Leading Beyond Survival Mode is a two-part series for senior leaders and others with organization-level decision-making authority. Drawing on neuroscience, trauma-informed leadership, and systems thinking, this experience helps leaders recognize how survival patterns take hold in organizations and become reinforced through leadership practices, relationships, priorities, structures, workload, decision-making, and culture.
Participants will examine what is happening in their own organizations, pinpoint the conditions keeping survival patterns in place, and identify where they have the authority and influence to make meaningful changes. They will leave with an organizational snapshot, identified leverage points, and specific commitments for creating healthier, more sustainable ways of working.
Session 1: February 12, 2027 at 9a - 12p
Session 2: February 26, 2027 at 9a - 12p
Location: TalentLaunch, 8001 Sweet Valley Dr. #4, Ohio 44125
What to Expect
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Participants will:
Distinguish between temporary periods of stress and an organization that has become organized around survival.
Recognize how sustained stress and threat shape human behavior and how those responses show up across an organization in leadership, relationships, workload, priorities, decision-making, conflict, power, and other ways of working.
Use your Beyond Survival Organizational snapshot to examine, from their perspective, where survival mode is operating in their organization and what conditions are sustaining it.
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Participants will:
Build on their Beyond Survival Mode Snapshot to pinpoint leverage points where change is possible within their authority and influence.
Distinguish between technical fixes and adaptive work, identifying where changes in leadership behavior, relationships, and organizational conditions are needed.
Explore what leaders can minimize, manage, or mend to interrupt survival patterns and support healthier ways of working.
Develop specific commitments for creating healthier, more sustainable, and adaptive ways of operating.
What You'll Take Away
Participants will leave with practical tools to continue the work beyond the learning experience:
An organizational snapshot that helps them recognize survival patterns and examine the conditions keeping them in place.
Identified leverage points and commitments that clarify where they can make a difference and the actions they will take to begin shifting organizational conditions.
A leadership team conversation guide they can use to bring their insights back to their larger leadership team, invite additional perspectives, build shared understanding, and explore opportunities for collective action.
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.
Come with a colleague. While individual leaders are welcome, we encourage participants to attend with another leader from their organization. Having a thought partner who shares your organizational context can deepen the learning, bring different perspectives into the conversation, and help build shared understanding and commitments that carry forward beyond the series.
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.