A collaborative offering of Equius Group, People Strategies, and Habeebah Rasheed Grimes LLC, Leading Beyond Survival Mode is a two-part leadership experience for senior leaders and others with organization-level decision-making authority. Drawing on neuroscience, trauma-informed and healing-centered leadership, and systems thinking, the experience helps leaders better understand how survival patterns take hold and how they become reinforced through leadership practices, relationships, priorities, structures, workload, decision-making, and organizational culture.
Participants will look at what is happening in their own organizations, identify the conditions that may be keeping those patterns in place, and begin to explore where change is needed.
Session 1: October 21, 2026 at 9a - 12p
Session 2: November 4, 2026 at 9a - 12p
Location: TalentLaunch, 8001 Sweet Valley Dr. #4, Ohio 44125
What to Expect
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Participants will:
Examine the difference between temporary periods of stress and an organization becoming organized around survival.
Explore how sustained stress and threat can shape human behavior and how those responses can show up across an organization in leadership, relationships, workload, priorities, decision-making, conflict, power, and other ways of working.
Apply the concepts to their own organizations and begin diagnosing where survival mode may be showing up and what may be keeping it in place.
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Participants will:
Build on the organizational diagnosis from Session One and focus on where change is possible.
Identify leverage points, consider the difference between technical fixes and adaptive work, and examine what may need to shift at the levels of leadership behavior, relationships, and organizational conditions.
Identify commitments for beginning to create healthier, more sustainable, and adaptive ways of operating.
Who This Is For
This experience is designed for senior leaders and others who can influence priorities, structures, resources, policies, leadership practices, and culture. It will be especially relevant for leaders in education, health, human services, public-sector, and other mission-driven organizations where sustained demand, workforce strain, resource constraints, policy shifts, public accountability, and the emotional weight of the work can make survival mode especially difficult to recognize and interrupt.
It will also be relevant for leaders whose organizations:
have been navigating sustained change, uncertainty, disruption, or increased demands;
are functioning, but with signs of depletion, caution, fragile trust, or constant urgency;
have invested in strategy, culture, wellbeing, or leadership development but continue to see patterns that are difficult to shift;
are experiencing tension between what the organization is trying to accomplish and the capacity available to accomplish it; or
are ready to examine not only how people are responding to pressure, but also the organizational conditions contributing to that response.
Participants should come prepared to look honestly at what is within their authority and influence to change.
Meet Your Facilitators
Habeebah Rasheed Grimes
Habeebah Rasheed Grimes is a nationally recognized voice on trauma-informed care, youth mental health, and human services leadership, with over 25 years of experience advancing equity and healing for marginalized youth and families. She previously served as CEO of Positive Education Program (PEP), one of Ohio's leading children's mental health agencies, leading 400 staff and championing equitable, trauma-informed care. She now leads her own consulting practice, helping individuals and organizations adopt trauma-informed, healing centered, and liberatory practices.
Habeebah holds a Master's Degree in Clinical/Counseling Psychology and a Specialist Degree in School Psychology from Cleveland State University. She is trained in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics and Somatic Abolitionism. She holds certificates in Healing Centered Engagement and Healing-Centered Leadership and Education from Flourish Agenda and the The Acosta Institute, respectively.
Erica Merritt
Erica Merritt is a Gestalt-trained organizational development consultant, executive coach, and founder of Equius Group. She helps leaders and organizations navigate complexity, strengthen culture, build leadership capacity, and turn insight into sustainable action.
Known for creating brave spaces for honest dialogue, Erica helps teams address difficult issues, improve how they work together, and make meaningful progress on complex organizational challenges. Her work spans leadership development, facilitation, coaching, culture transformation, and systems change, with a focus on creating more effective, human-centered organizations where people and performance can thrive.
Erica holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations from Ursuline College and a Master of Arts in Psychology from Cleveland State University, with a certification in Diversity Management through the NTL Institute. She also holds coaching certifications from the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and the Center for Credentialing Education.
Alicia Love
Alicia Love has over 20 years of corporate organizational development and human resources experience. She partners with leaders to design effective HR strategies, build highly engaged and inclusive cultures and drive organizational growth and performance. Known for her analytical approach, Alicia excels at identifying patterns in complex and disparate information to explain why things are the way they are and create simple, actionable solutions.
Alicia holds a Bachelor's Degree in Management from Georgia Tech and a Master's Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations/Human Resources from Cornell University.