Understand your limits: Becoming a better leader

Alison Lowe, Chief Executive of Touchstone, a mental health charity in Leeds and wider West Yorkshire, shares her experience of the importance of understanding your limits. Please note this talk contains references to abuse which may be triggering to some people.

“Lives fall apart when they need to be rebuilt.”
― Iyanla Vanzant, Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through

I cannot recall when I first knew that I was damaged as a result of my adult and childhood trauma. A lifetime denying that racism, sexual and physical abuse had affected me meant that I was slow to acknowledge the distress I was experiencing and how, in turn, that distress was negatively impacting my leadership and those around me.

I refused to accept that I had been a victim and, in a strange way, I now see that this led to me victimising myself by refusing to seek the help I needed, help that would have released me from the turmoil I was experiencing.

Another consequence of my failure to see the source of the pain I was in is that I inadvertently behaved in ways that made others experience pain. I, the abused became an abuser; using my power to control the environment around me in a way I had not been able to do as a child. The result of this was that people were afraid of me and I was not consistently living the values that I was so fervently espousing, but of course I could not see this.

Trauma can — and does — limit you. It denudes your potential; erodes your sense of self and it makes you feel as though your power has been taken away from you. Trauma doesn’t just impact your behaviours, there is a physical manifestation too. My mental health was deteriorating, my anxiety and panic attacks were massively increasing and, most worryingly, I was experiencing suicidal ideation.

It was only after an event at work in 2009 that I began to question my leadership and whether I was positively contributing to the culture in my own workplace. I did not like the conclusions I reached.

It was only after I acknowledged my past — in coaching to an amazing and insightful coach — that I was able to see how the shadows of my lived experience were still impacting my present. I was given a choice, continue living a lie, or confront my demons and learn to change my patterns.

I chose the latter.

The coaching forced me to see myself, not as I thought I was, but as I was behaving, even though that behaviour was a reaction to the trauma I had experienced, it was anathema to me and to my values and it was hindering my leadership of the organisation I was privileged to lead.

Through the next years of my journey to find myself, I learned that understanding my limits, expanded them and gave me a route map out of the darkness and into the light. I learned that celebrating my lived experience and sharing it as a “gift” to others was part of a healing process; for myself and for my audience. I also learned that recognising that I had been a victim and asking for help, did not make me weak. It made me a survivor.

Alison Lowe has worked with Voluntary Organisations for nearly 30 years. Right now she works as the Chief Executive of Touchstone a Mental Health Charity in Leeds and wider West Yorkshire.

Touchstone work with and for people that are affected by mental health problems and they specialise in working with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Alison has been a well-known campaigner on equal rights and chaired the Leeds Domestic Violence Forum that raises awareness of domestic violence against women and children by known men for over 25 years.