"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
(African proverb)
One of the reasons I believe developmental trauma survivors require a unique type of support in the workplace has to do with the ubiquity of soft skills.
According to Investopedia, soft skills are “character traits and interpersonal skills that support the pursuit of personal and organizational goals“.
I challenge you to go on your favorite job board now and find one vacancy that doesn’t require soft skills.
I tried and couldn’t. Here’s a random selection of jobs advertised in my city, and the non-technical attributes successful applicants must possess:
Delivery Driver: positive attitude, good communication skills
Gas Engineer: good communication skills, customer service, confidence to take on any task
Teaching Assistant: enthusiastic, confident, excellent team player
Product Specialist: proven influencing skills
Lecturer: ability to work under pressure, excellent communication, interpersonal and team working skills, ability to work with diverse groups of people
Senior Claims Associate: excellent communication skills including negotiation and presenting, ability to build and maintain effective relationships at all levels
Crypto & Blockchain Researcher: ability to clearly articulate problems and solutions, must function easily in a collaborative, high demand, performance driven environment.
You get my point. Self management and relationship capabilities are the salt and pepper (and sometimes the bread and butter) of most of today’s jobs. In the past this might have been the case for sales, customer service and management roles. Today performance in almost all types of work across organizational levels is enhanced, if not enabled, by soft skills such as the ability to cultivate relationships, manage resistance, build trust and achieve results with, and through, others.
So unless you’re an eccentric genius that has the option, and enjoys, working completely on their own without having to deal with employees, bosses, clients, suppliers, landlords, tenants, authorities and any other third party relevant to your success (or mere survival), then you’re going to benefit from having good personal and people skills.
Soft skills are the linchpin of successful careers
Actually, strike that - good doesn’t quite cut it. In a world of work where deadlines keep getting shorter, people switch jobs, teams and companies fast, where our in-house and external professional networks keep growing, workers need to ‘click’ with others quickly, through intro calls, elevator speeches and coffee chats. Chemistry and charisma become a competitive advantage, and shrewd impression management (a.k.a. masking, in more psychotherapeutic terms) a significant career accelerator. I’ve seen potential ratings and career paths ruined by one bad day or one poorly handled meeting - so you better be on your best foot forward at all times.
All this poses real challenges for developmental trauma survivors, who typically lack precisely in the social and emotional skills area. Those entering the world of work after a childhood dominated by abuse or neglect often pay a price for lacking the levels of self awareness, self confidence, and the relationship skills that fuel high performance in most jobs today, regardless of how well they did academically, how hard they work or how ambitious they are. That price might be not performing as well as others, being perceived as not performing as well as others, not advancing in their careers as quickly as others, or not even getting the job in the first place.
I’m not arguing that developmental trauma is a sentence to workplace misery and failure. I am arguing, however, that adult survivors of developmental trauma join the competitive labor market with a significant disadvantage. How much their uneven social and emotional development will hinder their career will depend on a million things - from the type of job they’re doing and the manager they get, to how quickly they can catch up and fill in these important gaps. Clarity is power, and I’d invite everyone to take a moment and reflect on how well they work with others, and why. I certainly wish I had figured that one sooner, losing less time and relationships.
Okay. I have a problem, how do I fix this?
Be kind to yourself
Rule number one. No blame, no shame, just reset. There’s helluva lot of reasons for who you are, and how you act in the world. No point in dwelling on that, your energy is better spent on what you can do today to achieve your goals tomorrow.
Check (and adjust) your expectations
How much importance do soft skills have in your line of work? How well do you think you are doing in this area? It’s okay if this is one of the things you’ll need to do some work on. But expect some things to feel hard and to require perhaps more work for you than for your friends/relatives/co-workers. You are unique, and so are your career goals and your path to them. Careers are marathons, not sprints. Temporary setbacks or slow starts are nothing but a moment in time.
Set clear goals
Set yourself small, achievable soft skills goals every day. Today I’ll say hi and smile at Sam in Finance. Tomorrow I’ll choose 3 emails and make sure they sound friendly and constructive before sending them. Build a habit of showing up at work as warm and relaxed (even when that’s the last thing you feel), and plant relationship seeds in all your interactions.
Get support
You decide how that looks like - a trauma informed career coach, Toastmasters every Thursday evening, or playing educational YouTube videos on repeat while making dinner. But there are loads of helpful resources out there, just waiting for you.
Today’s work is profoundly communal and relational. Getting along with people at work matters. This may come naturally to some, but childhood trauma survivors are likely to need to do some work on it. The great thing about all skills is that we can build and perfect them at any point in your life, and we have neuroscience to thank for finally debunking the myth of cognitive rigidity past the age of 20. You, and not your past, decide who you will be tomorrow.
Thanks for tuning in,
Adina
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