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Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. 2020 will go down in history as a pretty traumatic year for most of us. We had a global

pandemic that forced lengthy lockdowns, millions got sick, hundreds of thousands died.

Frontline workers have risked their lives to keep essential services going.

Economies have ground to a halt, some companies furloughed or laid off workers, others closed down,

unemployment spiked.

In the US, videos of racist incidents and killing spark fresh trauma, especially for black Americans and led to widespread protests. and

let's not forget about the wildfires, tornadoes, earthquake and mass shootings

that happened before and while all of this went down.

In other words, it's been a rough year.

But our guest today says that there can be a silver lining for all of us if we work at it.

Over the past few decades he's identified and studied a phenomena called post-traumatic growth.

He found that distressing events don't have to leave irreparable scars. In fact, with the right approach,

trauma can benefit people, organizations, and societies.

Rich Tedeshi is a professor emeritus of Psychology at UNC Charlotte, distinguished chair of

the Boulder Crest Institute and author of the HBR article Growth After Trauma.

Rich, thanks so much for speaking with me today.

It's a pleasure. We have all suffered different types of distressing events this year.

When does someone know that they've gone through what you would call trauma?

...