In trauma-informed leadership, values aren’t just abstract ideas hanging on a wall or buried in a strategic plan. They are living principles—ones that shape how we treat one another, make decisions, navigate conflict, and build trust.

And yet, many organizations struggle to define their values in a way that feels authentic, inclusive, and actionable. Especially for mission-driven, trauma-responsive workplaces, values must do more than inspire. They must hold us, guide us, and keep us accountable.

Why Trauma-Informed Values Matter

Before we dive into the process, it’s worth pausing to ask: Why does this matter?

When we center trauma-informed principles in leadership, we recognize that:

• Many people bring personal and professional trauma histories to work.
• Systems and policies can perpetuate harm or become sources of healing.
• The workplace can be a site of safety—or stress.

Organizational values serve as the emotional and ethical backbone of a trauma-informed environment. They help staff:

• Understand what behaviors are expected and celebrated.
• Feel a sense of belonging and alignment.
• Navigate moments of tension or uncertainty with clarity and trust.

Without clearly articulated values, organizations risk becoming reactive, inconsistent, or unintentionally re-traumatizing. But perhaps most importantly, values remind us of our why. When pressure builds and urgency dominates, values are what anchor us to our deeper purpose and collective humanity.

Recently, I facilitated a Trauma-Informed Leadership Training with several leaders from a non-profit organization in Los Angeles where I guided staff through a process of co-creating trauma-informed organizational values. What follows is a step-by-step look at how I structured that process—and how you can replicate it to shape your own values from the inside out.

Step 1: Ground the Work in Connection and Psychological Safety

We began the workshop with a gentle welcome and check-in—because how we arrive at this work matters. Trauma-informed leadership isn’t about diving into strategy cold. It’s about cultivating presence, trust, and connection right from the start.

We invited participants to introduce themselves and choose from one of the following check-in prompts:

• A word or phrase that describes how you're showing up today.
• One value that guides your leadership.
• A small act of care you've given or received recently.

Why this matters: Trauma-informed facilitation starts with consent and choice. Even in something as small as a check-in, we want people to choose what feels safe to share. This honors autonomy and builds emotional safety.

These small rituals aren’t just icebreakers—they model the very kind of relational culture that trauma-informed values aim to create.

Step 2: Build Group Agreements to Establish Shared Ground

Before launching into values exploration, we created group agreements—shared guidelines for how we wanted to interact.

This involved:

1.  A few minutes of silent reflection: “What do you need from this group to feel safe, heard, and respected?”
2. Popcorn-style sharing and theme-spotting.
3. Group consensus to finalize 5–6 key agreements.

Examples included:

• Speak from the “I” perspective.
• Practice curiosity, not judgment.
• Honor confidentiality.
• Value silence as part of the process.
• Assume best intent and name impact.

Why this matters: Trauma-informed values must emerge from a space where people feel psychologically safe. Creating agreements together sets the tone for brave, honest, and inclusive dialogue—and reminds participants that their voices matter. This step also models the value of collaboration and shared power, which are often missing in traditional top-down leadership models.

Step 3: Begin With Individual Reflection and Self-Assessment

Before jumping into group work, participants completed a Trauma-Informed Organizational Values Self-Assessment, adapted from a list of 30+ values rooted in trauma-informed practice. The categories aligned with the four pillars of trauma-informed leadership and included:

• Psychological Safety & Emotional Well-Being
• Trust & Accountability
• Autonomy & Empowerment
• Relationships & Connection

Staff were invited to:

• Review definitions and examples for each value.
• Select and rank their top three values based on personal and professional alignment.

Why this matters: Trauma-informed leadership honors lived experience. Asking individuals to reflect privately before engaging collectively creates a more inclusive and honest starting point. It gives introverted or cautious participants the space to ground themselves before entering vulnerable discussions.

It also reveals which values are felt, not just known intellectually.

Step 4: Identify Patterns in Small Groups

Once participants had named their personal top values, we broke into small groups (3–5 people) to explore patterns and themes. We offered three guiding questions:

• What values are showing up most often across the group?
• Which feel most foundational to a trauma-informed organization?
• Are there any values that we were surprised didn’t come up very often?

Each group selected 2–3 values they believed were essential and wrote them on sticky notes. This made it easy to visually map recurring themes in the next step.

Why this matters: Small group dialogue allows for deeper reflection, surfacing trends while giving voice to quieter perspectives. It also reinforces the collective nature of values creation—and creates moments of connection between colleagues who may not typically interact.

Step 5: Surface Collective Wisdom in the Full Group

We then invited all groups to post their selected values on a whiteboard or shared visual space. As facilitators, we helped organize these into themes while guiding a group discussion with prompts like:

• What are we seeing here?
• Which values are consistently surfacing?
• Are there tensions or trade-offs between any of these?
• What does this tell us about who we are and what we’re striving for?

By the end of this conversation, we had 5–7 core values that reflected the heart of the group.

Why this matters: Trauma-informed values are not handed down from leadership—they emerge from collaborative sense-making. This part of the process builds ownership and alignment.

It’s also an opportunity to highlight that values are both aspirational and directional—they’re where we are headed, even if we’re not perfectly living them yet.

Step 6: Define What Each Value Looks Like in Practice

Naming a value is a great start—but living it requires clarity. So for each of our selected core values, we worked together to define:

• 3 supportive behaviors that embody this value
• 3 slippery behaviors that pull us away from it
• 1–2 real-life examples of someone living the value at work

We also asked: How do we hold ourselves accountable to this value—individually and collectively?

Here’s an example using the value “Psychological Safety”:

Supportive Behaviors:

• Giving people space to speak without interruption
• Validating emotions even when we disagree
• Normalizing mistakes as learning opportunities

Slippery Behaviors:

• Eye-rolling or dismissive body language in meetings
• Gossip or back-channeling instead of direct feedback
• Punishing people for honest mistakes

Real-Life Example: “One time, a colleague forgot to send a key report. Instead of criticizing, the supervisor said, ‘Thanks for letting me know. Let’s talk about what support you need going forward.’ That moment stuck with me—it felt safe and human.”

Why this matters: Trauma-informed values aren’t about perfection—they’re about conscious alignment. Defining behaviors makes values tangible and observable. This clarity allows for more equitable supervision, more intentional onboarding, and more grounded culture-building.

Step 7: Create Structures for Accountability and Integration

To ensure the values don’t fade after the session, we asked:

• How can we embed these behaviors into onboarding and training?
• How can supervisors model and reinforce them in team meetings?
• What visual reminders or tools would help keep the values present?
• Who wants to help carry this forward?

Ideas included:

• Turning the values and behaviors into a printable poster or visual playbook.
• Creating a short video series with staff sharing real-life examples of each value.
• Holding quarterly reflection check-ins to assess how the values are being lived.
• Including values-based questions in annual reviews and staff development plans.

Why this matters: The trauma-informed principle of trustworthiness and transparency means we can’t just talk about values—we need systems that reflect and support them. Otherwise, values risk becoming performative or meaningless.

Step 8: Invite Personal Commitment

To close the session, each person was invited to write a personal commitment statement:

• What value do I most want to embody in my leadership?
• What’s one action I’ll take in the next 30 days to live that value?

This practice brings the work full circle—from the organizational to the individual.

Example:
 “I commit to living the value of Belonging by actively including quieter voices in meetings and checking in with newer team members one-on-one.”

Participants had the option to keep this statement private, share it with a partner, or add it to a collective wall of commitments.

Why this matters: Trauma-informed change starts from within. When people take ownership of their role in culture-building, transformation becomes not only possible—but sustainable.

Final Thoughts: Values That Live in the Day-to-Day

The process of creating trauma-informed organizational values isn’t about finding the perfect words—it’s about building shared meaning. It’s about having brave conversations, listening deeply, and turning values into behaviors.

When done well, this work:

• Increases trust and cohesion across teams
• Clarifies expectations and reduces ambiguity
• Supports regulation, reflection, and resilience
• Reinforces a culture of inclusion and accountability

But most importantly, it signals that your organization isn’t just trauma-informed in theory—it’s trauma-informed in practice.

Values, after all, are only as meaningful as the choices they guide and the relationships they shape. So whether you're starting from scratch or refreshing your existing values, remember: the process matters as much as the outcome.

Let it be inclusive. Let it be intentional. Let it be deeply human.