Empathic, Compassionate & Trauma-Informed Leadership Development Programs

Understand The Basics Of Trauma, Brain Science & Interpersonal Neurobiology

Learn key concepts of trauma-informed leadership; understand the fundamentals of how stress, overwhelm, and adverse experiences impact the brain and body; and integrate basic principles for trauma-informed support, management, and leadership

Switch On Self-Awareness & Expand Empathy & Compassion

Understand how past adverse experiences impact present performance, communication, and team effectiveness—increasing the empathy and compassion of leaders and people managers as well as their capacity to make sense of seemingly senseless and destructive behaviors in self and others

Unlock the Foundations Of Trusting & Reciprocal Relationships

Understand how to work with strong emotions and challenging interpersonal behaviors to move towards more truth, transparency, trust, caring, and reciprocity—and cultivate a sense of belonging, supportiveness, and in-it-togetherness

Learn Trauma-Informed Leadership Practices

Explore fun and simple yet powerful and proven cognitive and somatic practices that can support personal nervous system mastery (emotional regulation, stability under pressure etc.) as well as help lead and manage others in a trauma-sensitive way

Hold Safe & Brave Spaces For Personal & Team Development

Experience first-hand some of the key ingredients for holding brave & safe spaces for individuals to share challenging experiences in ways that feel supportive for them—and that are appropriate for professional workplaces

Develop Trauma-Informed Team Effectiveness & Culture Change Pathways

Co-create a concrete roadmap to move towards high-performing yet human-centric teams and leadership cultures—with actionable next steps for team development, designing a better future of work, and culture-change initiatives

Alison McAulay: Leadership Practioner & Trauma-Informed Therapist

Alison McAulay is a groundbreaking transformational leadership development theorist and practitioner, executive coach, and trauma-based therapist.

A former Team USA elite gymnast, professional dancer, and choreographer in Los Angeles and San Francisco; she has a BA in Performing Arts and advanced training in trauma-informed therapies, including Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, ACT, Attachment Theory, EMDR, and Kundalini Yoga. With this wealth of knowledge and experience transforming hearts and minds, she has spent many years working with her Switch On Leadership co-founder to unfold the Self-to-System™ leadership curriculum.

Alison’s mission is to re-humanize businesses—and their teams and cultures—by expanding the consciousness, compassion, creativity, and capabilities of senior leaders and the team members they lead. McAulay is the co-founder and Chief Transformation Officer of the leadership consultancy Switch On Leadership.

Customize Your Program Around Your Choice Of These Empathic, Trauma-Informed & Human-Centric Leadership Capabilities

Our trauma-informed leadership programs can be customized to build some or all of these specific capabilities from across our cohesive and coherent Self-to-System™ leadership curriculum:

Develop Emotional & Interoceptive Intelligence & Agility

• Understand the role and dynamics of emotions and somatic sensations in leadership effectiveness
• Explore anxious and destabilizing emotions and somatic sensations rather than repress, suppress, numb, or act out
• Track how anxious and destabilizing emotions and bodily sensations change and translate them into words for sharing
• Regulate emotions and bodily sensations, particularly when feeling upset, overwhelmed, or shut down
• Transform anxious and destabilizing emotions and somatic sensations into energizing and stabilizing emotions and somatic sensation

Leverage Trauma-Informed Conscious Leadership

• Understand the impact of, and the importance of transforming, difficult emotions and memories in leadership effectiveness
• Accept difficult emotions and memories, potentially from traumatic experiences, and seek peer and professional support when appropriate
• Engage with tools and practices that can help to process and release difficult emotions and memories
• Engage with tools and practices that can help to transform and heal difficult emotions and memories to unlock stored-up energy, aliveness, and potency that is blocked by trauma
• Consciously cultivate more self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-forgiveness to accelerate the journey of grieving, healing, and becoming more whole

Master Resilience & Sustained High Performance

• Understand the role and dynamics of physical, psychological, and existential stress and resilience in leadership effectiveness
• Build robustness to bounce back quickly from challenges, crises, disappointments, and frustrations
• Spot early physical and psychological signals of overwhelm and course correct through self-care
• Identify what most impacts personal resilience and utilize recovery practices to reduce overwhelm, exhaustion, and stress
• Proactively build physical, psychological, and existential resilience to unlock sustained high performance

Harness Presence, Attunement & Empathy

• Understand the role and dynamics of presence, attunement, and empathy in leadership effectiveness
• Be fully present and available with others without judgment, criticism, cynicism, biases, or projections
• Attune to the states and needs of others in an open-hearted and open-minded ‘neutral’ state
• Have empathy for the feelings, needs, perspectives, and behaviors of others
• Be vulnerable, authentic, and genuine with all, avoiding pretense, power plays, and status games and course correcting when not

Cultivate Team Receptivity, Trust & Reciprocity

• Understand the role and dynamics of receptivity and reciprocity in leadership effectiveness
• Freely invite and receive coaching on sabotaging behaviors, limiting beliefs, blindspots, and biases
• Take on, and look to leverage, both critical and appreciative feedback without taking it personally
• Be receptive to the needs of others yet also assertive to ensure own needs are met
• Seek to make relationships reciprocal, with a fair balance of give and take and send and receive

Foster Belonging & Psychological Safety

• Understand the dynamics of belonging and psychological safety in leadership effectiveness
• Foster a positive team climate that allows learning even in challenging times, not taking mistakes or poor performance personally
• Cultivate psychological safety so others can contribute their ideas and insights free of aggression, dishonesty, and manipulation
• Share successes with others while protecting them from pressure from above
• Nurture a sense of team belonging without people feeling obligated to act in a certain way