DISC® ASSESSMENT WITH A TRAUMA-INFORMED LENS

The DiSC® assessment is a widely used organizational behavioral tool that helps individuals and teams understand communication styles, decision-making patterns, motivators, and responses to their environment. By identifying tendencies across the four DiSC styles—Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness—leaders gain practical insight into how people show up at work, collaborate with others, and navigate conflict, pressure, and change.

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Overlaying DiSC with trauma-informed principles is critical. Behavioral styles do not exist in a vacuum; they are shaped by lived experience, nervous-system responses, power dynamics, and psychological safety. A trauma-informed DiSC approach moves beyond labeling behavior to understanding why people respond the way they do under stress and how leaders can adapt their communication, expectations, and support accordingly. This integration helps teams reduce misinterpretation, prevent re-traumatization, strengthen trust, and create conditions where all employees, especially those operating under chronic stress, can perform, engage, and lead more effectively.

BASIC BENCHMARKING

Trauma-Informed Leadership / Workplace Standards Checklist:

This tool is for organizations interested in conducting a gap analysis between where their organization currently stands compared to national best practices and standards. This is a self-reported tool and is not intended to be used to generalize findings.

 

ADVANCE BENCHMARKING

Employee Experiences Survey: This validated instrument is for organizations interested in assessing their readiness for change, trust within/among leadership and their workforce, and trauma-informed leadership characteristics and make significant organization change based in statistically significant findings. This survey has been used by clients as a stand-alone product. It has also been deployed as part of a multi-year effort capturing benchmark data to drive a new strategic direction.

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The Employee Experiences Survey has four sub-scales:

1. Readiness for Change

2. Trust

3. Capacity

4. Trauma informed leadership

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training teaches people to recognize, understand, and respond to signs of mental health or substance use challenges, acting as a first responder to offer initial support and connect individuals with professional help, much like CPR for physical health, using an evidence-based 5-step action plan (ALGEE) to provide nonjudgmental support in crises and non-crisis situations. The skills learned help reduce stigma and build community confidence, with courses available in various formats (in-person, virtual) and specialized versions for different groups like youth, older adults, or public safety. 

 

MHFA training typically takes 8 to 12 hours, offered in various formats like a single day, multiple shorter sessions (in-person or virtual), or blended learning (self-paced online plus instructor-led) to teach how to identify, understand, and respond to mental health challenges. The common blended format involves 2 hours of pre-work followed by 6 hours of live instruction, totaling 8 hours

Half-day, in-person or virtual. Includes pre-work readings, short reflective exercises, facilitated discussion, experiential activities, and practical tools grounded in adult learning theory. Participants receive curated resources and applied frameworks to immediately support trauma-informed practice in their direct service roles.

 

This interactive trauma-informed care workshop provides participants with a foundational understanding of how adverse childhood experiences, episodic adult trauma and stress, and adversity impact behavior, engagement, decision-making, and relationships both at the individual and organizational level. Designed for staff, supervisors, and leaders across sectors, this session emphasizes awareness, regulation, and practical strategies to reduce harm, build trust, and create more supportive environments for those they serve and those they work alongside.

Half day, in-person or virtual. Prework, ingroup work, interactive, use of adult learning theory and modalities and a Trauma Informed Leadership & Workplace Playbook for each participant. OPTIONAL: Copy of my Thin Book, The Hurt Leader for reflection and journaling.

 

At the end of the half day training, attendees will be introduced and will better understand the answers to the following prompts such as:

 

• What are the three Es of trauma?

• Can our organization benefit from training everyone in Mental Health First Aid?

• How can we support post-traumatic growth in the workplace?

• Why should the GenZ mental health tsunami matter to us?

• How can we apply the Do No Harm lens to leadership and decision-making?

• What is the Power of 3 foundational trauma-informed organizational behaviors and principles needed for our organizational sustainability?

• What’s the connection between our psychosocial development and our leadership styles?

• Assessing morale, trust and change readiness.

• Assessing Trauma-Informed Leadership and Workplace gap analysis

• Are we considering and or should we start considering cognitive schema overload, neuroplasticity, neurodiversity in organization change efforts?

• What other underpinnings are we considering when it comes to staff resistance or barriers associated with change?

Full day, in-person or virtual. Pre-test and post-test, prework readings, podcasts and discussion boards, ingroup work, use of adult learning theory and modalities, and a copy of my Thin Book, The Hurt Leader

 

This trauma-informed leadership course aims to equip leaders with the skills and knowledge needed to create more compassionate and productive workplace environments, enhancing employee well-being, self-awareness and mirroring, and organizational resilience.

• Develop the skillsets necessary to design and sustain a Do No Harm style of leadership and workplace culture.

• Develop important systems-thinking skills to help you discover the root causes of underperforming workplaces and transform their culture into a psychologically safe, collaborative, accommodating, and resilient workplace.

• Equip your organization with the skills to invest, create, influence, and foster system-wide change while operating in a burned-out, resistant, and change-saturated environment.

• Gather critical benchmark data on change readiness, trust, capacity, and trauma-informed principles and develop effective and measurable action plans using the Employee Experiences questionnaire.

HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) is a strengths-based public health framework that complements the ACEs research by focusing on how positive childhood experiences buffer adversity and support lifelong health, resilience, and well-being. Developed through work led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HOPE expands traditional prevention models by centering relationships while also elevating the lived experiences and strengths of individuals.

 

Grounded in the Montana Institute’s Science of the Positive and the Center for the Study of Social Policy Strengthening Families framework, HOPE offers a shared language for understanding how connection, belonging, and support counteract adversity and promote healthy development across the lifespan.

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The HOPE training equips leaders, staff, and organizations with a strengths-based, evidence-informed framework for understanding how Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and positive relational experiences across the lifespan buffer adversity, promote resilience, and improve long-term health, engagement, and performance outcomes.

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While trauma-informed approaches often focus on mitigating harm and understanding the impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), HOPE intentionally bridges this work by shifting attention toward what builds strength, what restores regulation, and what leaders and organizations can actively create in daily interactions, policies, and environments. HOPE does not replace trauma-informed care—it completes it.