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When leaders helping others through disaster are part of the same community, they may also be victims.

When helpers are also survivors, the act of helping others can foster healing and resilience in real time.

Organizations that support leaders who are both helpers and victims build greater resilience.

I recently had the privilege of serving as a committee member of a doctoral dissertation at Grand Canyon University. The candidate was Crystal Tutein, a disaster recovery official with the American Red Cross who lives in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Her research examined senior disaster relief officials who survived Hurricanes Irma and Maria while simultaneously leading recovery efforts for their community.

It was one of the most compelling research studies I’ve reviewed in my career. Not just because of the dramatic stories of the individuals. But because Tutein’s research surfaced something the literature had rarely explored before.

Two Storms. One Population. No Framework.

In September 2017, the U.S. Virgin Islands was struck by two Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, just 12 days apart. The devastation was total. Roofs gone. Neighborhoods erased. Families displaced.

Many of the people responsible for leading recovery efforts were living through the same disasters themselves, all at the same time.

These were senior emergency management officials who lost family members, buried loved ones, stood in food lines, and went months without power. All the while, they needed to step up as leaders in their communities, helping others through trauma that they were, themselves, experiencing at the same time.

One participant lost his father. He buried him. And went to work the same day. “Nobody really knew what I was dealing with,” he told Tutein. “But I had a job to do.”

The research literature has consistently overlooked this dynamic. Studies on disaster recovery treat survivors and emergency leaders as separate populations with different needs, different support structures, and different........

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