Trauma As Fuel Empowerment Guide

This workbook is designed to accompany the workshop Roots and Wings: How Trauma

Deepens Leadership, Learning, and Life. Its purpose is to help individuals and teams reframe

trauma as a source of transformation—fueling leadership growth, enhanced empathy,

broadened perspective, resilience, and meaning. Through seven carefully crafted exercises,grounded in theory and practice, this resource supports trauma survivors, leaders, and teams in

using personal challenges to spark empowerment and cultivate healing-based value creation.

Whether you are working alone or with a team, this workbook offers a guide for reflective

practice, perspective-shifting, emotional insight, and intentional application of lessons learned

from adversity.

The content is iterative, encouraging steady growth, and culminates in a more complete

understanding of how trauma may help us grow as people and professionals.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Role of Trauma in Leadership and Human Growth

3. Exercise 1: Mapping Your Narrative

4. Exercise 2: The Perspective Switch

5. Exercise 3: Empathy Walk

6. Exercise 4: Gratitude Grid

7. Exercise 5: Circle of Control

8. Exercise 6: Learning Lens

9. Exercise 7: Feedback Loop Map

10. Discussion Questions

11. References

12. Works Cited