My guest today is Katharine Manning, an attorney and victim's rights advocate for the past 25 years training and consulting on effective empathy in difficult times, and the author of the acclaimed book "The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job" (HarperCollins Leadership 2021). In this timely, grounding and generous conversation, she shares some of her deep insights on the perils of fear-based leadership versus the generative effects of empathy-based leadership. She explains how the vulnerability of sharing our difficult stories with others is not necessarily in the content of those stories, but in the need for reciprocity. We need people to bear witness to us, to listen. That’s the L in her powerful LASER Method. And as you’ll hear, that’s not a skill many of us have in our back pocket. We talk about MeToo, the necessity of a response to our story, and what gets in the way of truly seeing and hearing other people in their pain. And when we are listening to people’s stories, she describes the challenge of trying to stay present, to quell our own anxieties, and why it’s so hard to hold off on jumping in with quick fixes and solutions they didn’t ask for and don’t need from us. We discuss why it's so important to shift the workplace mindset from trauma denial with an exclusive focus on productivity to trauma literacy and the need for us to be more proactively curious about people as human beings. What does a workplace look, sound and feel like when we trust that people know what they need…when we trust that we can respect those needs enough to trade defensive barriers for good healthy boundaries? As a Senior Attorney Advisor for fifteen years, Katharine guided the US Department of Justice through its response to victims in cases ranging from terrorism to large-scale financial fraud to the exploitation of children and domestic violence. Katharine Manning is a beacon of wisdom and compassion, a voice of grounded empathy and tireless advocacy. She has witnessed how the power of story can help people reclaim voice, restore a sense of safety and dignity, return us to ourselves and each other...and recognize the possibilities for healing and growth that can emerge through empathy. She is the founder of a company called Blackbird, DC in Washington - as the Beatles lyric goes… "take these broken wings and learn to fly…"
"Are we going to lead with fear or empathy?" - attorney Katharine Manning, author of The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job (HarperCollins Leadership 2021).
Katharine Manning has worked on issues of trauma and victimization for more than 25 years. As a Senior Attorney Advisor with the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, for fifteen years she guided the Justice Department through its response to victims in cases ranging from terrorism to large-scale financial fraud to child exploitation.
Some of the cases she advised on include the Boston Marathon bombing, the Pulse nightclub and South Carolina AME church shootings, the uprising in Charlottesville, the Madoff investment fraud, and the federal case against Larry Nassar, doctor for the U.S. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics team.
Katharine Manning's expertise helps organizations to prepare for and respond to the challenges they face involving employees and clients who may be in trauma. A member of the bar in Washington, D.C. and California, she also served as an attorney with the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop in San Francisco, where she represented Fortune 500 companies in class actions, insurance, and media cases.
She is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Virginia School of Law and teaches at American University and in the Master’s in "Trauma-Informed Leadership Program" at Dominican University.
Website www.katharinemanning.com
"We Need Trauma-Informed Workplaces" (Harvard Business Review)
https://hbr.org/2022/03/we-need-trauma-informed-workplaces
Katharine's book: "The Empathetic Workplace"
https://www.katharinemanning.com/my-book/