A Traumatised Organisation: The system as a client
Dec 2024
Written by Noel Macnamara Glenys Bristow
The concept of organisations as living systems is not new. Extensive work, particularly in the area of systems thinking, has brought this perspective into the limelight.
Out-of-home care (OOHC) organisations are living systems, alive with thoughts, feelings and values (Senge et al., 2004). Being alive, they are vulnerable to stress, particularly toxic and repetitive stress. Toxic stress undermines the organisation’s capacity and culture for safety and trust.
As a result, our systems frequently replicate the very experiences that have proven to be so toxic for the people we are supposed to treat.
What is organisational culture?
Organisational culture is the social or normative glue that holds an organisation together. It impacts on all areas or organisational life; the way in which work is done; relationships between organisational members, right across, up, and down the organisation; how we feel about our work and each other; and subsequent care our children, young people and families receive.
There are two distinct parts to organisational culture:
- Overt: All the things you can see: the symbols (religious logos etc.), mission, vision, standards, policies, rules, principles, regulations, ceremonies, and laws that govern the behaviour of a system as a whole – both programs within the system, and individual members of the system.
- Covert: All the things you can’t see. According to Egan (1985), they are the unwritten ‘oughts’, ‘shoulds’, ‘musts’, ‘dos’, ‘don’ts’, and taboos. They are also rituals and ceremonies, that aren’t usually part of induction.
When two or more systems, whether individuals, groups, or organisations, have significant relationships with one another, they tend to develop in similar ways:
- They can begin to pick up on each other’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Members of the organisation can act on these feeling without even realising it! (Smith, Simmons & Thames, 1989).
- The staff can become discontented and disconnected from the organisation. The organisation is no longer a safe place. Staff may criticise and collectively call the management team ‘management’ rather than previously used individual names or nicknames and relationships.
- A negative organisational culture turns back on ‘the management’ because they’re the ones who should be helping us to feel safe, and they’re not. They might not have even seen or be aware of what’s going on. Quarrels start, and this is where you get increasing gossip in areas where people accumulate, making coffee, on line chats etc. The conversation will no longer be creatively about the organisation’s processes and missions and services; it will be about people and staff. As a result, many human service delivery networks are functioning as ‘trauma-organised systems’ (Bentovim, 1992).
Just as the encroachment of trauma into the life of an individual client is an insidious process that turns the past into a nightmare, the present into a repetitive cycle of re-enactment and the future into a terminal illness; in a parallel way, toxic stress insidiously has an impact on an organisation. In such cases, you may find that people, teams, or the culture of the organisation itself, can become:
- reactive or crisis-driven
- avoidant, numb, detached or dissociated (either emotionally or from the organisational mission, or both)
- polarised in its thinking e.g., them vs us / good vs bad etc
- unreflective
- lacking in trust
- too busy to think or feel
- defensive
- on edge and hyper-vigilant
- physically and emotionally unwell
- confused, lost, alone and disoriented
- dysregulated
- chaotic
- frozen and frustrated
- rigid and inflexible (which includes striving for perfectionism)
- mournful and grief-stricken
- helpless and depressed
- disconnected, disintegrated
- incoherent and fragmented
de Soir (2015) talks about how the organisation’s protective emotional membrane can be pierced by trauma. Trauma can also be absorbed and taken in while at the same time leaking and spilling out. This makes the organisation unwell, unhealthy, or have a compromised immune system. The organisation will give off signals and signs when it’s unwell, distressed, struggling or dysregulated, operating in survival mode, and will have developed ways to cope and protect itself. This leaves staff feeling vulnerable and helpless.
Carroll (2012) describes how, without reflection, processing, and ongoing plans for change, trauma can be experienced by the organisation as badly ingested food, swallowed, and then regurgitated later. Silence and lack of understanding about trauma hurts both young people and organisations, scarring both the culture and longevity of workers.
YOUNG PEOPLE
STAFF
ORGANISATION
Feel unsafe
Feel unsafe
Is unsafe
Angry / aggressive
Angry / aggressive
Punitive
Helpless
Helpless/disempowered
Stuck (unfilled and wrongly filled positions)
Hopeless
Hopeless
Helpless
Hyperaroused
Hyperaroused
Missionless (Lost its way)
Fragmented
Fragmented
Crisis driven
Overwhelmed
Overwhelmed
Overwhelmed
Confused
Confused
Valueless
Depressed
Depressed
Directionless
Toxic and repetitive stress
Toxic and repetitive stress
Traumatised organisation
Fight, flight and freeze
Sick leave, burnout and loss of experienced staff to industry
Traumatised and systemically dysfunctional organisation
Working with Organisational Trauma
There is no single answer to addressing organisational trauma and there is very little in the literature to help.
The role of leaders and of leadership is central when dealing with traumatising events and with systemic organisational trauma. Leaders’ interpretation and framing of events as well as their approaches and actions, strongly influence cultural dynamics.
Possible contributions leaders can make include providing safety, stability, and resources (not only physical resources but psychological resources such as respect, empathy, and compassion.) With longstanding systemic trauma, they can name suffering and identify organisational patterns in ways that alleviate guilt and suffering; they can offer optimism, confidence, and hope; champion organisational strengths and provide frameworks for making meaning; crucially they can also ask for outside, specialist help when necessary. As Wheatley (2005) observes that, to foster greater health for a living system, we need to find ways to “…connect it to more of itself”.
Working with trauma requires attunement – and so working with the organisation’s culture and processes at a pace the organisation can sustain, is vital to liberate the self-renewing capacities of the system. In other words, the automatic stress response of both individuals and organisations can be overridden by higher-level functions, and more thoughtful adaptations can be made.
This might involve working at two levels:
- To create a context for meaning – where people can freely express what they feel, which in turn helps them make sense of events, and imagine a more hopeful future.
- To create a context for action – where those who experience, or witness pain and suffering can find ways to alleviate their own and others’ distress in practical ways.
Working with these two levels might be accomplished by exploring the organisation’s history or undertaking some forms of systemic mapping to restore a sense of connection between parts of the organisation; it might also involve experimenting with how to strengthen structures and process or reaching out to non-competing organisations for inspiration and learning.
Integration work is also important – the senior leadership team needs to understand and focus on the dysfunctional patterns or strengthening core identity through a focus on The provision of regular reflective practice groups can be a simple and powerful step, which must of course be integrated with wider cultural transformation interventions.
We have made significant headway in bringing trauma into the light for children, young people and families and to a lesser degree for those working with trauma. However, organisational trauma remains a less known and less understand impact of trauma.
For more information on supporting staff who work with children and young people with complex trauma, don’t miss Noel Macnamara’s popular upcoming workshop Trauma-Informed Supervision exploring how to adapt therapeutic care to the needs of your staff through the supervisory process.
