Inside Goodwill Central Texas’ innovative approach to manager training

When do manager communications become leadership training? When does support go beyond providing resources to empowering managers to internalize the wisdom you share?

During Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference in Austin, Texas, Justin Joffe, editorial director and editor-in-chief of Ragan Communications, sat down with Christina Thorsen, director of internal communications and mission marketing at Goodwill Central Texas. Together, they explored the organization’s innovative approaches to leadership training, upskilling, and fostering psychological safety in the workplace.

They discussed:

• Tailored leadership training. Goodwill Central Texas prioritizes meeting employees where they are, offering diverse leadership training programs such as DISC training and emotional intelligence workshops. These programs help leaders understand their personality styles and navigate difficult conversations effectively. “We want them to own who they are by identifying their personality type, but then sometimes the conversations can be difficult,” Thorsen explained. “So how do we pair those together?”
• The role of HR business partners. Goodwill onboarded five bilingual HR business partners to provide leaders with more than compliance and process support. These partners play a critical role in training first-time managers, offering guidance on implementing policies and fostering a supportive workplace culture. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s a new handbook, go roll it out,’ but really offering training and helping leaders understand the ‘why’ behind our policies,” said Thorsen.
• Trauma-informed management. Recognizing the diverse and sometimes challenging backgrounds of employees, Goodwill incorporates trauma-informed management into its training framework to create psychologically safe environments.“Culturally, we just want to be very supportive,” Thorsen said. “Even looking at trauma-informed management and emotional intelligence training—those are big parts of how we meet our team members where they are.”
• Balancing compliance and human-centered approaches. HR business partners help translate compliance requirements, like handbook updates, into actionable and comprehensible guidance for managers. By conducting small group training and coaching, they ensure policies are well-understood and effectively communicated. “We’re moving away from just loading the handbook on a platform and saying, ‘You’ve read it, sign here,'” explained Thorsen. “Instead, we’re doing small group training so managers know how to talk about it, and team members really understand what’s going on.”
• The scalability of leadership programs. While the current focus is on equipping leaders, Goodwill envisions operationalizing these practices across the workforce to create a unified, supportive culture. “We’re starting with leaders now, but this work is going to scale eventually.,” Thorsen said. “It’s about operationalizing these behaviors and making them part of our culture.”

Check out the full conversation here: