Heal to Lead: How Integrating Trauma will Uplevel your Leadership

If you think trauma has no impact on leadership, think again. 

In the latest episode of We are Human Leaders, we speak to author, coach and sought-after speaker Kelly L. Campbell about their powerful new book, Heal to Lead on the importance of integrating your trauma for leaders at work and beyond. We explore Kelly’s transition from successful business owner to global thought leader in the space of trauma healing for leaders.

During this frank and often vulnerable conversation, we explore why every leader needs to integrate their trauma – and how they can go about it. 

Trauma and leadership

We explore the concept of trauma and why leaders absolutely must focus on healing their own trauma. As Kelly explains, “The word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek word for wound. In my definition, trauma is unintegrated information. To heal, we need to start doing the inner work to integrate that information. As long as it remains unintegrated and unprocessed, it essentially runs our life.”

They unpack the different ways that unintegrated trauma can show up for leaders, which for some might be people pleasing, for others attempting to exert control over everything. Kelly offers the example,

“If you felt powerless as a child, you might show up in a way as a leader where you will never feel powerless again. So you might step on other people, you might micromanage other people, they may take credit for the work that someone else has done in order to elevate their own personhood.”

The radical and essential journey of healing trauma 

In this powerful conversation, Kelly shares from the research that drove her book, healing your trauma means taking radical responsibility – a concept we are very familiar with at Human Leaders, as it forms one of the 3 foundational pillars of Human Leadership. 

In the context of healing from trauma and evolving to become a conscious leader, Kelly identifies this signal of conscious leadership:

“it’s when you can take radical responsibility for how you're showing up: your decisions and behaviors and how they’re impacting people and your environment. We start to understand where people are coming from and what is going to be helpful in supporting their optimal function, which directly impacts the bottom line.”

Leading Yourself to Lead Others

During this impactful episode of the We are Human Leaders podcast, we also explore the impact for leaders beyond their own leadership to how they lead others:

“As we become more aware of our own trauma, our own unintegrated information, we understand how this impacts other people, what theirs might be, how theirs might be activated.”

This makes us infinitely more compassionate in our leadership.

This conversation is essential listening if you’re looking to understand how your unintegrated trauma might be holding you, and your leadership, back.

Kelly L. Campbell (they/she) speaks and writes about trauma, leadership, and consciousness – ”The New TLC.” They are the founder of Consciousness Leaders, the world’s most diverse and equitable speaker representation agency. 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.