Louise Marra is a systems healer and founder of Spirited Leadership and Unity House. By coaching companies and NGOs across sectors in New Zealand, Louise aims to create a space for what she terms "walking restorers." These individuals can foster new relationships and promote practices that help heal historical wounds that creep into today’s workplaces. Louise believes that leaders have the responsibility to bring restoration of past and present trauma into their organizations. Louise’s book is called “ReRoot: The Nature of Change Through the System of Trees”. Watch out for a trauma-informed leadership course with Louise Marra on the pocketproject.org
Louise Marra is a systems healer and founder of Spirited Leadership and Unity House. By coaching companies and NGOs across sectors in New Zealand, Louise aims to create a space for what she terms "walking restorers." These individuals can foster new relationships and promote practices that help heal historical wounds that creep into today’s workplaces. Louise believes that leaders have the responsibility to bring restoration of past and present trauma into their organizations.
Louise’s book is called “ReRoot: The Nature of Change Through the System of Trees”. Watch out for a trauma-informed leadership course with Louise Marra on the pocketproject.org
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HOST: I’m Myrna McCallum, Metis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. As you know, I believe that law scholars and bar courses are missing a critical competency in their curriculum: trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases. Call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy. Guide your practice in to avoid doing further harm to others. And ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn’t know you needed before beginning your career.
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Your education starts right here. Right now.
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HOST: Today I want to take you to the other side of the Pacific, all the way to New Zealand. That’s where we’ll meet Louise Marra.
Louise is a founder of Spirited Leadership and Unity House. And with those organizations: she is working to radically transform leadership in the workplace. Louise offers coaching, and facilitates programs for NGOs and corporations. Programs in meditation, mindfulness, nature-based education, and more.
These efforts are rooted in Indigenous practices. Louise is Maori, and she descends from the Ngāi (Neye) Tuhoe (Two-hoy) iwi from the North island of New Zealand.
I’m excited to speak with Louise about restorative leadership. According to Louise, a leader can and should restore and heal workspaces that are experiencing traumatization because the groups within them can become more grounded and connected in order to improve productivity and foster success.
But for that to happen, it is going to take a small revolution. Companies need to find common ground with employees and foster a deep level of connectivity. Leaders must undergo a major shift in consciousness. They will have to reckon with workplace practices that are just traumatizing, dehumanizing, demoralizing, and just dismissive of the experiences of their employees. This is huge, what Louise is doing, so let’s get into it!
[00:00:00] Myrna McCallum: Hi there, Louise Mara. Thank you for taking time to have a conversation with me on this podcast of mine.
Louise Marra:Wonderful to be here. Really beautiful to, to meet you and yeah, join this movement you're creating.
Myrna McCallum: Oh, I really appreciate you saying that. Sometimes when I hear movement, I get excited and other times I get terrified and I'm sure that's just a natural human response.
[00:00:27] So there's so many things I want to talk with you about. Today, can we start with the collective trauma work that you're doing?
[00:00:36] Louise Marra: Yeah, love to. There's a lot of need in this time for really healing and restoring the past. Like there's so much that's not suppressed anymore. So there's so much kind of up and out for healing and restoration.
[00:00:52] So I live in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And, I whakapapa to Ngāi Tūhoe, which means I belong to the Tūhoe tribe here. So, I do a lot of work of restoration in the decolonization space and re indigenization space. And as you'll know, that's not a easy or quick space. So I work both with Māori, Pacific people, but also with what we call Pākehā, which is kind of white New Zealanders, to actually get them ready to be what I call walking restorers, which is able to actually kind of relate in a new way and enter the relational space in a new way that is restorative for indigenous people because so much of that relational space becomes re traumatizing. I do a lot of work there, also in training NGO leaders, mostly some kind of more corporate leaders and trauma informed practice and restorative leadership, what I call restorative leadership.
[00:02:10] Like to me, leaders are healers. Like we're either healing or we're re traumatizing. It's kind of, it sounds a bit brutal, but we're either restoring in some ways or retraumatizing. There's not really much of a neutral space. I know that's an outrageous thing to say, but that's how I see it. You know, I've worked in leadership development for many years, and I feel like we're actually responsible.
[00:02:38] So that means leadership itself has to change.
[00:02:42] Myrna McCallum: Interesting. Okay, you mentioned a lot of things, and I want to go back and see if we can, like, unpack some of what you've talked about. Now, you talked about restorative leadership. That's interesting to think about restorative, like any kind of restorative approaches and leadership being put together.
[00:03:05] Can you tell me more about what that means and what that would require from a leader to be a restorative leader?
[00:03:12] Louise Marra: Yeah, perfect question. And I feel that in all spheres, because of where we are with multiple crises in the world and certainly what the environment take that we've all in some ways across all disciplines including law which in some ways has seen itself as just service orientated but you know how do we find a way of being in all our disciplines that actually starts to reconnect, not continue the disconnect?
[00:03:50] So in some ways we're in a disease of disconnection. So how do we start to restore our connectivity and then lead from a place of connectivity, not the disconnection? What does that require? Well, first, that lead is, in some ways, I talk about plugging in, filling up, re-routing, like really connecting themselves back to the Earth, and really feeling that part of them, say in polyvagal theory, the ventral vagal, or the self that isn't traumatized–
[00:04:31] You know, we all carry trauma, actually, all of us, but that doesn't mean we are trauma. So that we find that place, we cultivate it because it's that place that kind of metabolizes the disconnected place. But what happens is we get into the disconnect thinking we'll solve things without coming into the connection to see what solutions want to arrive.
[00:04:57] So for me, it's a leadership that connects before a solution-makes.
Myrna McCallum: So is it more like collaborative leader or a relational leader?
Louise Marra: Yep, you could definitely apply those terms. I see it as a bit deeper in a way also that it's also a capacity that we can allow these big traumas to arise and we begin to actually work with them in a restorative way.
[00:05:34] So in my country, the colonization trauma is just always present. We think it's not. It's always present. Because it's never really being honored, restored, owned. So it's also leaders who actually know that they have the ability to be able to work with and include that in a restoring way, not a re traumatizing way. So we're not adding to the thickness of the denial or the thickness of the fight/flight, like, I don't want to know any of this crap or, you know what I mean? Like we're actually really able to be with those traumas because they're showing up in every workplace.
Myrna McCallum:Definitely. I've become quite familiar through my work with institutional or organizational traumas, and also the ways in which some leaders become traumatizing just by virtue of the way in which they approach their role.
[00:06:36] And it sounds to me like examining or exploring what restorative leadership looks like could be of profound healing benefit to some of these organizations and help these leaders learn a different way of leadership.
[00:06:52] Let me ask a little bit about collective trauma, because I heard you say we're all traumatized doesn't mean we are all trauma, or we're all, you know, behaving or engaging from a place of trauma.
[00:07:09] Now, I know there's going to be a lot of folks out there who resist that idea? Because I've heard them when I show up in certain places, folks who will say, I've never been traumatized. I had a pretty good life and this trauma doesn't apply to me. And what would you say to those folks, Louise?
[00:07:27] Louise Marra: What would I say? I mean, there is so much intergenerational trauma that's never been restored. Now, some people have been more the recipients or the victims of that, and some of them have been the perpetrators. So in our ancestral lines, there's a lot of perpetration. Some people are totally switched off to that, but the system we live in, the soup we live in is actually quite a traumatized, disconnected soup.
[00:08:03] So for people who say I don't have any, in some ways it's kind of easy to just keep a whole lot at bay and then make trauma an only personal thing. But actually trauma is anything we're too alone to feel or that collectively we haven't been able to feel yet. I feel that it really includes every human being. So putting yourself outside of that in itself as a trauma, does it make sense?
[00:08:31] Myrna McCallum: It totally does make sense. I mean, it makes sense to me as somebody who's been talking about trauma for the last three years. For some folks who maybe are less clear on it, it might still be a little bit confusing. And so to help them understand, let's talk a little bit about what collective trauma is because if people maybe don't necessarily resonate with the idea that they carry individual trauma or even intergenerational trauma, I think there's an argument that could be made that we are collectively traumatized. And if, like, for those of us, and that's all of us who survived this pandemic, the pandemic is one example of, I think, a collective traumatizing experience, but there are so many others that happen within organizations and locations and
[00:09:23] the list goes on. So can you help explain what collective trauma is and how we might recognize it, whether it's in our workplace or in our community?
[00:09:34] Louise Marra: One thing around the disconnect is a couple of collective traumas that I think is so strong. Like one is our disconnect from the environment. There's still just this bizarre idea.
[00:09:47] That's been wired into us that humans are separate from the environment, but they could never ever be the case scientifically in any way whatsoever. So we live with that disconnect. And so then we all live with the manifestations of that. So our foods. Not optimal, our air's not optimal, our water's not, you know, all of these things that come in and out of our system.
[00:10:12] Another thing that I think is a trauma we live in is the stress, the pressure, those are all trauma responses. They all continue to disconnect. So there's no time and space to come back into a deep connection of wisdom in a way, because that's our wisest place. And my stressed place is our most traumatized place.
[00:10:42] So you know, those would be big collective traumas that I feel we've really got to really look at. And they impact all of us.
[00:10:50] Myrna McCallum: Absolutely, they do. You've mentioned disconnection a number of times, and you spoke about the disease of disconnection. Can you tell me why is disconnection so damaging?
[00:11:04] Louise Marra: If you feel into when you feel most disconnected, eh, and if I feel into when I feel most disconnected and anyone listening might just feel what that kind of isolation and almost like over personalization, like, you know, often that's there's something wrong with me, something fatally flawed about me. That's a very hard place for a human being. And when you start to understand how the nervous system works, but also what Indigenous people have told us for ages, and my own experience of life, is I've got so many connective fibres, always sensing the environment, communicating. You know, we're beautiful instruments. Now, to me, it's such a trauma that most people don't experience that. And then on a macro scale, humans aren't experiencing their fullness, aliveness. You've got medicine for this time, I've got medicine, we don't know how to fully bring it because we're so busy managing our trauma.
[00:12:21] Even if we don't call it that, we're busy managing our stress, we could say, we're busy managing our pressure, we're busy managing survival. So the answer isn't so much to solve all of that, it's ah, let's recover this connective tissue. Let's recover our connected self. That's what heals. It's not like we can go away in a way and just heal ourselves.
[00:12:45] I don't think that's possible. And it's certainly not the time of that. And I'm not anti-individual healing and I run my own therapy practice as well, but I do think we're now entering the collective healing phase really, and that's what's super needed. And it's exciting because people get to heal together, like I run healing groups.
[00:13:07] It's phenomenal, actually, what can happen in a group, vis a vis what can happen in individual therapy, but it's both.
[00:13:16] Myrna McCallum: I've definitely heard people say that we heal in community and not so much in isolation. And I mean, right now on social media, you see a lot of healer type people putting a lot of messages out there about like inviting you to think about your triggers.
[00:13:40] And one thing that's really popular right now across social media is the question, are you not triggered because you have overcome your triggers or because you have removed people from your life so there's no one there to trigger you and it just gets me thinking about the value that community can bring when it comes to thinking about collective, collective healing or healing any kind of trauma and connection.
[00:14:12] Whether this concept can apply to workplaces. Can workers or employees also heal in those environments together?
[00:14:23] Louise Marra: I really believe that they can. I work a lot in workplaces where there's a lot of diversity. And Indigenous people, people of color, they're not going back into a box. They're not just going to say, okay, the way you do it's right and we'll just carry on.
[00:14:41] That's not happening anymore. There's a lot of willingness in organizations to actually start to kind of look at how a whole thing might be reimagined and how some of the past ways of operating can be more restored. Like one simple thing I get people to do is I issue a challenge. So I've issued a challenge throughout the NGO sector in New Zealand.
[00:15:08] I call it six by one, which is six times a day for one minute, like just six minutes, six times a day for one minute. Can you stop and do something that brings you joy and ease? Because you see we’ve got to wire that ventral vagal or this beautiful selfhood back into workplaces. And this drivenness just keeps everyone in a pressure cooker. But that actually means that you've got contracted nervous systems through your whole organization.
[00:15:41] And we also think productivity is more quicker, better. But actually flow states are the most productive and most organizations don't even know how to access them. So I think there's just a whole new era that we need brave leaders to go. I'm walking into this and I'm really seeing that there's a lot of women wanting to do that.
[00:16:05] Myrna McCallum: Well, no, I think this might be a good time to segue into the whole women in leadership. But before we do that, I just have to comment, I'm sure many lawyers who are listening to us now, they're all pressure cookers. Everyone lives by the billable hours. Everyone has to meet these targets.
[00:16:24] I know you have a son who's a lawyer, and so you probably hear a little bit about the toxicity of working in a pressure cooker and how hard it is on your physical health and your mental health, and I'm curious about for those individuals who are struggling with that kind of pressure with that demand, how can they come to a place of ease and joy?
[00:16:55] And I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, yeah, what is that? I don't know. I feel anxiety. I feel depression. I feel tired. I feel exhausted. I feel stressed. These are the things that I hear often and not just from lawyers, but from a lot of high achieving, perfectionist driven hustling types of people, which are a lot of people, what I don't often hear.
[00:17:21] I feel joy. I feel rested. I feel relaxed. I feel like I'm in flow. So folks who are in the freeways of hustle culture, going, going, going the pressure cooker of life, how can they take a detour if only for, you know, moments to tap into that relaxed, you know, bit of wisdom that lives inside of them.
[00:17:49] Louise Marra: I'd really love to say a couple of things about that. One is: it's very hard to be an individual in a system that's wired that way. You know, some of I think what really needs to happen, you know, in consulting firms and the law firms, like I said, it's like time and money have been so coupled. But the pressure on time is immense because of what it's worth. So I think there needs to be some really brave firms, and I haven't found a law firm here, just, you know, I'm sure they're out there, that actually say we're going to help everyone do this differently.
[00:18:30] So that we actually are going to build pauses into our culture. That would make that so much easier for individuals to actually be able to do that. And that's what I mean: we're in a collective trauma around this hustle culture and it's addictive, but we live on adrenaline and it's almost like we need a soul retrieval because it's soul destroying.
[00:18:53] So that would be my first thing. My second thing is what I am seeing is groups of young people coming into law firms, consulting firms, saying we're not prepared to do it that way anymore. And even a small pocket of people within an organization can actually make quite a big difference in some ways energetically.
[00:19:15] I encourage people to say, why don't you say, we want to set up a prototype. to actually try some different things and let's see what happens to our productivity now. So those are some of the things that I think are really important and then there's like the practical thing or what do I actually do to start to experience some joy and ease that's kind of what you're pointing at that's more really significant and also sad in a way. So Some of the things like I really, I think the mindful movement's been amazing, but I talk about creating a movement of becoming natureful. So one of the things I get people to do is to, I mean, it sounds crazy, but I've got chief executives in New York and all over the world doing it, is you make friends with a tree.
[00:20:07] Trees know how to bring joy and ease. And even just sitting with your spine against a tree or your feet next to it, they are a co-regulating agent. So, you know, something that reconnects you to... Earth. People talk about grounding, but most people don't know what it is, but anything that you can form a relationship with on this Earth, you can bring that into your six by one.
[00:20:36] Say, ah, I'll just sit, imagine my spine's against the tree, kind of connect, not just to the process of breathing, but to the air coming in. Because the air coming into my body gives space. When we're pressured, we actually need some inner space. And one of my most pressured jobs was working directly for the Prime Minister here, which was 24/7, totally high stakes, incredibly intense.
[00:21:05] And I would get to the point that I was so stressed, I couldn't think. So I started this work then in a way, I actually have to go outside for a minute. I actually have to find some space. to be able to actually get my brain working again and to get my body relaxed enough that actually I come back online so we go into kind of a freeze.
[00:21:33] Lots of people are in kind of functional freezers so, you know, anything we can do to really fill up a little bit, create a bit of space. So my favorite things are to create connections with nature, which helps us ground. Even in a meeting I get people, okay well just bring your tree in behind you, imagine your spines against it and put your own roots down into the ground, through your feet, through the structure of the building, down into the earth.
[00:22:09] You can do that wherever you are, like synchronize with tThe land, the [indigenous word], we would say, where you are. This doesn't actually take that long to turn on in a human being because it's natural, but there's a bit of skill building to go, ah, I actually know how to ground, I know how to put my roots down, I know how to synchronize.
[00:22:34] Those things bring you joy and ease because you're coming out of our disconnect.
Myrna McCallum: Interesting ideas and examples that I think are pretty accessible to most people and your idea about connecting with trees doesn't seem crazy to me because I go hug trees all the time and I talk to people about hugging trees all the time and so I totally get it.
It's interesting that you talk about functional freeze and how many of us may be operating from that space. I was thinking about how it was only maybe a few months ago I was in a high stress kind of moment, like my body was still charged with all this stress after a really long work stint. And I had an Apple watch on and I noticed that my heart rate was really high.
[00:23:30] And then in that moment, I just thought, I'm just going to start taking some deep breaths. And we hear all the time, Oh, you need to take deep breaths. You need to breathe, just breathe. And I would be like internally telling those people, like, just shut up with your breathing. I just have to get this done.
[00:23:48] Right? Not understanding why people would tell me to just take a breath. And then I started looking at Apple watch as I was taking these breaths and I could see my heart rate dropping and dropping and dropping and only then did it sink in for me. I was like, ‘Oh, that's why people tell people to breathe because your heart rate starts to drop, everything slows down, you start to relax and come out of that state of freeze mode or functional freeze’.
[00:24:22] And so I love the examples that you gave about. Whether it's, if you can't go and connect with the tree, you can visualize the connection and that can serve you in a hectic day. And I have often talked to people about like the benefit of having little rocks or little stones in their office when something is going on to hold onto that, but it has a nature element.
[00:24:48] And same with water. Like, if you can't go to the ocean and you can't go to a river, you could go to the kitchen sink or the tap in the bathroom and then just like run water over your hands. All of these things are all connection back to elements in nature. And so it's interesting that you and I are in sync in this way.
[00:25:12] And I also want to say it's really cool hearing you say that there are younger lawyers coming into the practice of law who don't want to do things the way they've always been done. I'm finding the same thing here. And what I hear a lot of younger lawyers and law students say is not so much an emphasis on work-life balance, which I kind of think is a myth, but more on mental health and wellness.
[00:25:38] I want to work in a way that protects my mental health and wellness. And so your demand that I work 80 hours a week or meet these billable targets actually doesn't allow me to protect my mental health and wellness. So I'm not going to do that. And I'm loving hearing those conversations from these younger people, because I think fast forward 20, 30 years, the profession I'm a part of is going to be a lot healthier than it currently is.
[00:26:08] Louise Marra: Yeah, I agree. I actually think there's, there's kind of an evolution, revolution happening in all workplaces. Even if it's still a bit under the surface. And I think things are going to be quite different in another 10 years as we evolve as humans. I think this connection work is going to become such an important thing.
[00:26:34] And there's such a difference, like, I work with a lot of senior leadership teams and part of what I do is, okay, if we're caught in fight and flight or the sympathetic charge, actually trauma's leading the show. It's leading the culture, it's leading strategy. People get quite shocked by that. No, trauma's not leading.
[00:26:53] Yes, it is if it's highly competitive, if it's full of this, like, tension, if it's survival energy. All of that's the terrain of disconnect. So then trauma's leading. Now trauma needs respect and healing but it should never lead. So then humans have really got to turn on this other part and that's a lot of the work I do with teams.
[00:27:17] Like let's actually come into a connective space and then we start to think about strategy. But what's amazing is it delivers so much more than the tense space. So it's kind of like a weird human thing that we sort of know that, but we don't. So we then keep the pressure thinking it'll deliver more, but actually we know that's not true.
[00:27:43] And I think individuals can actually start to really turn that on and wire that into themselves. And I think teams can do a lot. And I think cultures and organizations, if they make that a priority, we'll end up with way better cultures and become a magnet for people wanting to work there.
Myrna McCallum: [00:28:04] Okay. So I want to talk about ReRoot. I know you have a book called ReRoute and this movement of connection and the healing work. I want to talk about it and then I think that might be a really good segue into talking about the work that you're doing to hold up women in leadership and help women really become the healers and the leaders that they could be.
Louise Marra: ReRoot is a kind of a simple little book that I wrote because I was working in a global, leading a global collective trauma lab on climate trauma. And what I really learned from that is that so many people want to connect to nature and don't know how or feel so much guilt and shame that it gets in the way.
[00:28:54] ReRoot actually, it talks about self and system. I'll come back to that, but basically it gives you like 50 processes of how to deepen your relationship with nature through cultivating the relationship with the tree because trees actually Now, indigenous people have known this forever, of course, but, you know, the orthodox mainstream world has got so disconnected from bodies.
[00:29:21] This is the functional phrase. I can't feel myself, I can't feel my body, I can't feel you, I can't feel a tree. So the book just takes you through a very gentle, fun process of actually how to do it.
[00:29:36] And what I'm seeing is how quickly that can happen for people. So I'd really encourage people to become natureful. It does most of the work rather than, I've got to get my stress under control, and that becomes a stress. Even I've got to get my mind under control, which is an impossible task. Actually, I can become natureful because the body knows how to do that because it's its rightful place.
[00:30:02] Myrna McCallum: I'm going to have to like pick up ReRoot, not just for me, but I think for a few of my friends. I have this one friend in particular, who's for the last, she's been going through something that could be burnout, maybe like brain fog, just can't think, just, you know, fatigue. And she's been saying to me lately, she's like, I don't know why, but I feel like I need to just go and lay down on the forest floor and maybe have a sleep there.
[00:30:30] And I'm like, that's called grounding. And here's a little bit more information about that. And yes, let's make that happen. Let me help you make that happen. Okay. So I love that. So tell us a little bit about women in leadership and the work that you're doing.
[00:30:48] Louise Marra: With women and why is it women, women and a lot of men too, but feel there's a lot really wanting to rewire this world in a totally different way.
[00:31:02] And that's actually up for changing the way organizations happen and operate and to make them more human. And this course that we're running the moment around: where do love and power come together? Now, even 10 years ago, it might've been, what are you talking about? But actually, you know, love is a human superpower that creates sort of bonds of affection and connectivity.
[00:31:31] So it's really beautiful and say women in leadership, there's a lot of people from the Global South, these people from all different parts of the world going, wow, we need to lead this world into a new era. That's super exciting. So I'm not saying there's not men willing to do that, but there just seems to be more of a movement through women. So I think for me, women are turning on their medicine, and women leaders are turning on their medicine in a very connected way, where this power that can lead to disturbance is actually becoming much more power and love coming together and together we lead something quite different and really up for quite radical change in systems. And I think that's super exciting and I'll do anything to support that.
[00:32:32] Myrna McCallum: So where do these women leaders tend to come from? Like what sectors are you finding that they're looking to explore other ways of approaching leadership or creating transformational change?
[00:32:47] Louise Marra: Well, I work across all sectors. That's what's exciting because the NGO world got just as exhausted, stressed, pressured, 24-7, like, you know, incredibly so.
[00:33:02] So I'm seeing a movement across all sectors really saying, actually let's try and do this differently. Let's bring human kind of heart superpowers back into workplaces, even this trauma-informed work, like that's quite a cold term for actually what it means is a healing orientation. Hey, trauma informed is the words being used because it's quite, it's a bit more acceptable.
[00:33:35] But actually what trauma-informed is, is that I can begin to take a healing orientation, a restorative restoration type orientation to myself, each other, the way we meet together. So one of the things I work a lot with is the way meetings happen, because there's so many meetings and no one really meets.
[00:33:57] So stop the meeting, you know what I mean? Like, let's actually meet and create a bit more depth in meetings so that more magic can be released.
Louise Marra: Like the connection, the relationship, people who are missing the relationship.
And the connective tissue isn't there to create much magic. So there's a lot in indigenous cultures, including my own, that the space between people needs to be cared for.
[00:34:26] That's where the connective tissue happens. That can create either more traumatization, discord, or it creates something that opens.
[00:34:39] Myrna McCallum: I hear what you're saying about people are looking for bringing like all of these human elements to what they do. And I like right now, I've been thinking a lot about how AI is going to change the world and how it's going to even change the legal profession. More people are relying on chat GPT to help them not just write their arguments but also send text messages to their friends because they can't be bothered to reply. And I've been thinking about how important experience is and I'm going to share this like cute little story, but this really sums it up over the summer I was hanging out with my grandkids and they're five, four, and three and there's this really cool car wash they wanted me to like we have to go to the car wash and I was like, okay we'll go to this car wash and I'd never been there before and we go in and they had a couple people greeting us and just kind of interacting with us a little bit and then doing like a pre-wash and then we go into the thing.
[00:35:54] They had all these lights and different colors of foam and it was like a whole experience, Louise. My grandkids, their lights lit up, their eyes were like popping out of their heads when it was over. They're like, let's go again. And I was like, no, that carwash is 20 bucks. We're not going to get, but it occurred to me then that, you know, you can go through any kind of carwash and it does the same job, what I believe people are looking for, especially now—and I don't know what it is about now. Maybe it's because we live in this too. Many of us are afflicted with this disease of disconnection you spoke about—but we're all looking for an experience. And I really think that whether we are leaders in whatever organization is, or we are lawyers or whatever we might be, AI is not a threat to us as long as we continue to center the experience that we provide people when they come to us seeking our services.
[00:36:56] Like, I tend to sum it up by saying: at the end of the day, I feel that people just simply want to be heard. They want to be seen. They want to know what, what they say matters. But if I was to even drill down further, people just want to have an experience because it's the experience they have with you.
[00:37:15] That's the thing they take away and remember. It's not so much the work you did, the report or the project you delivered. It's how you did it. And. Maybe this women in leadership, I don't know, like, do you think that that is part of it as people are understanding the importance of experience?
[00:37:37] Louise Marra: Yeah, I think that's very beautiful what you're raising.
[00:37:41] And I agree with you. How can AI free up humans to do this human superpower of love and connection and how much that delivers? And I agree, people are looking like, that they matter, I'm seen, I'm heard, and I matter, and that we can reflect, yeah, you, you matter,
[00:38:00] and I matter. You know, there's something beautiful that happens in the softening.
[00:38:06] I think that's exactly what we're entering into, and some companies will really lead the way in that, and start to really become magnets for people, wanting, That sort of experience in their lives, because then I get to experience myself through my experience of meeting you in a different way. That's what I love about working with teams and groups, is groups have been so dangerous for people, but actually when people feel safety and connection, it's remarkable what gets released.
[00:38:45] But yeah, it's very beautiful.
[00:38:48] Myrna McCallum: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you, Louise. I really appreciate the time you take in a chat with me about all of these like cool things that you're doing in New Zealand.
[00:38:59] Louise Marra: And I really appreciate the connection, Myrna, and beautiful to connect and speak.
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Thanks to my guest Louise Marra.
Also, subscribe to the pocketproject.org
https://pocketproject.org/self-study-trauma-informed-leadership/
My business partner Jen, this is where she came across Louise’s work. Louise was offering a trauma-informed leadership course for women. I know registration has since then closed, since that course came into effect, however, I know the pocket project is doing a lot of work online and I am sure this course is going to come up again.
If you have an opportunity to take a trauma-informed leadership course online with Louise Marra through the pocket project or somewhere else, I invite you to sign up. You won’t regret it.
Thank you for listening. Thanks for sharing this with people in your network, and for rating and reviewing the Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast on whatever podcast platform you happen to use.
Thanks also to Cited Media for their production support.
This episode was recorded on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
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