Thoughts after reading Bessell Van Der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps The Score”

The battle-worn veteran returns from the combat zone, suffering from PTSD, and has difficulty readjusting to civilian life. This is a Hollywood image of trauma that doesn’t do full justice to the awful fact that trauma is quite commonplace.

In his book, “The Body Keeps The Score”, psychiatrist and trauma expert Bessel Van Der Kolk shows how trauma is experienced by a variety of people, amongst them: veterans, child abuse survivors, and victims of sexual assault or other violent crime. 

People who have experienced discrimination, due to different racial or gender or socio-economic backgrounds, will also have suffered trauma. So will those with physical disabilities or cognitive impairments. Even introverts in extroverted cultures. And so on. Trauma of varying degrees.

Trauma is a psychological phenomenon, something that affects the way in which the mind works. And, as is apparent from the title of the book, it’s also a physiological phenomenon, something that shows up in the body, even if the nature of the original trauma was not physical. Physical ill-health, as well as psycho-emotional disturbance, are the unfortunate and lingering effects of past trauma.

Relevance

What has any of this to do with you, as an investment professional? Well, Van Der Kolk’s book says nothing on the subject. But perhaps you could use it as an invitation to reconsider your snap judgement about the character deficiencies of a colleague, perhaps someone who might be off sick a lot, or another who might be excessively cranky. 

Given how prevalent trauma is, the chances are pretty good that someone in your team has suffered trauma of some sort. Rather than judging their behaviour as evidence of a character deficiency, you might relax that position and make space for a little compassion for what might have occurred in that person’s life. If they’ve been traumatised, they’re suffering enough already, and they don’t need your critical judgement to be added to their burdens.

Well, you might say, that’s all lovely and compassionate, but you’re in the hard game of beating a group of ferocious competitors, you don’t have time for any of this touchy-feely stuff. 

Invitation

Yah, okay, sure. But…The culture of your team is a significant variable in the competitive equation. Culture matters for performance. And the quality of the conversations between the members of your team is the connective tissue in the team’s culture. Conversations matter for culture, which matters for performance. There’s a direct line.

Improving the quality of the conversations begins with getting the other person. And if the other person has been traumatised and you fail to take account of that fact, you will not come close to getting them, and then your conversations will be lower quality, your culture will suffer and your results will be suboptimal. 

So compassion, I would argue, does have a place in your hard game. I would extend my argument to say that, because compassion is so difficult and so rare, it might be the very best place to develop a competitive advantage.

Trauma inflicts a lot of pain on those who experience it. But perhaps, wrapped in all the layers of pain, there may be a gift. That gift is the possibility of deeper human connection, and all the good things that flow from there, including better investment performance. The choice to discover the gift is entirely yours.

Reflection

  • How certain are you that none of the people in your team have been traumatised?
  • Who is showing signs of physiological or psychological difficulty?
  • How might you engage with this person now?