Trauma hurts. Your professional development doesn’t have to.
Professional development experiences, made for your team.
Leaders and teams want their employers to invest in their growth. They want to learn and succeed, but they don’t want to sit through another generic, boring, half AI work presentation that they’ll forget by Monday morning.
At TIW, we make and deliver creative, custom PD offerings on trauma-informed leadership and how organizations can mitigate the impact of trauma on their workplaces.
We’re obsessed with our subject matter and in love with teaching and empowering professionals. We can’t wait to meet you.
Why This Topic Matters
Trauma has a massive impact on humanity, and it shows up at work everyday, whether or not teams are trained and equipped. On top of personal trauma, today’s workforce faces external adversity that often impacts their wellbeing and professional effectiveness. Economic, political, environmental, and other conditions are pushing down on workers alongside an artificial intelligence revolution that can seem to threaten both our ability to earn a living and the value of our lived experience and minds.
Considering this, we believe the leaders of the future will be the humans who human best. Think “soft skills,” but bigger. Think “psychological safety,” plus 5 more principles. Think “putting people first,” except you discover that when you do that, business outcomes improve right alongside wellbeing.
Trauma-Informed Leadership is a radically human way of thinking about our coworkers, and its related skills help leaders support people to do great work, despite our frailty, pasts, and the complicated world we live in. Trauma-Informed Workplaces will have a competitive advantage in coming years because working conditions that meet the moment for workers will be able to meet whatever the world throws next: steady, people-centered, and resilient.
Earning Attention
Human time and attention is the most valuable thing in the world, and we don’t take it for granted. We start with quality sources and valuable information (which should be the bare minimum!). To keep teams engaged, we use communication strategies such as atypical content pace rhythms, topic chunking, videos, poetic repetition, storytelling and story sharing, group discussions, random interactivity, and writing prompts.
Our facilitators teach content with passion and guide activities with humility. The way they show up borrows from internet aesthetics that favor dropping pretense, “hot takes” as loosely held discourse initiations, interrogating workplace norms, persona play, humor with a heart, humor with a point, and “keeping it real.” (Don’t worry: we do make Mandy comb her hair and wear a blazer on workshop days.) Our goal is to show up authentically, as helpful and human as we can.
OUR ENGAGEMENT PROCESS
STEP ONE
Your custom professional development experience starts with curiosity. You are curious about us, so you email or set up a 30-minute video call. Now, we are curious about you. Because we have backgrounds in mental health counseling and professional peer support, we approach the helping relationship with humility and recognition that you are the expert on the call. You know yourself, you know your team, and you know your company. We listen, ask questions, and share ideas until a workshop or training starts to take shape.
STEP TWO
We send you a proposal with outlined content, format, possible activities, digital resources, and pricing. If you like what you see, our principal consultant Mandy celebrates by listening to the only Dashboard Confessional song that’s not at least a little depressing. If you have feedback, new ideas, change requests, or questions, you respond via email and we work together until the proposal is right. Once it’s right, you guessed it: “Hands Down” at max volume.
STEP THREE
We send you a standard services agreement to sign and an invoice that matches your preferred payment plan. Once the agreement is signed and the invoice is paid, we officially schedule and block off 1.) A leadership prep call about a week before your workshop begins, and 2.) Your workshop date(s)
STEP FOUR
We prepare for your workshop, drawing from the catalogue below and pulling in relevant new materials as the project develops. Mandy asks Mischa and David for feedback, then gets defensive when they actually give her some. The next day, she makes their suggested edits. Peter reminds Mandy to keep her pipeline full and says for the three millionth time that we need to raise our prices.
STEP FIVE
It’s a week before your workshop! You meet on a prep call with us to discuss housekeeping and unresolved details. We preview your deck and digital resources and ask for your thoughts and input, usually covering practice scenarios and stories to verify relevance and alignment. We gather more information on what we should expect on workshop day.
STEP SIX
We start your workshop! If your engagement has multiple sessions, it’s the strongest start ever and everyone leaves jazzed for the next one. If it’s a one-day engagement, it’s an awesome afternoon! You’re impressed by the amount of ground that was covered and how clear the content was. You’re proud of your team for their engagement and grateful for how the workshop evoked participation from everyone. It’s good to see your colleagues together with their attention and efforts united. Everyone shares their takeaways at the end, and it’s obvious that this is a valuable experience. You put TIW on a consulting retainer for 1.5 million dollars a month and get a tattoo of their logo. (Just kidding! But you do want us back in 6 months or a year. And you want to talk about coaching for a couple of your emerging leaders.)
Example Trainings
Trauma-Informed Workplace Core Training
Trauma shows up at work in ways you might not recognize. This training demystifies what trauma actually is, why it matters in professional settings, and how the six principles of trauma-informed practice create workplaces where people feel safer and perform better. Teams learn to recognize the signs of activation in themselves and each other, and they discover what trauma-informed leadership actually looks like in real conversations and real moments. Teams walk away with shared language and tools they can use immediately.
TIW Boundaries and Role Clarity Training
Compassion can blur lines. This training tackles the hard question of how to care about your people without becoming their therapist or emotional dumping ground. Participants practice setting boundaries that feel trauma-informed (not cold), learn the difference between a trauma-informed managers and a therapist, and develop strategies for responding with genuine compassion while protecting ourselves and the organization. The skills here prevent burnout, equip supervisors with tools for tough topics, keep relationships professional, and ensure people get routed to the right resources when they need them.
TIW De-Escalation Training
When someone's nervous system goes into overdrive, the usual management playbook doesn't work. This training teaches leaders how to create safety in moments of activation, understand what's actually happening in a dysregulated person's body and brain, and respond in ways that calm rather than escalate. Participants practice scenario-based skills so they know what to say and do, and they learn nervous system regulation techniques they can model and teach their teams. It's practical, hands-on, and built for the real situations leaders face every day.
TIW Leading After Layoffs
Layoffs leave trauma in their wake, and not just for those who leave. This training addresses the hidden cost of staying: survivor's guilt, broken trust, and the psychological toll on remaining staff. Participants learn how to rebuild safety and cohesion after upheaval, hold space for grief and uncertainty without losing professionalism, and navigate the hard conversations about the future with transparency and humanity. The result is a team that can move forward with trust intact, rather than operating from fear.
The Cost of Caring
Compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout are real occupational hazards, especially in helping professions and high-stress industries. This training names the difference between these invisible injuries, helps staff spot them early in themselves and others, and teaches concrete strategies for prevention and recovery. Participants build an individual self-care plan and explore what organizational supports actually prevent people from running on empty.
TIW Emerging Leader Training
New managers are often promoted for being great at the work, then handed a team with no training in how to lead it. This training gives emerging leaders the foundation others were never given. Participants learn what the role of a manager actually is, how to set clear expectations, delegate with confidence, and run one-on-one conversations that build trust. They practice giving feedback, handling their first difficult moments, and managing their own stress so they can stay steady for their teams. Using a trauma-informed lens, they learn how safety, clarity, and consistency affect performance. Emerging leaders walk away with practical tools they can use the next day.
TIW Performance Conversations Training
Hard conversations go wrong when people's brains perceive criticism as threat. This training outlines how the brain processes feedback, what gets in the way of communication, and how to talk to employees about their performance in ways they can actually receive and act on. Training participants practice real scenarios and learn what to say (and what not to say) so that reviews rebuild trust instead of damaging it. They walk away with a trauma-informed framework for giving professional feedback, with tools and skills that can be practiced the next day.
TIW Leveraging Lived Experience Training
This training is for teams that employ people who have lived experience with recovery, trauma, or the issues your organization serves. It helps them and their leaders learn to leverage that expertise without being reduced to it. Lived experience experts develop disclosure strategies, learn how to build credibility despite the stigma that surrounds lived experience, and navigate the unique challenges of working alongside clinicians and clients.
“The facilitator was a hoot! And the material was so engaging and practical. My team never pays attention to anyone, but they paid attention to this. I would do it again!”