Top 3 Ways to Support a Healthy Organizational Culture at Your Sober Living Home

Though they are places of residence first a foremost, sober living homes are also organizations, workplaces and therapeutic environments. As with any organization, sober living homes can easily breed toxic cultures where indirect communication, fear, intimidation, coercion, blame and high drama thrive. 

It is often said that when you fail to consciously plan and attend to your organizational culture, you invite bad actors to prioritize personal power over organizational values. This erosion can happen slowly over time and it can be a difficult problem to fix once it’s taken root. 

The solution? 

Proactively plan for a healthy organizational culture before a toxic environment can ever develop.

Today at the Sober Living App blog, we’ll look at 5 things all sober living home operators can do to proactively support a healthy organizational culture at their sober living homes.  

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #1: Post the Philosophy and Rules of Your Sober Living Home in a Prominent Place 

Because addiction cannot peacefully co-exist with healthy relationships, people in recovery often need coaching around how to create, maintain and respect healthy interpersonal boundaries. It takes time and practice to unlearn the toxic relationship patterns and behaviors that people with SUD practiced when they were using. 

One of the ways this manifests in sober living homes is a lot of boundary-testing around rules. Residents may break or bend rules to see how strictly and consistently they are enforced. Residents may attempt to “split” authority figures from one another to undermine a “united front” on rules. This, in turn, can result in a conflict between managers or other standard-bearing figures within your sober living home’s orbit. 

Don’t let this happen.

Clearly post the philosophy and house rules of your sober living home in a prominent place (like the living room) so that there is full transparency on what is and is not allowed. This consistency actually invites a sense of safety and stability into the sober living home environment and encourages a deepening of residents’ recovery.

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #2: Don’t Hire Friends, Sponsors or Sponsees at your Sober Living Home 

This is very controversial in the addiction treatment and recovery communities, but we humbly suggest that you reconsider hiring friends, sponsors and sponsees to manage your sober living home. These types of arrangements are sometimes called “dual relationships” and they can quickly and easily lead to trouble. It is difficult to maintain the proper professionalism and objective distance that a healthy working relationship requires when you are also personally “friendly” with your employee, especially if that friendship pre-dates the working relationship. 

Not only are these relationships difficult to manage themselves, they can also wreak havoc on your other working relationships within the organization. It will be easy for others to view your relationship as “favoritism” and “bias” and this will haunt you in future conflicts outside of the immediate dual relationship, as well. 

Healthy Organizational Culture Tip #3: Model Healthy Conflict Resolution at Your Sober Living Home

People in recovery frequently struggle with healthy conflict resolution skills. Direct communication and assertiveness can feel threatening and foreign to those who are not accustomed to respecting and maintaining healthy boundaries. 

The fix?

Model healthy conflict resolution skills at your sober living home. Train all management and residents in healthy communication (like Non-Violent Communication or NVC) and create space for a formal conflict resolution process at your sober living home should anyone request it or require it. Put down in writing what a formal conflict resolution process entails and require all residents to agree to submit to such a process, if needed, in writing. There are many models of these types of processes online for free. Simply choose the one that most resonates with your sober living home’s mission and values and make sure to include those details in your new resident agreement. Make additional copies or a poster detailing the process accessible in a common area. 

We’re Here to Help Your Sober Living Home Create a Healthy Organizational Culture

At Sober Living App, we’re passionate about helping sober living homes across the country operate smarter. 

Running a sober living home can be a huge hassle, but it doesn’t have to be. 

We’ve distilled all the chaos that can easily overwhelm sober living home operators into a simple app that “thinks” about all the little details that go into running your sober living home 24/7 so you don’t have to. 

Claim your free, no-strings free trial today and see the Sober Living App difference for yourself. 

4 Ways a Trauma-Informed Approach Can Help Your Sober Living Residents Cope with Pandemic Stress

A history of trauma is very common among sober living residents. As we continue to delve deeper into the pandemic, we are all being exposed to the shared secondary (or primary, in some instances) trauma of living through these disturbing times. The effects of going through such a turbulent time will no doubt be the object of much study in the years to come. 

As sober living home operators, what should we know about how trauma - past and present - are operating right now in our facilities? How can we support residents with a history of trauma during these traumatic times? What can we do to help residents cope with pandemic-related stress while building up their capacity for resilience? 

Today, we’ll look at four ways you can incorporate a trauma-informed approach into your sober living home’s COVID-19 playbook. 

Consider Screening New Sober Living Home Residents for Trauma

It’s difficult to address trauma when you don’t know it’s there. 

Implementing universal screening for trauma during your new resident application process helps you get to know what your residents are up against in terms of their lifetime trauma exposure. When an incoming resident has a high level of trauma in their past, you’ll know in advance. This can help inform how you respond to everything from “behavior issues” to interpersonal conflicts with your trauma exposed residents. 

Make The “New Normal” Predictable at Your Sober Living Home

For residents with a history of trauma, unpredictable environments feel unsafe. COVID has disturbed all of the daily routines and patterns that signal to our brains that everything is normal. When big pattern shifts occur - like the ones we are all experiencing around COVID - trauma affected residents are more likely to respond negatively to the change. 

That’s why it’s so important to create as much pattern and predictability in our “new normal” as possible for your residents. Do everything you can to make sure that your sober living home’s COVID guidelines are predictable and consistent. Develop new routines around cleaning, visitation and socializing so that your residents always know what to expect, even during these uncertain times.  

Institute the Buddy System or Other Peer Support Program at Your Sober Living Home

Does your sober living home offer in-house peer support? 

Do you have a buddy system between residents? 

If the answer is no, now might be a good time to start. Consider linking up “old timer” residents with new residents. When trauma affected residents are experiencing symptoms of isolation and dissociation, a quick check in with a buddy can help turn their day around.   

Get Curious About Problem Behaviors at Your Sober Living Home

Do you have a resident who is always breaking rules? Complaining? Starting fights? 

“Problem behaviors” are often warning signs of trauma. It’s tempting to ask such residents, “what’s wrong with you?,” but re-framing the question and asking, “what happened to you?” will most likely get better results. Often, the “problem behavior” you are picking up on is part of your resident’s trauma-related response. These responses might aggravate you, but your resident probably developed these behaviors as part of a survival strategy in response to their trauma. They are an expression of your resident’s will to survive in the face of adversity. 

Keep the Focus on Resilience at Your Sober Living Home

The sober living home community is resilient. Together we will make it through this pandemic. 

Infusing a trauma-informed response into your sober living home’s COVID-19 plan means treating your residents’ stress responses as normal rather than pathological. Helping your residents lean into healthy coping behaviors and veer away from negative patterns that no longer serve them helps build life-long resilience that will see them through the pandemic and beyond.

We’re Here to Help Your Sober Living Home Thrive

At Sober Living App, we know sober living and we’re committed to helping your sober living home thrive. 

Our software solution is saving time, money and sanity for sober living home operators across the country. 

We invite you to claim your free trial today.