"Rooted leadership means leading with empathy and care. It’s about finding ways to connect with people and create communities of trust and psychological safety, where people feel safe enough to show up and be themselves – including in times of crisis."
Today, we're talking to expert in organizational trauma, founder, and award-winning author, Dimple Dhabalia about what it means to be a rooted leader and how practicing story healing can help us all.
We get into:
- The impact of the Industrial Revolution
- Why the mind-body connection is important (even–and maybe especially–at work)
- Workplace trauma and moral injury in the workplace
- Creating "brave spaces"
- Self-awareness and the 5 types of reactions most of us have when experiencing a dysregulated nervous system
- Neuroplasticity and the function of story sharing and story healing
"The antidote to dehumanization is helping people see the humanity in each other again."
This is important work for people to be doing – especially at work, in leadership, and right now. I hope you'll listen and share your takeaways!
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You can find Dimple @dimpstory across all social media platforms, and at dear HUMANitarian on Substack. Her book, Tell Me My Story: Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self is available at all online booksellers.
Dimple D. Dhabalia is the founder of Roots in the Clouds, a human-centered leadership coach, and bestselling author with over twenty years of government and public service experience. Dimple partners with leaders across mission-driven sectors to address root issues of organizational trauma, and design inclusive, human-centered workplace cultures where emerging and seasoned leaders can learn how to preserve their own humanity as they work to preserve it for others.
After almost two decades working on the front lines of the government and humanitarian sectors, Dimple had experienced vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, moral injury, burnout, and anxiety. Like so many others, she worked in an organization that celebrated the resilience of the human spirit in the refugees and displaced persons they served, while often failing to extend the same ethos of care to those working within their own organizations.
Determined to educate and support heart-centered leaders, she developed and launched the Daring Leaders Project (DLP), the first mindfulness-based leadership development program of its kind within her government agency. Her vision and leadership earned her Director’s awards for Innovator of the Year and the Pillar of Leadership.
In 2021, Dimple left a two-decade career in government and humanitarian service to launch Roots in the Clouds with a personal mission of putting the “human” back into humanitarian work and making service sustainable across mission-driven sectors. Today, Dimple’s cutting-edge work uses the power of storytelling to help leaders and organizations heal and rebuild mission-driven cultures using a holistic, human-centered, and trauma-informed approach grounded in principles of mindful performance, positive psychology, and human-centered leadership.
Her new book, Tell Me My Story–Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self [Ambika Media 2024], was the #1 new release in workplace culture on Amazon, and was recently excerpted in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Dimple and her work have also been featured in a number of high-profile podcasts and media outlets including, Fast Company, CEO World Magazine, and the Federal News Network. Dimple recently debuted a limited-series companion podcast to Tell Me My Story called Service Without Sacrifice and is also creator and co-host of the popular podcast What Would Ted Lasso Do? You can find Dimple @dimpstory across all social media platforms, and at dear HUMANitarian on Substack.
Jun 12 202546 min