A good problem to have

Mid 2025 I went through a huge period of change.

I left a senior research role disillusioned with academia and its publish or perish culture. I love research, I love writing, but I hate the toxic competition inherent in the system.

For a long time I’ve been thinking about writing a book about mentally healthy workplaces. I’ve started many times and it never went anywhere. Suddenly, while I worked out what to do next with my career, I had time and energy to spare. I had also spent the past ten years building an effective research, writing and editing practice. The idea of a book no longer seemed quite so daunting.

The book I really wanted to write is not the one I’m now working on. I was stuck on an old idea that wasn’t going anywhere.

In the end, the catalyst for the book I’m now working on was a conversation with a friend who worked in a corporate leadership role. They told me that they had been trying to find training or high-quality resources on trauma-informed leadership and came up empty handed. My friend identified that their team had been impacted by a workplace trauma and they wanted to be sure they were supporting their team members as much as possible.

This conversation wasn’t a one-off. Since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve had hundreds of discussions about an urgent need for trauma-informed leadership across all sectors. It hit me that I could create the resources my friend was looking for. I told myself to open a document and just start writing.

Read the full article at The Trauma-informed Leader on Substack.