Everyone Brings Their Sh#t to Work
Nov 02, 2026TL;DR: The colleague who goes silent in conflict or treats every piece of feedback like a threat may be responding to something much older than this week's meeting. Plenty of workplace behavior was learned long before anyone had a job title. Nicole Hollar, behavior change keynote speaker and integrative life coach, explains how the long-term effects of trauma can surface at work, why leaders shouldn't try to diagnose it, and how to keep accountability intact while recognizing the patterns underneath performance.
Most organizations have a short list of explanations for difficult behavior. Someone is a poor fit, has a bad attitude, isn't committed or needs more training. Sometimes one of those explanations is right.
After more than 25 years watching how people behave under pressure, though, I've noticed how often adult behavior at work is shaped by lessons learned somewhere else. A person who grew up where mistakes led to punishment may hear routine feedback as danger. Someone who learned that keeping the peace kept them safe may agree to every deadline and suffer in silence. The perfectionist reworking a slide deck at 1 a.m. may be less worried about the slides than about what being wrong or not perfect means.
Not everyone who struggles at work has trauma, and nobody should start assigning it to their coworkers. Trauma can have long-term effects, but it is also personal, and an employee's history belongs to them.
Treat the size of the reaction as information
When a response seems out of proportion to the situation, take that as information. In coaching I call inappropriate or unwarranted emotion, baggage. A reaction bigger than the moment is often connected to something other than the moment and has the fuel of the previous moments amplifying it.
That doesn't mean lowering standards. One of the principles in Hollar's Potter's Wheel™ is Boundaries: distinguishing what's mine from what's yours. An employee's history is theirs. So is the work, the behavior and the choices they make once they recognize a pattern. The leader's part is how they communicate, what they model, whether expectations are clear, and whether the environment makes honesty feel risky.
A lot of workplaces treat accountability and compassion as competitors, as though you must pick between kind and clear. People do better with both. Clear expectations reduce the guesswork that keeps anxious people on high alert. Private, specific feedback is received better than public criticism for almost everyone, and very differently for someone whose past taught them that being singled out meant something bad was coming.
Leaders have their own stuff
The manager who avoids every hard conversation, the executive who needs control of every detail, the leader who takes disagreement personally: those patterns came from somewhere as well. Before deciding what's driving someone else, it's worth asking what's driving your own reactions and what your team has learned to do around them.
When I speak to organizations about behavior change, this is usually where the room gets quiet. Talking about the team's resistance is much more comfortable than talking about the culture a leader's own patterns helped create.
Organizations can and should make real support available, such as an employee assistance program or mental health resources, for people who want it. Most of culture, however, gets built in ordinary moments: how feedback is delivered, how mistakes are handled, and whether people can tell the truth without bracing for impact.
Questions for Reflection
- Which behavior on your team have you labeled an attitude problem without ever wondering what might be driving it?
- What do people seem to brace for when they bring you bad news, and how might you have taught them that?
- Where are you taking responsibility for someone else's history, and where are you avoiding responsibility for your own?
Frequently Asked Questions
How does trauma show up in the workplace?
It can appear as defensiveness toward feedback, perfectionism, conflict avoidance, people-pleasing, withdrawal or strong reactions to authority. None of these behaviors proves someone has trauma, and many people with trauma show none of them. The best approach is to treat outsized reactions as information instead of assuming they're simply attitude.
Should managers ask employees about their trauma?
Generally, no. An employee's history is personal and theirs to share or keep private. Managers can focus on clear expectations, respectful feedback, consistent follow-through and making support resources, such as an employee assistance program, easy to find.
What does a trauma-informed workplace look like?
Broadly, it recognizes that past experiences can affect how people respond to stress, authority and conflict, and it avoids practices that create unnecessary fear. In practice, that often means clarity, consistency, respect and psychological safety, with standards and accountability still in place.