Turn Systemic Distress
into  |

[ An open letter to BC Healthcare Leaders] 

You did not step into leadership to manage dysfunction.
You stepped up because you cared—about patients, about staff, about what health care should be.

Yet over time, a different story began to unfold.
The system started shaping you—not around your purpose, but around its pain.
An invisible system of chronic urgency, hierarchy, and silence has taught many to survive rather than lead.

We now recognize this for what it is: a trauma-organized system.

A system where:

Burnout, absenteeism, and compassion fatigue are “just the job,”

Communication is more prescriptive than collaborative,

Disrespect slips beneath the radar of workload metrics, and

Leaders become crisis managers instead of vision keepers.

The hidden cost is steep:

Teams lose trust, families lose time, and talented people lose heart.
And because trauma always echoes through our nervous systems,
the organization’s distress ends up living inside each of us—whether we notice it or not.

Why traditional fixes fall short

No amount of restructuring, Lean project boards, or new reporting software will
heal a trauma-organized environment on its own.
Lasting change begins in the body before the boardroom—in the way we
self-regulate, co-regulate, and create psychological and neurobiological safety with one another.

When leaders model presence teams regain the bandwidth to learn, innovate, and care.
When conversation replaces compliance, self-accountability deepens.
When relationships are restored, patient outcomes follow.

A different way forward

We call this approach Safe Space Systemic Transformational Leadership and Coaching S3:TLC
It moves systems:

From urgency → to the speed of presence

From command-and-control → to co-regulation and collaboration

From patching symptoms → to healing root causes

Safe Space Systemic Leaders:

Create safe spaces—intentional spaces where staff can breathe, reflect, and reset their nervous systems.

Listen to distress as data—treating conflict, absenteeism, and errors as information, not personal failure.

Model Speed of Presence—Prioritizing presence with people over process, listening and systemic dialogue.

Guide people to share leadership—aligning the primary purpose with personal leadership responsibility.

Create time and space for connection and co-regulation—because metrics don't matter if we hurt people.

An invitation

I'm not asking you to add yet another pilot project to an overcrowded calendar.
I invite you to re-imagine leadership—to let your system's presence be your strategic action.

Begin with one meeting that starts in silence and shared breathing.
Hold one “safe-space huddle” where every voice is heard before decisions are made.
Ask one brave question: “What is our distress trying to teach us?”

Small, embodied shifts like these are the leverage points that transform whole systems.

Our commitment

We're a growing network of Safe Space Systemic Leaders and Coaches across BC—executives, directors, managers, clinicians, educators, client partners and coaches—united by a single conviction:

“We refuse to sacrifice people in order to save the system.
We will restore the system by restoring the people.”

If this resonates with the leader you intend to be, we invite you to join us.
Let’s make BC the province that proves healthcare systems can heal—from the inside out,
one nervous system and one courageous conversation at a time.