Out of the Hole: Practical Trauma-Informed Leadership Using the 6A Framework
Tracks
Prince
| Wednesday, November 4, 2026 |
| 3:15 PM - 4:45 PM |
Overview
Malika Reese
Three Key Learnings
1. Trauma isn't a minority experience in the rural mental health workforce - it's the majority experience. Leaders who understand this respond to the human reality underneath performance, creating safer and more sustainable workplaces.
2. The 6A Framework: Awareness, Acceptance, Authenticity, Accountability, Assertiveness, and Adaptability. A practical, sequential pathway for trauma-informed leadership. Each stage is paired with a concrete tool applicable from Monday morning.
3. Getting out of the hole is a practice, not a destination. The more you practise this framework, the better you get and the safer it becomes for everyone around you to do the same.
Presenter
Malika Reese
Director
Malika Reese
Out of the Hole: Practical Trauma-Informed Leadership Using the 6A Framework
Presentation Overview
Around 2 in 3 Australians have experienced childhood maltreatment. That means the majority of people in our rural mental health workforce: clinicians, peer workers, managers, coordinators, are carrying unaddressed trauma into every team meeting, supervision session, and client interaction. Not because they are unwell. Because they are human.
This workshop introduces the 6A Framework - a practical, embodied model for trauma-informed leadership - and gives participants six concrete tools they can use immediately in their workplace and with their teams.
Built on two decades of lived experience, advocacy, and professional storytelling, the 6A Framework moves participants through six sequential stages: Awareness, Acceptance, Authenticity, Accountability, Assertiveness, and Adaptability - distilled into six words: See. Accept. Show up. Own it. Speak. Shift.
This is not a lecture. It is an experience. Through parable, story, structured reflection, and small-group practice, participants move through the framework in real time - leaving not just informed, but transformed.
The 90-minute session is structured as follows: an opening provocation establishing psychological safety; story-based introduction of the framework through parable; deep facilitated exploration of each stage with six practical tools: The Pause, The Externalise, The Truth Test, The Repair, The Gentle Call-Out, and The Wide Lens; small-group application using rural-specific scenarios; and a whole-group integration and close.
This workshop is especially relevant for rural and regional mental health workplaces where burnout, isolation, and secondary traumatic stress make trauma-informed leadership not a luxury - but a survival strategy.
Participants will leave with a framework they can name, tools they can use on Monday, and a different understanding of what it means to lead people who, like all of us, bring their whole story to work.
The more you practise this, the better you get.
This workshop introduces the 6A Framework - a practical, embodied model for trauma-informed leadership - and gives participants six concrete tools they can use immediately in their workplace and with their teams.
Built on two decades of lived experience, advocacy, and professional storytelling, the 6A Framework moves participants through six sequential stages: Awareness, Acceptance, Authenticity, Accountability, Assertiveness, and Adaptability - distilled into six words: See. Accept. Show up. Own it. Speak. Shift.
This is not a lecture. It is an experience. Through parable, story, structured reflection, and small-group practice, participants move through the framework in real time - leaving not just informed, but transformed.
The 90-minute session is structured as follows: an opening provocation establishing psychological safety; story-based introduction of the framework through parable; deep facilitated exploration of each stage with six practical tools: The Pause, The Externalise, The Truth Test, The Repair, The Gentle Call-Out, and The Wide Lens; small-group application using rural-specific scenarios; and a whole-group integration and close.
This workshop is especially relevant for rural and regional mental health workplaces where burnout, isolation, and secondary traumatic stress make trauma-informed leadership not a luxury - but a survival strategy.
Participants will leave with a framework they can name, tools they can use on Monday, and a different understanding of what it means to lead people who, like all of us, bring their whole story to work.
The more you practise this, the better you get.
Biography
Malika Reese is a keynote speaker, advocate, and lived experience leader named Wollongong Citizen of the Year 2025. A founding member of the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse's LE College, she set legal precedent in Australia, successfully challenging a suppression order. With decades as a professional performer, including the Sydney Opera House and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Malika brings rare humanity to trauma, culture, and leadership. She holds two degrees from the University of Wollongong and is Artist in Residence at Tender Funerals. Her work helps organisations build cultures where people don't just survive... they thrive.
