Original post: https://www.forbes.com/sites/garrettgunderson/2021/03/31/trauma-in-the-workplace-happens-are-you-contributing-to-it/?sh=5a4ef3c53776

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably someone who focuses on getting things done, moving the needle, and hitting your goals. You likely have an internal drive that makes you the perfect person to launch a new initiative or found a new company. You are what Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas, authors of the book Move Fast. Break S%@t. Burn Out., would call a “Catalyst.”

Catalysts have a deep-rooted need to improve things and create a better future. They take in lots of information, see infinite possibilities, and can’t stop themselves from moving into action. You can find Catalysts anywhere. They aren’t limited to one industry, role, gender, race, geographic locale, career stage, or any other demographic. You’ll find them in the C-suite, as individual contributors, and working for themselves. Whatever they’re doing in the world, they’re always focused on one thing: change. It’s a desire that seems innate to Catalysts.

Change in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the drive for change can create some unintended fallout in its wake if we’re not careful. As an entrepreneur building your organization, it’s critical to step back and ask yourself: am I overly focused on innovation and goals, and unknowingly creating a traumatic or toxic environment for my people? Especially if you’re a Catalyst, this is a serious issue you have to watch out for so it doesn’t destroy the culture you’re building.

Why is that? I have written about and talk about the dark side of the Catalyst, what I would call the High Roller.  They are more likely to unknowingly create a toxic workplace? Here’s what Tracey and Shannon had to say.

When a Superpower Becomes a Weakness

Even among entrepreneurs, not everyone is going to be driven to constant change, across all siloes, in the way a Catalyst is. The superpowers that make Catalysts so great at getting things done can sometimes turn into blind spots, especially when their team isn’t on the same page.

Tracey and Shannon said that taking action is so easy for them that they forget that not everyone thinks like they do. As a result, they tend to under-communicate, leave people behind, and forget to bring others along in their process. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to distrust and dissatisfaction among team members, and create pressure that leads to trauma.

Facebook offers an example of how this can unfold. What starts as a culture built on values that create change—values like “be bold” and “focus on impact”—can slowly devolve into a toxic workplace filled with multiple instances of trauma: dissenting employees being silenced, former employees being blacklisted from other jobs, and multiple instances of embedded racism.

There’s no doubt Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has built one of the defining products of the 21st century with Facebook, which now boasts 2.8 billion users. But as the company grew, it’s evident that the business focus tightened while the focus on culture slipped.

As a result of this “neglected culture,” Facebook slid down Glassdoor’s list of best tech companies to work amid allegations of a cult-like workplace environment and “more Black Lives Matter posters than black employees.” On the company’s internal communications board, comparisons to being in a dictatorship abound, as does the word “sycophantic.”

In their rush to grow, Zuckerberg and other company leaders turned a blind eye to the trauma that was being created, and now, Facebook is paying the price for its toxic culture.

The Need for Psychological Safety at Work

Tracey and Shannon said the actions of leaders like those at Facebook ignore two key elements of a healthy, productive workplace: bringing your whole self to work and psychological safety.

Catalyst entrepreneurs tend to be head down, laser focused on the work of growing their organization. A side effect of this focus can be neglecting to acknowledge the humanity of those working alongside them. After all, if you don’t bring your whole self to work, are you going to stop and appreciate the deeper needs and desire of your team members?

Factors like a high turnover rate can indicate a toxic workplace, but without the right lens, it’s easy to write that off as the cost of starting a new venture. You’re going to churn through team members as you work to find the ones who are fully bought into what you’re doing, right?

Not quite, said Tracey and Shannon. A high turnover rate is often a sign that psychological safety—a key factor in employee satisfaction—is lacking at your workplace. Just how important is psychological safety? Just look at the findings of Project Aristotle, an effort from Google to understand what makes for effective teams. The number one dynamic of an effective team?

You guessed it: psychological safety, defined as “an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive.” Teams with this dynamic can take risks, ask questions, and admit mistakes without worry of being punished or embarrassed.

What We Need from Catalysts Right Now

Workplace trauma is marked by anxiety, stress, and other factors that lead to dissatisfaction and burnout. Cases like Facebook are more obvious, but it’s not always so clear cut, said Tracey and Shannon. They said Catalyst entrepreneurs with small teams can contribute to workplace trauma without ever meaning to because they simply don’t know it’s happening.

Here’s an example we can all relate after 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people started working from home and continue to do so. Given our increased connectivity thanks to technology, the expectation (either spoken or implied) is that employees will now be more available than they were previously: for meetings, check-ins, brainstorming sessions, and more. The research backs this up: a Harvard Business Review survey conducted in the fall of 2020 found that, “56% [of respondents] said their job demands had increased.”

At the same time, employees are struggling to adapt to their new work environment and its lack of boundaries, with that same survey reporting that “55% of all respondents didn’t feel that they had been able to balance their home and work life.” What have leaders done to address this increased level of stress and the resulting burnout? Suggestions tend to focus on methods of improving self-care, laying responsibility at the feet of the employees rather than the leaders, ignoring the true causes of trauma and burnout.

In this VUCA world, Catalyst entrepreneurs are needed now more than ever to build businesses and organizations that will lead us out of a recession. But in combination with their superpowers, the ingredient needed to create safe, productive workplaces is empathy.

Understanding how others might feel and putting ourselves in their shoes for a moment is essential to working with others—and working well in general. It’s the only way to blaze a trail without burning those alongside you in the process.

The events of 2020 seemed to catch the entire world by surprise, and there’s no reason to think 2021 will be any different. If entrepreneurs want to survive whatever comes next, they’ll need to start preparing now.

One of the best ways to do so is through reading. New books are published every day containing cutting-edge insight into how businesspeople can best prepare for the future — here are some of the best.

1. Solving the People Problem: Essential Skills You Need to Lead and Succeed in Today’s Workplace by Brett M. Cooper and Evans Kerrigan

At the heart of being a great entrepreneur is the need to be great with people, and Solving the People Problemhelps budding business tycoons do just that. In order to run a great business, leaders need to be prepared to bring together a diverse group of people, and this book goes a long way in teaching the basics of how to do so.

2. Crawl, Walk, Run: Advancing Analytics Maturity with Google Marketing Platform by Michael Loban and Alex Yastrebenetsky

Anyone who has grappled with Google Marketing Platform will immediately understand the title of this. You need to have a firm hand on the basics before you can take your next steps. Crawl, Walk, Runtakes the reader on a journey through each phase of the learning process, ensuring that everyone who buys it walks away fully prepared to market like never before.

Related: 6 Books That Helped Me as an Entrepreneur

. Courage to Lose Sight of Shore: How to Partner with Private Equity to Grow Your Business with Confidence by Kelley W. Powell

Founding a successful company is one thing, but knowing how to grow it properly is something else entirely. Kelley W. Powell has had a lifetime’s worth of experience in achieving sustainable company growth, andCourage to Lose Sight of Shoreis a perfect distillation of the knowledge she has accrued.

4. Own Your Career, Own Your Life: Stop Drifting and Take Control of Your Future by Andy Storch

It’s probably why you became an entrepreneur in the first place — to take control of your life, once and for all. Andy Storch has long understood that feeling, and his bookOwn Your Career, Own Your Lifeis an infectious statement of empowerment for all looking to finally mark their territory as an individual as much as an entrepreneur.

5. Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well by Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas

A word of warning: This book is not going to be for everyone. Tracey Lovejoy and Shannon Lucas have created a call-to-action for the movers and shakers of the business world. Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.is a validating text for everyone who’s ever been told that they press too hard or go too far — attitudes that will be necessary for forging ahead in the coming months.

6. More Good Jobs: An Entrepreneur’s Action Plan to Create Change in Your Community by Martin Babinec

No entrepreneur is an island. Every one is a part of a local community, and his or her success has a lot to do with the opportunities that exist in this local economy. Rather than wishing your community was more conducive to startups, More Good Jobs teaches you how to become an active participant in creating this change, opening the doors to more opportunities, wealth and fulfillment in the process.

7. A CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding Your Focus in the C-Suite by Trey Taylor

Being a CEO is no easy task, but broadly speaking, the duties fall into merely pillars: culture, people and numbers. That’s it. InA CEO Only Does Three Things, Trey Taylor brings an important perspective to the conversation around the responsibilities a business leader has. The book serves ultimately as a how-to for navigating both the good times and bad as the leader of a dynamic organization.

Related: 7 Books for Maximizing Life Satisfaction During Uncertain Times

8. Get Rooted!: Growing People and Companies Through Change by Stacy Henry

As 2020 has proved to us all, change is coming whether we want it to or not — all that we can do is prepare for it.Get Rooted!is Stacy Henry’s guide for seeing change not as a hindrance but as an opportunity. Sometimes change is exactly what a business needs to thrive, and this book can show you how to harness it.

9. The Extraordinary UnOrdinary You: Follow Your Own Path, Discover Your Own Journey by Simone Knego

Being a great entrepreneur isn’t just crunching the numbers and holding meetings; it’s also about understanding what kind of person you are and how you can play to your own strengths.The Extraordinary UnOrdinary Youasks you to discover the person at the heart of your entrepreneurial persona and learn more about what that means for your business.

Every entrepreneur’s journey will be different, but drawing on the experiences of others never hurts. Take the time to learn about what your next move will be. It may be the biggest one you ever make.

Author: Petr Daisyme, Co-founder of Hostt (Entrepreneurship Leadership Network Contributor)

The term VUCA—short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity—originated with the U.S. Army War College to describe how the world was changing in the wake of the Cold War. Since then, its adoption has soared in an effort to describe our ever-evolving global environment.

And if there was ever a year that perfectly encapsulated what VUCA looks like, it was 2020. A global pandemic, calls for social justice, and a presidential election have disrupted not just every industry imaginable, but also the fabric of our daily lives. There’s no denying that we now live in a VUCA world, and despite the wishes of many, our new reality isn’t going to change.

Acknowledging our new VUCA reality also means acknowledging that a new set of skills will be needed to thrive in a world that is always changing. Ask leaders what skills are needed to navigate today’s world and you’ll hear self-direction and adaptability. Many companies that have survived the pandemic point to agility as the key to their success. Traditional hard skills are taking a back seat to “voracious intellectual curiosity and passion for learning.”

What’s amazing is that when you line up all the traits needed to succeed in a VUCA world and overlay them with the traits of people whom we call “Catalysts,” it’s a direct match.

What are Catalysts? These are people who naturally take in lots of information from various sources, see infinite possibilities, create a vision, and can’t stop themselves from taking action to improve everything around them. They have a natural ability to create positive visions of the future in a sea of uncertainty and help drive organizations towards that better future.

Catalysts are innately VUCA ready, which means leaders must activate them in order to survive and thrive in 2021 and beyond. Existing in a state of homeostasis is no longer going to cut it. Organizations can either choose to evolve or be left behind.

The first step in unleashing the Catalysts within your organization is learning how to spot them. There are telltale signs that someone on your team—maybe even you—might be a Catalyst.

Spotting Catalyst traits in yourself

In any given situation, Catalysts have incredible vision. They not only can piece together different streams of information and see the new opportunity that’s available, but they can also envision the path that leads there. It’s all very obvious to them, to the point that it’s often frustrating for Catalysts that their team members don’t arrive at the same conclusion when they do.

Here’s another surefire sign of a Catalyst: a desire to move at a breakneck pace. Catalysts are “get stuff done” people who are adept at systems thinking, seeing around corners, and coming up with new approaches—all at a speed that is truly dizzying to watch. They’re like a spinning top that never wobbles.

This leads to another Catalyst hallmark: cycles of burnout. Catalysts are known to run hard at a new challenge and obsess over it, to the point where it becomes their job and their hobby. You can imagine that trail ends in burnout. But because many Catalysts don’t yet understand how they operate, let alone how to properly care for themselves, their burnout is cyclical.

Finally, as a Catalyst moves into action, their default state is to constantly take in feedback and iterate as they go. They’re a shining example of what it means to have a growth mindset.

Recognizing Catalysts on your team

If any of those traits resonated with you—and especially if all of them did—you might be a Catalyst. If that’s the case, spotting Catalysts on your team will be much easier.

Here’s why: There’s a keen sense of recognition that happens between Catalysts. It’s almost like an imperceptible spark passes between them. If there’s another Catalyst on your team, chances are you already know it—and now you have the language to describe your connection.

If you’re not a Catalyst, here’s how to spot them on your team. First, think of the people who are always suggesting new ideas. They might even be known as “troublemakers” or “disruptors” because they’re constantly bumping up against the status quo. They don’t intend to be disruptive, of course. It just so happens a Catalyst’s natural state of being is seeing how things could be better, so they tend to spend a lot of time exploring around the edges.

Again, this could speak to a lack of self-awareness on their part. If someone doesn’t know they’re a Catalyst, they might not operate with the greatest finesse. There’s also likely a lack of support on the organization’s part, simply because the organization doesn’t know to handle Catalysts.

How to support your Catalysts

In order to harness the competitive advantage that your Catalysts offer, awareness must be developed on both sides. The reason we wrote our book was to help Catalysts spot these traits in themselves and develop a greater self-awareness around how they operate. Part of being a Catalyst means recognizing that you must slow down to clarify your vision, bring people along with you (instead of leaving them behind), and better align with the actual strategy.

The other side of the coin is awareness and support from leadership. You can’t activate your Catalysts if you don’t intentionally create an environment suited for them, which happens to resemble the environment in which high-performing teams thrive. Google’s research with Project Aristotle revealed the top dynamic of effective teams is psychological safety.

In other words, Catalysts need to know they can take risks without being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive by leadership. When you activate a Catalyst, chances are good they’ll come back to you with a path forward that is divergent from what the organization is doing right now. This is their specialty: they connect the dots no one else can see.

Yet in our experience, this is the point at which many Catalysts feel attacked. Their ideas are dismissed or the organization refuses to do what needs to be done. At this point, the Catalyst is going to know they can’t safely create positive change there and they’re going to leave. This is why so many Catalysts tend to be nomadic during their careers: they’re seeking impact coupled with psychological safety. When you tell them, “Go out there, explore, maybe even fail—then come back and tell us what you see,” the imperative is on you as the leader to back those words up with your actions.

From the Project Aristotle findings, we can also infer that Catalysts need dependability—where’s the bar and what’s expected of them—as well as clarity. This isn’t clarity the way we normally think of it, with clearly defined KPIs or objectives. Catalysts are doing something brand new, so clarity for them is knowing where the guardrails are. What’s the area they can explore? If they come up with a whole new business model that’s going to cannibalize the company’s existing customer base, is that okay? Or does it need to be more incremental than that?

Catalysts also need meaning, as they’re purpose-driven people who are looking to make the world better. Show them how their work connects with a team or with the organization.

The trickiest piece is the final one: impact. How can you reward and recognize the work of Catalysts? This is tricky because the metrics to measure their success might not yet exist, so some creativity is needed to incentivize, reward, and demonstrate the impact of their efforts.

Helping Catalysts avoid burnout

Executive awareness is so important for Catalysts that they will often follow, from one place to the next, those managers who understand their value and know-how to support them. This fact illustrates the tiny percentage of organizations that know how to handle these wicked change agents. Those that do create a Catalyst friendly workplace will have a massive competitive advantage.

Of course, this competitive advantage only holds so long as the Catalysts on your team avoid catastrophic burnout. Much of this work must come from the Catalysts themselves because it’s wholly within their control to track, sustain, and replenish their energy through proper self-care. Another idea that we’ve found to be effective is a parking lot of ideas that can be pursued at a later date. Catalysts are known for juggling multiple projects at work, two side hustles, a family, and personal self-development, so prioritization is a critical tool to have in their arsenal. As leaders, we can support Catalysts’ ability to maintain their energy by helping them avoid taking on too many projects or projects that are unreasonable for the current organizational environment.

Responsibility also falls with the organization. Right now, we’re helping many leaders establish context-specific Catalyst Programs that fit their culture and their unique challenges. These programs help executives tap their Catalysts to support the ideation, manifestation, and adoption of change initiatives. These programs connect executives to the people that can help them make change initiatives as good and as successful as possible because they are leveraging those that get the change, can optimize it, and can bring others on their local teams along with the organization.

Beyond that, leaders should open the conversation about burnout. Multiple times in 2020, we’ve all said to each other, “It’s been a tough year, hasn’t it?” But that’s where the conversation stops. Now is the time to go deeper than that. Talk with your Catalysts (and really all your employees) about how they’re feeling, what their workload looks like, and take an active part in helping them manage it.

Don’t waste your Catalysts’ potential

What happens when both leaders and Catalysts demonstrate self-awareness and empathy? The most beautiful kind of alignment. The organization is thinking about the future and doing innovative work, spearheaded by their brightest, most forward-thinking minds.

Because they’re supported and empowered, the Catalysts will have activated not just their fellow changemakers within the organization, but also a broad swath of employees. Their energy acts as an accelerant to higher levels of employee engagement and morale, and that engaged, motivated, happy workforce is working together toward the organization’s goals.

We might be living in a VUCA world, but thankfully, there are those among us who stand ready to lead the charge into our uncertain future. They can see the path nobody else sees, and if you’ll let them, they’re capable of leading your organization where it needs to go.