How do we as leadership developers and People & Culture professionals navigate the drama and trauma of world events? How do we support our employees, while also still trying to focus on business outcomes? Oh... and while also trying to take care of our loved ones?
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June 2025: Our Urgent Need for Deeper Conversation

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I’ve found it impossible to ignore world events lately, even when trying to focus on work. Living in California, the drama and trauma in recent weeks of immigration raids at workplaces and the unprecedented overreaction of calling in the military to deal with protests has hit close to home for me. And that’s just ONE of the upsetting aspects of the seemingly endless global turmoil that fills the daily news!
 
I debated whether to talk about this in my newsletter, but this is something we all need to be aware of, because our employees are affected by it too:
  • World events negatively affect employees’ mental health (Modern Health)
  • Employee engagement has dropped to a 10-year low (Gallup) 
  • People feel more disconnected from colleagues than ever (AppSpace)
So how do we as leadership developers and People & Culture professionals navigate this? How do we support our employees, while also still trying to focus on business outcomes, OKRs, and the bottom line? Oh... and while also trying to take care of our loved ones and our own mental health at the same time?
 
I asked folks about this on LinkedIn earlier this week, and it sparked some very thoughtful comments. I encourage you to check them out -- and add your own!
 

Recent research gives solid evidence of something we already know intuitively: that people "thrive when they form meaningful relationships, and meaningful relationships are formed and sustained through high quality conversations. With that in mind, I believe that navigating the impact of traumatic world events requires deeper conversations at work -- about mental health and work-life balance, about identity and experience, and about cultivating understanding across differences.

 

Here are some ideas on what this can look like in practice, and how we can help leaders and teams to have more meaningful and impactful conversations:

  • Mental health must now part of every leader's role. Many companies leaned into this during the COVID pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in 2020, but my sense is that a lot of people saw that as an exceptional circumstance and have tried to get "back to normal." But the crises keep coming, so I strongly believe that leaders today need the skills, willingness, and bandwidth to tend to their team's wellbeing. This can include training on trauma-informed leadership, open conversations about mental health, and being proactive in managing workload and setting boundaries with executives about reasonable expectations for outcomes.

  • Leaders need to know how to talk about identity and experience. Helping every employee feel seen, heard, and understood is critically important, especially when so many of the traumatic world events we're processing relate to aspects of identity -- race/ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, gender and sexuality, disability and neurodivergence, and more. This can include fostering psychological safety, offering space for people to share about identity and experience (here's an activity I use for that), and leaders deepening their own understanding of different cultures and identities.

  • We need to strengthen our skills for conversations across differences. So much of what is causing stress in people's lives and work today is related to the polarization we're experiencing in our society between different groups and ideologies, whether political, religious, or other. Leaders and individuals alike desperately need practical skills for how to talk with people we disagree with, instead of avoiding them and retreating further into our own corners. There a few great books on having these kind of challenging conversations across difference that I highly recommend, including Beyond Your Bubble and Facing the Fracture by Dr. Tania Israel, and We Can't Talk About That At Work! by Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Reese.

This is a big area (as you can probably tell from this extra-long newseltter!), and one I'm continuing to think about and learn about. If it's something you're interested in taking a closer look at, for yourself and/or your organization, let's find time to chat!

 

And most of all, please don't forget to take care of yourselves amidst all of this. As the saying goes, "put your own oxygen mask on before you help others with theirs." As leadership developers, we put a lot of our own energy into supporting others. But remember, we can't support others if we don't also support ourselves. 

Nick sig black

The L&D Leaders Roundtable

a new group for heads of L&D at midsize tech companies

 

When I was leading L&D internally, I was never able to find a community of peers at companies with similar dynamics and issues to mine. So now I’m starting one! It's an invite-only group limited to 12 L&D leaders from tech companies with between ~100-1000 employees. If you or someone you know is in a role like this, please fill out the interest form (or share the link!).

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