Interpersonal leader responses to secondary trauma in nonprofit human service organizations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21398
• Author: Anthony Silard
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Interpersonal leader responses to secondary

trauma in nonprofit human service

organizations

Anthony Silard

Department of Public Administration,

California State University San

Bernardino, San Bernardino, California

Correspondence

Anthony Silard, Department of Public

Administration, California State

University San Bernardino, San

Bernardino, CA.

Email: tonysilard@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Secondary trauma is concerned with the intrapersonal

affective responses an individual can experience during

or subsequent to an interaction(s) with another person

who recounts his or her personal stories of abuse,

trauma, or disempowerment. Secondary trauma can

engender a host of detrimental intrapersonal effects on

nonprofit staff who express empathy toward clients

experiencing primary trauma. I explore the interpersonal-

level responses to seconda ry trauma-affected staff

available to the leaders of nonp rofit human service

organizations. These secondary trauma-sensitive leader

behaviors, I theorize, will reduce the prevalence of sec-

ondary trauma in nonprofit organizations and generate

follower engagement.

KEYWORDS

emotion, leadership, nonprofit, secondary trauma

1|INTRODUCTION

Recently, scholars have taken an interest in the role of emotions in nonprofit organizationa l life

(Rowold & Rohmann, 2008, 2009; Silard, 2018; Ward & Greene, 2018). Some of these recent

studies have found that emotions are enacted uniquely in nonprofit organizations, that is, dif-

ferently from organizations embedded in the private and public sectors (Silard, 2018; Ward &

Greene, 2018). Secondary trauma is one such emotion that may be uniquely elaborated by non-

profit actors, especially those in nonprofit human service organizations (HSOs) providing direct

services to clients experiencing personal or primary trauma, such as homeless shelters, rape cri-

sis centers, suicide prevention, and disaster assistance organizations.

Received: 4 December 2018 Revised: 4 November 2019 Accepted: 11 November 2019

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21398

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2020;30:635–653. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 635

Alternately referred to as "vicarious trauma," "vicarious tramautization," "secondary trau-

matic stress," or "compassion fatigue" (Figley, 1995), secondary trauma is concerned with the

intrapersonal affective responses an individual can experience during or subsequent to an

interaction(s) with another person who recounts his or her personal stories of abuse, trauma, or

disempowerment (Williams, Helm, & Clemens, 2012). Secondary trauma can engender a host

of detrimental intrapersonal effects on nonprofit staff who express empathy toward clients

experiencing primary trauma. These effects tend to mimic the effects the clients themselves

experience and can include severe and enduring psychological outcomes such as helplessness

and fear (McCann & Pearlman, 1990).

In addition, secondary trauma can alter an individual's personal and professional identity

and psychological needs and beliefs relating to trust, safety, self-esteem, control, and intimacy

and lead to a general disillusionment with society (for a review, see Sabin-Farrell & Turpin,

2003). These intrapersonal outcomes can easily spillover to the personal lives of secondary

trauma-affected staff (M

airean & Turliuc, 2013). Due to the consequent depletion of their per-

sonal resources as per conservation of resources (COR) theory (see discussion below; Hobfoll,

1989), secondary trauma can also affect the ability of actors to engage productively with other

dimensions of their work (Elwood, Mott, Lohr, & Galovski, 2011).

In this article, I will explore the interpersonal-level emotion management behaviors avail-

able to nonprofit leaders to respond to secondary trauma-affected staff. My analysis will be

guided by the research question: How can nonprofit leaders practice emotion management in sec-

ondary trauma-affected human service organizations to reduce the associated potentially detri-

mental staff outcomes? These secondary trauma-sensitive leader behaviors, I theorize, will

reduce the prevalence of secondary trauma in nonprofit organizations and generate positive

organizational outcomes such as increased follower engagement. I will begin by explaining how

secondary trauma operates as a subordinate emotion that can be experienced by nonprofit staff.

Subsequently, I will delineate organizational- and interpersonal-level leader responses to sec-

ondary trauma in HSOs, and the importance of each. I will then define staff engagement and

state why it is a staff outcome germane to this analysis. Next, I will define leader emotion man-

agement (LEM). I will then propose three nonprofit LEM behaviors likely to generate follower

engagement in secondary trauma-affected organizations.

2|SECONDARY TRAUMA IS AN EMOTION

Subordinate emotions differ from primary emotions in that they are generally produced by a set

of cognitive "prototypical scripts." I will now explain this process and then delineate how it

applies to secondary trauma, which I propose is a subordinate emotion to the primary emotion

of sadness. The emotion prototype approach provides a useful organizing framework for dis-

crete emotions. Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, and O'Connor (1987) conducted a hierarchical cluster

analysis in order to produce a hierarchical model of discrete emotions. Consistent with

appraisal theories of emotion (Conroy, Tech, & Menges, 2017; Scherer, 1997), the superordinate

category of the model is based on an individual's functional assessment of an external stimulus

(stimuli) or event(s) as promoting or inhibiting their implicit or explicit goals (Ashkanasy,

2003). This superordinate category, similar to emotion valence, can be either positive or

negative.

The next descending level in the emotion hierarchy, developed by Fischer, Shaver, and Car-

nochan (1990), consists of five basic emotions. The third and lowest level of the hierarchical

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