En route to Post-Traumatic Growth

In mid-1996, US psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun published a paper in the Journal of Traumatic Stress that detailed a phenomenon that they had observed in some war veterans, and in survivors of major accidents or life-threatening illnesses. They called it Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG).

It was different to resilience – which is the ability to recover from knockbacks, and to bounceback despite adversity. PTG is the ability to bounceforward.

With instances of Post-Traumatic Growth, “…people develop new understandings of themselves, the world they live in, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life," says Dr Tedeschi.

What might this look like in business? 

Some of you reading this might have had a hell of a year – taking your tech product to a global market; helping people at home to connect with friends, monitor the news or buy their favourite gin (obviously Brighton Gin). Some of you will have had everything you have worked for taken away from you – still faced with paying big overheads when it is illegal for people to come to you and have the great experience they crave. Some of you might have expanded your team. Some of you will have had to find a new team, maybe even a completely new sector to work in, or lost all work completely.

Whatever this year has done for you personally, we have all been part of a collective trauma – and may be for some time. So, what if – in a creative, forward-looking and dynamic city like Brighton & Hove – we could accelerate our collective Post-Traumatic Growth? Creating opportunities for the people and organisations that have been forced to hibernate – buying local, pooling resources and expertise, getting behind each other. And boosting and applauding those who have managed to ride this crazy wave – sharing success stories, investing in innovation, recommending vacancies to your talented friends.

We’re sponsoring Brighton Base Camp: En Route because it lives and breathes this spirit. The darkest part of the public health emergency is behind us, even if it takes many more months to vaccinate everyone and for us all to find our feet. We’ve got economic hills to climb, but we are en route; we’re moving forwards. And we can choose to move forward alone as individuals, bruised by what we have just been through. Or, we can bounceforward as a business community with some new fuel, a bit of reinvention, a chance to get rid of old habits that no longer serve anyone.

In the past year, the always possible team has taken the chance to step back and look at what we’re good at, and what we’re not. We’ve listened really really hard to our clients, and to people who have never chosen to work with us before. We’ve taken some risks, narrowed our focus and expanded the core team from four people to eight people (some of whom are six months into the job and have still never been in the same room).

And by plotting out our own Post-Traumatic Growth journey, we’ve been able to better support over 150 businesses to make plans that work, raise funds, build teams, design new products and bounceforward. Through our work on the South East Business Boost, Reset. Restart, Catch The Wave and on development projects in London, the east of England and the midlands – we’ve become a major development consultancy for different sectors in the UK. Ambitious entrepreneurs and their teams like our ability to mix human curiosity with hard-nosed evidence; critical friendship that gets rid of the noise and helps leaders work out what’s next.

What you’ll experience at Base Camp: En Route is PTG at its best. Open-hearted ideas, commercial acumen, fearlessness, generosity of connection. I’ve had the privilege of helping to curate the Brighton Summit and Base Camps for the past three years – and the April 2021 event is a gem.

We’re using this event to launch our Post-Traumatic Growth offer to businesses in Brighton and beyond. Could yours be one of 100 ambitious businesses that work with our team of growth, strategy, marketing and productivity specialists to create a new roadmap for a new time? A 12 month, visual roadmap, plotting the practical detail for what to do now, next and later - designed with you to nail the who, where, why and how?

All packages will be affordable – some will be given away for free.

Interested? Check it out here.

Have a brilliant time at Base Camp.

always possible are sponsoring this year's Brighton Base Camp: En Route. Base Camp brings together 200+ businesses and entrepreneurs from across the city's diverse business community for a morning of inspiring speakers, expert-led workshops and structured networking sessions - leaving you feeling motivated and energised for the year ahead. 

Find out more and grab your ticket to Base Camp: En Route here. 

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk