If we take seriously the notion that we are in that pivotal space between worlds where we can choose our future and that we have an opportunity to transform our world, we ought to be thinking not only about how we bounce back, but also about how we might bounce forward. Here’s what I can tell you from my research and work on posttraumatic growth that is in-press—Transformation After Trauma: The Power or Resonance—and due to be published this summer.
It is undeniable that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a seismic impact on the world. All the ways we organize our lives, work and world have been altered overnight. The fundamental assumptions that underpin our identities, relationships and worldviews are all upended…and for all the chaos, stress and grief of these times, these conditions of socially traumatic impact that bring everything into question are the starting point for transformation. Indeed, transformation-that fundamental shift in identity and worldviews-is already here. For those of us now living through the COVID-19 pandemic, life has already been redefined into life before and after the pandemic. Our work, our service to the generations to come, is going to be making the decisions needed to sustain the most critical transformations of our world that the ‘crisis’ phase of COVID-19 has led us into. It is a moral imperative that we do not go back to ‘the way things were’ where those ways were no longer serving humanity.
I know this, because I have lived it and researched it. Over 20 years ago, I experienced armed conflict and a civil war that impacted my life in both traumatic and transformational ways. In the aftermaths, I became so intrigued by the identity and worldview changes I was experiencing that I moved beyond my own personal meaning-making to studying the lives of transformational leaders who had experienced social trauma and the phenomenon called posttraumatic growth. The original research for my doctorate 10 years ago was with African war survivors who were transforming their organizations, communities and their industries. Since then, I have applied and expanded on the research through work in healthcare, social and immigration services, non-profits working with the under-served, social justice practitioners, and leadership and organization development practitioners working in complex change.
I have learned that posttraumatic growth can scale at the individual, organizational and societal levels and applies whether trauma results from man-made sufferings or ‘acts of God.’ I have learned that even though trauma is an unwelcome doorway to transformation, as the South African proverb goes, some hardships teach. Indeed, the entire Organization Development field emerged from the social trauma of the world-war II era, when Kurt Lewin and others took on the search for ways to support human organizing for development and thriving to counter the social psychologies and organizing that had resulted in the war[i]. Likewise, David Cooperider reminded us in his article Appreciative Inquiry in a Broken World of Victor Frankl’s seminal work (Man’s Search for Meaning) that points us to the fact that meaning-making and transformational possibilities can emerge from the most horrific circumstances if we choose, because: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I was thrilled to see Cooperider point also to the contemporary developmental research of posttraumatic growth that has picked up the thread of this thinking and was the foundation of my research.
If we take seriously the notion that we are in that pivotal space between worlds where we can choose our future and that we have an opportunity to transform our world, we ought to be thinking not only about how we bounce back, but also about how we might bounce forward. Here’s what I can tell you from my research and work on posttraumatic growth that is in-press—Transformation After Trauma: The Power or Resonance—and due to be published this summer.
It’s all about our stories and meaning-making. I found in my research that in complex traumatic circumstances, those that realize transformations whether individually, at a group level, or socially find deep and aligned resonance that emerges from personal and collective stories. Resonance is a moment of awakening, through personal stories, that opens space or creates an opportunity for transformative learning. It signals the moment(s) when people begin to integrate their experiences, even traumatic ones, and shift out of narratives of despair or hopelessness towards narratives of transformation. The starting point for transformation in these circumstances isn’t vision work, but resonance work. Why? Because the personal stories that define what truly matters to us helps us find new meaning when our worlds have been rocked. It gives us an identity core to start with, before we move forward into redefining, reimaging and redesigning the future.
The conditions need to be right for transformation to unfold. Realizing transformation in these times requires an environment of trust and dialogue. We all need to listen deeply, ask questions we can learn from and look for insights that move us beyond the normal, even the ‘new normal,’ into extraordinary possibilities. In the midst of chaos, stress and the plain fatigue that I see and hear around me and that I am experiencing, it is easy to miss the possibilities. I am reminding myself that getting to transformation possibilities means slowing down to look, listen and question intentionally for what deeply resonates and then and only then to act.
Transformation will only be realized by our persistent actions. It was clear that my research aligned broadly with the posttraumatic growth and transformative learning research that will tell us to expect identity, relational and worldview changes if we are moving toward transformation. For those that choose to lean into resonance, you can also expect a transformed purpose, heightened social consciousness, awareness of spirituality and/or existential value of life and humanity, and a call to act in new ways that align with these transformations. Those that fulfill the promise of transformation however, are those that are determined—who continue to take actions toward the promise of transformation no matter the obstacles that inevitably come their way. This is the call for all of us. It is the call of our times.
All this can feel daunting, especially when I listen to the news. For starters, all we need right now is to start paying attention to the personal experiences and moments in this pandemic that deeply move us, that may be calling us to transformation. When those moments arrive, I invite you to consider:
- What about the story/moment is creating resonance for you?
- What (re)newed purpose does it call you to?
- How does it shift your connection to others?
- How does it shift your worldview?
- What action(s) are you being called to?
[i] Burke, W.W. (2006). Where did OD come from? In J.V. Gallos (Ed.), Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass reader. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
