Institute. When “Trauma-Informed” Means Pathologizing Victim Responses, 2025.https://safeandtogetherinstitute.com/blog/when-trauma-informed-means-pathologizing-victim-responses-to-harm-and-ignoring-perpetrators-harmful-behaviors