Giving Back to the Community, I Became a Tyrant: A Lesson in Authority & Trauma-informed Leadership

Where We Learn Power

Where—and how—do people learn to exercise authority?

We l earn it early. Almost all of us do. Our first lessons in power come through childhood—through the people who raise us, guide us, or in some cases, fail to. Parents, caregivers, teachers—they model how we give and receive direction, how we respond to boundaries, and what power looks like in relationships.

Some of us grow up in “because I said so” households. Others grow up in collaborative ones. That difference alone can determine whether someone wields authority like a hammer—blunt and forceful—or like a paintbrush—adaptive and precise.

Those early lessons get reinforced in school. Coaches, peer groups, playground politics—they all teach us who gets to lead, who gets picked, who gets left out, and what happens when someone steps out of line. Then institutions take over: workplaces, religious communities, civic systems. Each one adds a layer to our internal blueprint of how power “should” work.

By the time we reach the workforce, our relationship to authority is often cemented. And where we fall in the hierarchy has more to do with that blueprint than with our skill or merit.

I’ve felt this personally. I’ve always had issues with authority. That’s made it hard to follow when trust is low—but it’s also made it hard to lead. Especially when enforcing rules I didn’t believe in. I’ve had to unlearn some things. Sit with some discomfort. Rebuild my approach to the world around me and how I shape it.

Because the truth is, we learn authority the same way we learn table manners: by watching others, absorbing their cues, and figuring it out as we go.

In social services, many people enter the field with one reason: they want to give back. After years of recruiting in nonprofits, I’ve heard it hundreds of times. Applicants know the pay won’t be good. They know the work will be hard. But they want to "give back to the community."

And when they say that, authority rarely comes up.

Because when we imagine helping, we don’t picture power. We picture kindness. We don’t think about what happens when “helping” requires structure, boundaries, and enforcement.

But institutional care isn’t charity in the traditional sense. It’s not one person helping another and moving on. It’s dozens of people under one roof—each navigating systems, trauma, and survival.

That’s not a moment of generosity. That’s a pressure cooker.

The Front Line of Shelter Work

In Chicago, when someone loses their housing—whether they’re couch surfing, sleeping in their car, or out on the street—they’re told to call 3-1-1 or 2-1-1.

That call goes through the city’s centralized shelter access system. Every city-funded shelter is required to report its open beds multiple times a day. When someone reaches out, the city scans that list and connects them to a bed—if one’s available.

These shelters are spread out across the city. Some are in wealthier neighborhoods. Some are in disinvested communities. But regardless of zip code, there’s one thing most of these places have in common:

Low pay.

Consistently low pay.

Not as a fluke, not as an oversight—but as a structural component baked into the way we fund and staff shelter work.

And yet, the expectations placed on frontline staff are staggering.

Helping people is part of the job—but it’s just one piece. On any given day, staff are doing much more than offering support. They’re running a facility. Managing group dynamics. Responding to crises. Holding space for dozens of individuals, each with their own history, trauma, and coping mechanisms.

They’re opening doors, distributing meals, enforcing curfews, cleaning bathrooms, calming disputes, calling ambulances, and sometimes even cooking dinner. And most of the time, they’re doing it all with minimal training, inconsistent support, and very little backup.

These are the folks getting paid the least.

Still surprised?

Shelter workers are expected to be unicorns. Emotionally intelligent, detail-oriented, able to de-escalate conflict, handle paperwork, talk to case managers, mop the floors, and mediate a shouting match—all before lunch.

But unicorns don’t work for poverty wages.

So what happens? We compromise. We settle for whoever’s willing. We lower the bar because we can’t afford to raise it. And we act like it’s normal for systems serving our city’s most vulnerable to be held up by people scraping by themselves.

It’s not just disappointing. It’s unsustainable.

Because in this field, you get the results you’re willing to pay for. And right now, we're paying for burnout, turnover, and broken trust.

The Cost of Misaligned Trauma-informed leadership

When someone takes a shelter job with the sincere intent to give back, they often arrive with passion and purpose. That energy can be powerful—but if it’s not grounded, if it's not rooted in trauma-informed leadership it can also be dangerous.

Shelters aren’t feel-good charity operations. They’re high-pressure environments packed with trauma, unpredictability, and constant emotional demand. Most facilities house a couple dozen people, some a couple hundred, each with unique stories, behaviors, and triggers. And frontline staff? They’re expected to manage all of it—wake-ups, chores, curfews, enforcement—while applying trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and unconditional positive regard.

That’s a tall order. Especially when you're one person (or part of a small team) representing the “establishment,” tasked with keeping the facility running—while managing a group of strangers you didn’t choose, in an environment you didn’t design.

And you’re expected to do all of this with trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and unconditional positive regard.

What does that actually mean?

• Trauma-informed care means seeing every outburst, shutdown, or refusal not as defiance, but as a possible response to past trauma that has nothing to do with you.

• Harm reduction means accepting that people will sometimes make risky choices, and your job isn’t to stop them—it’s to keep them alive while they figure it out.

• Unconditional positive regard means respecting people even when they’re being difficult, disrespectful, or disruptive—because they still deserve care, no matter what.

All good things. But in a high-stress shelter environment? That level of nuance takes training, support, and emotional regulation most workers haven’t been equipped for.

That’s when the question of how you exercise authority becomes critical.

Do you rely on threats?

“Do this or you’re out”!

Or do you build understanding, offer choices, and earn cooperation?

Because how staff exercise authority doesn’t just affect compliance—it affects safety. It affects healing. It affects trust.

And the truth is, many shelters don’t have the luxury of being selective. Budgets are tight. Turnover is high. The hiring pool is shallow. So sometimes, the wrong people get hired. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re unprepared. Undertrained. Ill-equipped for what this work actually demands.

We don’t talk about this enough.

When you put someone with the wrong tools—or no tools—into a trauma-saturated space, you don’t get “help.” You get risk. You get staff who only know how to enforce rules with the one piece of leverage they have: the threat of losing shelter.

That’s the hard line: “If you don’t do X, you can’t stay here.”

And when someone has nothing to lose, when they’re already at their limit, that line can spark real danger—for everyone involved.

This isn’t a problem of bad workers. It’s a problem of bad design.

When we fail to invest in training, mentorship, or meaningful support, we set both staff and participants up to fail. And we end up with environments that do more harm than healing.

It’s unfair to the people we serve. It’s unfair to the staff doing the best they can. And it’s a betrayal of the communities and funders who trust that these systems are functioning.

This isn’t just a workforce issue.

It’s a moral one.

The Authority We Don’t Talk About

A lot of what happens in shelters isn’t the result of malicious intent. There are no cartoon villains pulling strings behind the scenes. But that doesn’t mean the harm isn’t real. And too often, it isn’t addressed.

How authority is exercised at shelters feels like one of the more overlooked elements in social services work. We talk about trauma. We talk about equity. We talk about systems. But we don’t talk about authority enough. How it's used, misused, and misapplied by the very people tasked with providing care.

And yet, it's a constant.

I've worked with all kinds of people in this field—and I've seen authority exercised in all kinds of ways. Some of them quietly harmful. Some of them openly abusive.

There was one staff member—I'll call him Mr. Stone. Everyone knew him. He had a reputation for being abrasive, rigid, and just generally an asshole. He wasn’t outright violent or anything, but he didn’t need to be. His presence alone was enough to push people away. clients would plan their return to the shelter based on his shift—leaving early in the morning and coming back only once he was gone.

One of those clients was a man people affectionately called Irish. He’d been struggling with heroin addiction for a long time, but he was trying—doing his best to stay sober. For him, the shelter was a safe haven. It kept him away from the streets, away from temptation. He wanted to be there. He wanted the structure. The warmth. The chance to stabilize. A chance to eventually be a father to his 9-year-old son again.

But Mr. Stone had a habit of tormenting him. Not in loud, obvious ways—but with condescension, snide comments, a tone that cut deeper than most people realized. It was constant. It was targeted. And it wore Irish down.

I saw it. A lot of us did. It was always just subtle enough to avoid action—but obvious enough to feel.

So Irish started staying out when Mr. Stone was on shift.

Then, one night, he didn’t come back at all.

A few days later, we heard the news: Irish had been found dead. It was the middle of a brutal Chicago winter. They weren’t sure if it was an overdose or a heart attack.

Either way, he died cold and alone.

I’ve never said that it was Mr. Stone’s fault. Irish made his own decisions.

But I've always wondered; is there a version of things where Mr. Stone wasn’t working there, maybe just that one night? If Irish wasn't constantly being tormented by this person, would he be alive now? Maybe, maybe not.

We’ll never know. You can’t prove a negative. But what we do know is this: Irish wasn’t at the shelter because he didn’t feel like being bullied. Because he didn’t want to deal with someone who used authority as a weapon.

How do I know this?

Because one day, my coworker and I found him overdosing in a bathroom stall. We administered Narcan, stayed with him until he regained his composure, and in that vulnerable moment, he opened up. He told us about his struggles with sobriety, the weight of his mental health challenges, and his longing to be a father again. He shared what it was like living on the streets, and how his time at the facility had been shaped by constant run-ins with Mr. Stone. He wanted to stay—wanted to make himself useful by cleaning, helping out, contributing to the community—but the daily bullying wore him down. He felt trapped, with no real options but to endure it. This was a week or two before he was last with us.

Things like this should be enough to make us ask...

Who are allowing to hold power in spaces meant to heal?

When Power Becomes Abuse

There was another staff member I had the immeasurable misfortune of working with.

We’ll call her Amanda.

Amanda was, without exaggeration, a tyrant. One of the very few people in my life I’ve ever described as genuinely evil.

She weaponized rules. She didn’t just uphold structure, she manipulated it to punish. Amanda had a pattern of targeting people, antagonizing them until they reacted, and then using that reaction as justification to kick them out of the shelter.

It didn’t matter what the request was—fetching something she could get herself, reporting behavior that didn’t sit right, or simply saying no when someone had the right to say no. At one point, someone refused to run to the corner store for her, and soon enough, that person was out.

Every interaction carried the same unspoken threat:

Comply...

Or be discarded.

Out on the street.

She held that threat over people like it was a baton.

Whether it was enforcing chores, curfews, or group activities, Amanda treated any resistance as an attack on her authority. The threat of eviction wasn’t a last resort. It was her go-to tactic.

And as if that weren’t enough, her entire demeanor was abrasive, smug, and inconsiderate. She had no business being in a position of power over anything living.

One incident still pisses me off quite a bit when I think about.

A young woman was staying at the shelter. She’d recently landed a modeling gig with a small production team—an opportunity she was genuinely excited about. It was local, creative work. Paid work.

During that weekend, she was sexually assaulted.

She returned to the shelter shaken, withdrawn, and clearly traumatized. Like many survivors, she chose not to go to the police, something Amanda immediately framed as suspicious. She didn’t want to talk.

She spent the first day in bed.

Then the second. Not eating.

Not responding.

Just trying to process what had happened.

On the third day, Amanda decided enough was enough.

And instead of keeping that opinion to herself, or venting with a colleague, or seeking guidance—she marched up to the dorms during wake-up call, shook the young woman awake, and told her that it was time to get over it.

That was the moment things escalated.

The young woman reacted violently

Can't blame her...

The issue with Amanda was control.

Authority.

At this shelter, dorms were cleared every morning—unless you had a job or a documented medical reason to be in the dorms during closures. In Amanda’s mind, this person was now undermining her authority. She was bending the rules. She was setting a bad example.

"If she does it they're all gonna do it!"

And Amanda couldn’t have that.

Because if others saw her make an exception, she believed they wouldn’t respect her anymore.

That’s the level of thinking we’re sometimes dealing with. That’s what happens when authority is held by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.

The Rulebook Excuse

This is a classic move:

hiding behind the rulebook while doing something clearly harmful.

People cite policies, protocols, “how things are supposed to be” as a shield. As if the presence of a rule automatically justifies the way it’s enforced. As if saying, “It’s just policy,” absolves someone of the impact of their choices.

Let’s be honest: Was Amanda truly trying to uphold a necessary rule? Or was she using that rule as a tool—an excuse—to do what she wanted to do?

Sometimes, rules are the problem.

Sometimes, the rules we create for structure and fairness become obstacles to care. And when we apply those rules without flexibility, without discretion, without understanding the human being in front of us, we stop doing social services—and start doing damage.

Take the young woman who had just experienced sexual violence. Was enforcing dorm clearance really the priority?

Of course not.

So when Amanda walked upstairs and confronted her—when she told her to “get over it”—what was the goal?

Was it to enforce a policy? Or was it something else? Did Amanda know her approach would provoke a reaction? Did she want that reaction?

Because if she knew, and still chose to escalate, that says everything we need to know about her.

It wasn’t about care.

It wasn’t about structure.

It was about power.

About dominance.

About putting someone back in their place.

"Because these people are spoiled!"

And this is the pattern: the worst kinds of authority hide behind the best-sounding reasons. They use “the rules” as weapons. And then they expect others to co-sign the harm because, technically, the rule exists.

But in human services—especially in shelters, where trauma is part of the fabric—you can’t lead with technicalities.

You have to lead with humanity.

Authority Must Be Fluid

In environments serving vulnerable populations—people navigating trauma, addiction, mental illness—rigid authority doesn’t work. Rules must be flexible. Authority must be dynamic.

Because when the people you serve aren’t operating from stability, enforcing structure without context does more harm than good.

However, that kind of fluidity isn’t intuitive. Especially if your entire understanding of power was shaped by force. If you grew up being told that obedience equals respect, and that questioning authority equals defiance, then compromise feels like weakness. Flexibility feels like failure.

Most people’s relationship with power is set early—shaped by family, reinforced by social norms, and calcified through professional roles. When those patterns go unchallenged, they become default. And when someone steps into a job that requires them to shift—where authority needs to be exercised twenty different ways for twenty different people—it gets complicated fast.

Because this isn’t something you can learn from a textbook. It’s not something credentials alone can prepare you for. You have to unlearn first. You have to build the muscle for adaptability, for emotional regulation, for interpreting behavior without reacting defensively. That takes mentorship, real-time feedback, and a framework of trauma-informed leadership that asks not just “what are the rules?”—but “what’s the goal, and what response gets us there with the least harm?”

And even people with good intentions can cause harm if they’re replicating what they’ve internalized as “tough love.”

Take Amanda.

She actually had lived experience. She’d survived addiction, homelessness, sexual violence. She’d “made it out” and turned her life around. But her model of healing was harsh. Her idea of strength was rooted in suppression, not support.

When she told the young woman—who’d just been assaulted—that it was time to “get over it,” Amanda wasn’t just breaking protocol. She was reenacting her own trauma response, weaponized by the power of her position.

Maybe she thought she was being helpful. Maybe she believed others just needed to “toughen up” like she had. But that’s exactly the danger.

Because unchecked authority, shaped by unresolved harm, will always risk replicating that harm.

So we have to ask:

What do we believe qualifies someone to care for others?

What are we doing to help staff unlearn the harmful models they’ve inherited?

What happens when we don’t?

Redefining Authority Takes More Than a Workshop

Changing how someone sees authority isn’t just professional—it’s personal. You’re asking them to rethink how they’ve moved through the world. Who they believe they are. You're asking them to look at themselves.

Telling staff, “Don’t take it personally if someone yells at you,” might sound simple. But for some, it means abandoning everything they were taught about strength, respect, and identity. For many, being disrespected—especially by someone they’re expected to oversee—feels like a direct attack.

Changing how someone processes that? Doesn’t happen in a workshop.

You can run all the trauma-informed trainings, require mental health first aid, or push cultural competency. But none of that matters if it’s not modeled, maintained, or nurtured.

Supervision has to be ongoing. Rigid or punitive behavior needs to be checked early—but with care. You don’t confront someone by telling them their identity is wrong, especially not in front of others.

These conversations require coaching, not correction. Relationship-building. Validation. You name the challenge—and meet it with empathy.

Yes, you call out harmful behavior.

But you also reinforce that these situations are hard. That being disrespected does hurt. That compassion doesn’t mean letting yourself be walked on—it means choosing your response with intention.

Because what we’re really dealing with isn’t just staff conduct.

It’s burnout. Poverty wages. Personal trauma. All crashing into environments where the cost of getting it wrong is human dignity.

Modeling Authority with Dignity

One of the most powerful ways to shape how authority is exercised in shelters isn’t through trainings or policies—it’s through modeling.

People watch how leadership moves—especially in moments of conflict. They notice your tone, timing, and posture. And if you lead with calm, fairness, and dignity—even when things are tense—that sets the standard. Even if they don’t agree with your decisions, they’ll remember how you made them.

This is why stepping in isn’t about taking control—it’s about showing how it’s done. When you de-escalate a conflict respectfully, hold a boundary without shame, or redirect behavior with compassion, use it as a teaching moment. Afterward, walk your staff through the “why.” Explain what you were responding to, what you were trying to contain, and how you decided on your approach. That’s the essence of trauma-informed leadership in action.

These real-time breakdowns help people build not just skills—but judgment. It’s how culture is actually transmitted. Not through memos. Through moments.

And when authority is modeled with dignity, it stops being a threat. It becomes a source of stability and trust.

Normalize Coaching Over Blame

If we want staff to grow in their leadership, we have to normalize coaching over condemnation.

When someone handles a situation poorly, the instinct might be to correct them immediately. But the more effective approach is to treat it like reviewing game tape. Walk through what happened. Identify where things started to turn. What signs were missed—in the participant or in themselves? What emotional cues could have signaled a different approach?

Most staff know when something went wrong. They just might not know why, or how to do better next time.

But correction can feel like shame—especially for people already feeling under-trained or overwhelmed. If their identity is tied to being respected, being told their approach is flawed can feel deeply personal.

So if you want feedback to land, it has to be grounded in empathy. Show that you’re invested in their growth. Reinforce their strengths while helping them refine their approach.

Affirm and Redirect—Without Denial

Leadership also means facing reality. For example; you can’t pretend poverty wages and burnout don’t exist. Ignoring things like that only fuels resentment. So affirm what’s real. Acknowledge the weight your staff are carrying. And show them that you’re in it with them—not above them.

You might not be able to fix everything, but you can lead with honesty and support. Know your team. Know where the stress comes from. Help alleviate it where you can.

This is what modeling healthy authority looks like. Not dominance. Not detachment. But supportive presence. And that presence becomes the blueprint your team follows.

Because leadership isn’t just about policy—it’s about presence. And presence is what builds trust, confidence, and lasting cultural change.

Invest in people.

Train with care.

Lead with presence. Never stop asking...

Who does our authority serve?

If your team needs support navigating authority, culture, or crisis—Breaking Cycles offers training, coaching, and consulting built for this work. Let’s build systems that heal.

Reach Out!