A Fresh Look at the Five Ives Framework in the Workplace

Reconnect with core leadership principles in this episode of Returning to Us, as Lauren revisits the 4Ps and their role in the Five Ives framework.

In this earlier episode from Returning to Us, Lauren introduces the foundations of what would become the Five Ives framework, including the Five Ives continuum and the 4Ps (Policy, Practice, Practitioner, and People). Listening back now, this conversation serves as a helpful reminder of how workplace culture, leadership, and environment all play a role in regulation and healing.

Today, the 4Ps remain a core part of the Five Ives framework, supporting organizations in building awareness, strengthening culture, and creating trauma informed change. This episode offers a timely reminder of how these tools continue to guide meaningful, system wide impact.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: All right if you were here for last episode, last couple of episodes really, myself and Jessica are introducing this Five category framework that we developed for, like, it wasn't necessarily designed for personal healing and regulation, it was more designed for organizational, but it really applies to personal healing as well, and personal regulation. So, we call this framework and this organization the Five Ives, FIVE IVES. So, we introduced those we talked about those what it looks like to move through these different categories.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So today, what I want to do is introduce this, the second part of the 5 Ives, which is our 4 P's. So, the 4 P's really focuses on the workplace. What are the elements of a workplace that impact how an organization functions, what their culture is like, their overall regulation. So basically we took the this concept and we divided it into 4 different P's that make up an organization. So here are your 4 P's, and then I'm going to break them down. Tell you what each one means, and then tell you how the Five Ives fits into this secondary framework. So, your 4 P's, the highest tier of, like, least amount of influence, as like an individual would be the Policy level so like what at the Policy level is going well, not going well, trauma informed, not trauma informed, negatively impacting the company culture, positively impacting the company culture. So that's like highest part, hardest to change because of somehow out of reach it is for some of us. But we can definitely influence it and impact it. And then we've got our our Practice and the practice is like the place of work. So, it could also be, like, you could you could take out the word practice and put in like the school or the business location, the studio, like whatever type of organization you work for, it would just be like the physical building, the brick and mortar. And then your next P is the leadership level. And medically, we would say the Practitioner. If it were principal, it would be, you know, school. So, just the person that is in a leadership position. And then your last P is just the People, and we kind of put staff into that practice and an organizational organization P. So, the people is who you serve. And we work mostly with organizations that are serving others. We work with medical, we work with policing, we work with child advocacy, we work with education agencies or schools. Anyone who's serving someone. So, with the Five Ives, the goal really is just to influence workplace culture, so that people want to come to work every day. They don't burn out, they don't quit and that the organization as a whole becomes more trauma informed, so that we are showing up better and just societally having a positive impact. So, the thing with most trauma informed care programs and a lot of coaching programs is they they coach at the either the people level or even, like, the I wouldn't even say that the leadership level at like when I say people level, I mean they coach it like the frontline staff and then maybe coach the frontline staff, how to effectively implement the service, to to the the customer or the the other people. So, that's like really the the lowest hanging fruit. That's where most people work, and that that makes sense. Because if those people are in Survival it's hard for leadership to get out of survival because they're putting out all of those fires. But what we find really helpful is to really think about all 4 of the P’s, all levels of the organization, like, what is your policy that's impacting your leadership. What does your practice itself, the physical building, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What's the energy in it. What is, like, communication looking like between staff? How about staff, are they taken care of? Then you've got your your principal, your practitioner, your leadership level is anyone supporting them? And then your people level, which is who you're serving. So, what we do is what we we take these 4 P's, and we have an organization kind of self-reflect, maybe even audit themselves like in in a reflective way of, okay, if we look at each of these P's and then we take the Five Ives framework this continuum of of healing and growth and we apply it to each P. Where are you at on the Five Ives scale with each P.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So, if you weren't here for the last episode, you may not have heard, you know what each Five Ives which each what each Ive for the Five Ives represents. But in in brief, and what what the Five Ives represents is this continuum or this categorization system where you move from basically not so okay to very okay. And it looks like and sounds like this: The 1^st phase, the 1^st category, is Survive. You are just surviving your everyday life. You are stressed out, you are burnt out, you are ready to give up. Then you move into Revive where you get some of your life back, and you're feeling a little bit better, and you're starting to regulate a bit more, and then you move into Strive and Strive is where you're actually feeling good enough to start planning for the future and actually making more stabilized plans and then move into implementation of those plans. And that's the Thrive phase. Most people think that we are all done on Thrive. But we are not. We added a 5^th Ive, which is Hive. And that's where we we think about okay. Now, how do we take what we've learned and how well we're doing and how do we influence those around us? Mentors onboarding trainer training inside of your organization like, what does this look like to keep it going and share with others? So, what we do then is we think about. Okay, let's let's talk about the lowest level people. This is where most people usually start the people that you are serving. When you think about primarily, the people that you are serving. Where would you categorize them on the Five Ives? Would you say that most people you are serving are in survival? For example, when we work with medical organizations a lot of times, it's medical organizations that are that are serving populations that are in survival ER, Medicare, Medicaid, whatever it may be. So, when we think about that, we're like, okay, yeah, most of us are probably in survival, maybe in revive. Okay, so how do we pull those people out of one stage into the next more healthy stage. And let me back up to even say like, the stages aren't healthy versus unhealthy, so to say. The Survive stages need necessary to actually survive everyday life. Like, biologically speaking, we would not be here today if we didn't have our survive state. The problem is, too many of us are getting stuck in the survive state and that's when it causes a lot of inflammation in the body. And then that leads to disease. So, Survive stage itself isn't unhealthy. We just don't want to get stuck there. But a lot of these people that that type of organization would be serving, they are getting stuck there. So, we want to work on things that we can do inside of our organization to move them up and out.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, then, if we take that and we back up a step. Practitioners or principals or leadership, when you reflect, and you think about your own leadership. And if you are leadership, where where do you all think you are? Do you think you're doing really well? And you're implementing future oriented things? And and you're in Thrive. Do you feel like you're not quite in Survive, maybe in revive like you're like feeling like, you know, something's not quite right but there are still moments where things are going well, and you're trying to figure out what to do next. The only thing about the practice and the practice is like it's a big bucket, because we talk about practice is in like the physical space, like when you look at your physical space. Do you feel like that space is, is designed and alludes to and feels like chaos, disorganization survive. Or does it feel like it's very intentional? It's very well designed. It helps people to regulate. It keeps people regulated which would be more of a thrive, or maybe even a Hive stage. And then also in the practice level, you think about your staff. What's the culture of the staff like? Are Staff coming to work? Are they calling off sick? Are they taking mental health days? Are they absent? Are they getting their work done? Are they being productive? Are they talking positively? What are the communications like between staff? All of those things influence where an organization brick and mortar practice wise would be on on the Five Ives scale. And then we think about policy. Where is policy at on that Five Ives scale and there could be a lot of things in the policy that are keeping us in Survive. There could be a lot of things in policy that are moving us into to Hive. So, it really just depends for each organization. This is different. And this can change because leadership comes in leadership can change. People leave positions and new people come in, and that can influence the practice. Who you're serving can potentially or possibly change. Policy probably doesn't change quite as frequently, but it changes and it can change. And we can influence its change. So really, thinking about these 4 P's policy, practice, practitioner, people, and remember that those terms are interchangeable. We could take out practice and put building and staff, and we could take out practitioner, and we could put in principal or whoever leadership might be and the people being the people that we're serving. These 4 P's policy, practice, practitioner ,people. Where are we at on the 5 I've scale with all of these 4 P's. And why did we design all these things like, why do these frameworks matter? Because the 1st step in healing, the 1st step in growth, the 1st step in change is a step into self-awareness. If you don't have self-awareness of where you're at, how could you possibly change. And even if you don't have self-awareness and start to implement change-based things, it's likely that those things might not go well if they don't align to what your actual needs are. So, part of our coming in and kind of, hmm, gathering data, I'll say I want to say audit. But I feel like audit is not a fun word, and people have such a negative association with it. We're like positively auditing people. We come in. We complete this this rubric system, and the system gives you a score, and the score shows you in all 4 of these areas where where your weakness is at. And then we start to implement the 5 eyes framework in these areas based on the rubric data. So, for us, for me, like the reference in my mind, goes to. All these people are biohacking, and they're like cold plunging, and they're saunaing. And they're red lighting. And they're doing all these things to like improve longevity and feel better and heal. Some of the problem that I think about with that is, are those things actually the right healing mechanisms for those individual people. For example, I've read some articles about how cold plunging for women can be really bad, because it's, I would say, really bad, or just not as helpful as it is for men, because biologically, hormonally, we're all made up very differently, especially men versus females, like different types of hormones and responses to stress. And the stress of that cold plunging causes women can actually do less healing than people may think, and it also depends on time of the month. But I think about that, and I'm like, Okay. but if a female got some auditing done of her body, and she knew where her weaknesses are, then she might know better if cold plunging is good for her or not, because maybe her as an individual it is good for. So we want to make sure that we're using interventions that actually meet the needs that we have. And a lot of times I think most of us aren't doing that. So, this framework gives us that this framework takes that medical example, or that, like human personal, biological example, health example and puts it into a business framework, an organizational healing framework.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So very excited about this work have seen it impact so many lives already, and very excited to to have it exposed to more and more organizations, and more and more people and and impact more and more people. If you forget any of this, or you need a visual to break this down, go to FiveIves.com, FIVE, IVES, fiveives.com, and the visuals are on there that really help you to kind of see what this framework and moving through it looks like. And like, I said, we're talking more workplace and organizational level today. But this applies to the the personal level as well. You can think about yourself on the Five Ives framework, or even like yourself, in terms of those 4 P's, how are you influencing those P’s. okay to wrap up the show I'm going to share with you our try at home tip, which is a space color audit. Maybe less fun than it sounds. But it's really impactful. It's nothing to do with outer space has to do with your physical space, whether it's your office space, your workspace, your home space, your bedroom space, any physical space that you are in a lot when you close your eyes and visualize that space. Or if you're in that space, or can go to that space, you might physically go there. But kind of scan that space or that room and take an audit of how do the colors in that room make you feel in this, like, neutralized moment? So, I I say this, and I ask you all to do this as a try to help tip, because colors really influence our energy, our mood and there are some colors that are that will cause us to be quicker to anger, quicker to frustration, quicker to X. There are some colors that help us. Be kind of more alert and more awake, and there are some colors that make us feel more calm. And that's because those colors relate to kind of biology and our, the way our brains developed. So, for example think about in nature, red, not always, but in a lot of cases, is a sign of danger, like frogs with red markings, red mushrooms, snakes with red markings, spiders with red markings. A lot of times those particular animals are poisonous or can be poisonous. So, a lot of times a bright, bright red, or sometimes even an orange is is like like a stop. Even the red, there's like certain red berries that are poisonous that that tells you to to stop and slow down. But, so biologically, our brain embodies like red, alert, even think like red light stoplight. So, when we see red like on a subconscious level. We're a little bit quicker to frustration. Anger, you know, small doses of red is maybe fine and everyone's response to red will be different, based on like kind of their nervous system, and where it's at. But if you have a lot of red it can be causing you or individuals to be more frustrated more frequently or angry. Even other colors that are needed to maybe consider are like yellow is really good for alertness. So yellow is a great color, if you like, in your workspace in your classrooms. Other colors that have influence are like earth-based colors, so greens and blues and grays they're really good, for, like, calm spaces like, maybe you want your office to feel like a calm space, especially if it's like a therapeutic office. Maybe you have a medical room examination room. You want people to be calm in that room, so you can add in some calm colors there the waiting room potentially calm, a classroom like a lot of classrooms can be really chaotic with all their colors and although that looks kind of fun, what it does is it overstimulates the body. So, what I really encourage is thinking about what colors you have, and also trying to include some empty white space on your wall. And white's a very neutral fine color to have. So, if you do have colored walls, is there any space where there isn't anything? Or is there any like white coloration in your your colored space. Can you bring any in like if your walls are colored, can you bring some in in the form of photos or art? So just yeah. That large is a good one to think about, too. Like when you're scanning a room like, do you have art hanging? And is that art what color primarily. And how is that influencing you and your mood, and your energy and other people that are coming into your space, If there are people coming into your space. So, just a space color, physical space, color audit is your try it at home tip.

Lauren Spigelmyer: And that's it for Returning to Us podcast if you're looking for more support in the area of stress trauma behavior of the brain or just like organizational culture and healing we would love to be a part of your learning and healing journey. So that is why we created Five Ives, which offers a range of supports from coaching programs to group training programs, even university credit for those in education. So, if you want to learn more about how you can access this as an individual, or how you can access this as a whole organization or cohort or subset of your organization, feel free to hop on to Fiveives.com FIVE, ives.com and set up a discovery call with us, and we can talk about how best we may be able to support you. Don't forget to lock in what you learned today by applying it right away, or leaving a comment about what you might do or come back and leave a comment of what you have done, and let us know how it went. Until next episode, I am Lauren Spigelmyer, and thank you for joining me.

Categories: : Emotional Regulation