Heal to Lead

By taking radical responsibility for your own healing, you unveil the high-conscious leader within that our world needs right now.

You don’t outrun or outgrow the formative experiences that have shaped who you are. So, it makes sense that your emotional history would also be the foundation of your leadership style. If what got you to this point may now be the very thing that is holding you back, then Heal to Lead was written for you. Everything you’ve read about conscious leadership is based on self-awareness and personal growth, yet the missing link has been trauma healing. If you want greater collaboration with your people, the confidence to inspire growth in your organization, and a more meaningful connection to yourself, your community, and the natural world, it’s time to do the inner work. This book shows you how to develop high-conscious leadership, rooted in deep introspection, vulnerability, compassion, and reciprocity with all beings.

Inside, former CEO turned trauma-informed leadership coach Kelly L. Campbell walks alongside you as you unpack and process what’s been buried within your psyche. Integrating your past trauma is the key to unlearning the maladaptive strategies that have kept you subconsciously safe until now. With the resources, personal anecdotes, and reflection questions in this book, you will be better able to regulate your emotions and feel more enlivened as you lead from a place of reclamation. As an indicator of your commitment, your organization will ultimately realize greater stability and success.

• Discover how trauma lives in the body and can hinder you from accessing your potential.
• Break strategic patterns in your life that keep you automated, and gain clarity about what you are here to contribute.
• Develop greater compassion for yourself and others so you can co-create healthy workplace culture and respond productively in difficult situations.
• Make a lasting, positive impact within your organization and augment your bottom line.
• Disrupt the default of extractive, patriarchal, and supremacist business practices.
• Commit to taking part in the restoration of our societal tapestry and global environment.

Heal to Lead is a radical departure from the myths that emerging and established leaders like you have been fed for so long. By healing your core wounds, you shed other people’s stories about who you are, releasing the pain and scarcity mindset that keeps you feeling stuck. This liberation finally gives you access to your innate gifts as a leader, and you feel empowered to do the right thing by all as a generative force in the world.

Prologue ix

Introduction xiii

Part I Kintsukuroi 1

Chapter 1 Why We Become Leaders 3

Chapter 2 Low- Conscious Leaders Are Everywhere 13

Chapter 3 The Wound in the Room 25

Chapter 4 Why Now? 33

Part II Preparing for the Journey 39

Chapter 5 Contextualizing Trauma 41

Chapter 6 Maintenance Versus Healing 59

Chapter 7 What Is High- Conscious Leadership? 67

Chapter 8 Four Fundamentals 73

Part III When the Past Is Present 79

Chapter 9 Fundamental #1: Integrating Trauma 81

Chapter 10 Practicing Introspection 89

Chapter 11 An Awakening 95

Chapter 12 Doing the Work 105

Part IV True Strength 119

Chapter 13 Fundamental #2: Embodying Vulnerability 121

Chapter 14 Failure’s Great Gift 129

Chapter 15 The Value of Nothingness 137

Chapter 16 The Art of Implementation 143

Part V Care in Action 149

Chapter 17 Fundamental #3: Leading with Compassion 151

Chapter 18 Compassionate Intelligence 155

Chapter 19 How We Respond Matters 163

Chapter 20 A Shift in Intention 169

Part VI the Great Remembering 175

Chapter 21 Fundamental #4: Lighting the Way 177

Chapter 22 Essential Work 185

Chapter 23 What We Receive When We Give 189

Chapter 24 Project Rebuild 195

Notes 203

Acknowledgments 223

About the Author 227

Index 229

KELLY L. CAMPBELL (they/she)is a Trauma-Informed Leadership Coach to emerging and established visionaries who know they are meant for more. Kelly writes about the intersection of trauma, leadership, and consciousness—“The New TLC”—on Substack and for Entrepreneur, and has written for Forbes. A keynote speaker, Kelly is also the founder of Consciousness Leaders, the world’s most diverse and equitable speaker representation agency. She was trained as a Climate Reality Leader in 2017 after selling her cause marketing agency. More at KLCAMPBELL.COM.

HEALING LEADERS WILL REBUILD THE WORLD.

The strategies we create throughout childhood become the foundation for how we lead. Our tendencies toward people-pleasing, hiding parts of ourselves, micromanaging others, and numbing our pain in isolation work for a while. At some point, though, something’s got to give.

It’s time to make the correlation between unprocessed trauma and your leadership style—so you can shift the trajectory of your life and your organization, create impact in your community, and help reshape the world you want to live in.

Sharing real and powerful stories about their own upbringing, experience as a CEO, and expertise in trauma-informed leadership, Kelly L. Campbell explains four fundamentals for uncovering your high-conscious leadership in Heal to Lead. It all starts with integrating trauma, embodying vulnerability, leading with compassion, and lighting the way.

For those willing to follow through, Healto Lead invites you to liberate yourself from maladaptive behaviors that no longer serve your highest function. You’ll begin to love who you truly are; you’ll learn to trust your intuition, gain access to new levels of creative thinking, and communicate with greater intentionality. You’ll discover how to engage, connect, and invest more deeply in all relationships. By becoming more self-aware as a leader, you will remember why you’re here—and see clearly how much your contributory gifts are needed.

This book is an unvarnished, powerful, and unique perspective on remembering our true nature as high-conscious leaders. If you’re an executive, entrepreneur, or leader who knows there has to be a better way, the question is:are you willing to heal to lead?

Praise for HEAL to LEAD

“Kelly Campbell takes a revolutionary approach to leadership…. She understands that until we take responsibility to do the work and heal our trauma, we cannot fully embody who we want to become. Her work is a paradigm shift in every sense of the word.”
DR. NICOLE LEPERA, New York Times bestselling author of How to Do the Work

“Heal to Lead brings childhood trauma out of the shadows so that real leaders may light the way forward for humanity.”
RAJ SISODIA, Co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement

“Kelly L. Campbell takes a provocative stance that the integration of past trauma is a core component of developing self-awareness, vulnerability, and compassion—hallmarks of conscious leadership.”
DIANA CHAPMAN, Co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership “Healing the trauma that has shaped us is a process. Kelly offers this as part of four fundamentals of high-conscious leadership, and she generously explores her personal blueprint to help us reflect upon ours.”
GINA HAYDEN, Author of Becoming a Conscious Leader

“How can we be authentic leaders if we haven’t done the work to uncover our motivations and discover who we truly are? Kelly distills how our childhood informs our leadership styles—and how thoughtfully integrating those experiences can help liberate us and empower others.”
DORIE CLARK, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Long Game

“One of the most vital things we can do as leaders is to turn our focus inward and do the hard, messy work on ourselves that’s necessary for growth. Only through that can we find a way to effectively lead others. Heal to Lead illustrates the power of this in practice.”
MICHAEL VENTURA, Author of Applied Empathy