Hosts Nicki Straza and Sherri Dockree introduce the Dissonance Disrupted Podcast and begin a conversation on wellbeing at work through psychological safety, emphasizing it is often misunderstood as a box-checking, task-oriented, or purely cognitive initiative. They address employer fears of being fully responsible for employees’ psychological health, reframing it as creating environments, guardrails, and shared accountability where leaders and team members are each responsible for their actions and reactions. The hosts argue psychological safety is fundamentally physiological and rooted in neurobiology: when people perceive threat, they shift from prefrontal executive functioning to amygdala-driven fight/flight/fawn/freeze responses, making logic-based persuasion ineffective until regulation occurs. They explore how neurodiversity (including ADHD and rejection sensitivity) can intensify emotional threat responses and how ambiguity, lack of clarity, and insufficient autonomy can undermine safety and performance. They also highlight generational differences—Boomer and Gen X stigma around emotions versus Gen Z’s non-negotiable expectation of emotional consideration—and the need to honor humanity and dignity while maintaining boundaries and clarity. Practical strategies include using story-sharing to build curiosity and connection (e.g., structured lunches that prevent eating alone), focusing on “people before task” to build capacity, and encouraging leaders to start with self-safety, self-kindness, and awareness of their own stress responses, while acknowledging limitations in access to support and the real leadership challenge of retention versus cutting losses.

In this episode Sherri and Nicki welcome theirfirst ever guest, Kathleen Foldvari — social worker, psychotherapist, and founder of A Minute for Mental Health. Kathleen works with healthcare professionals, educators, first responders and leaders to prevent burnout before it becomes a crisis.

The conversation unpacks what trauma informed leadership actually looks like in practice — not as a clinical concept, but as a daily leadership skill. From the trauma hierarchy we create in our own minds,to the way unprocessed trauma quietly shows up as micromanagement, reactivity,and disconnection from teams, this episode challenges leaders to stop assumingthey are fine and start leading from a place of genuine self awareness.

Sherri shares her own experience of witnessing atraumatic accident and not recognizing its impact until someone else named it.Nicki connects the generational lens — exploring how older generations wereconditioned to suppress while younger generations are pushing for authenticity,and why we actually need both.

The conversation closes with Kathleen's practical challenge to leaders: shift from trauma-informed to trauma-assumed. Assume everyone has been through something. Lead from there.

Yes, trust matters, and in the workplace, we know it often gets overlooked. sing to talk about why that trust matters and how it may be at the root of workplace challenges, while also considering how this impacts different generations and neurodiversities.